From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee

by Edward Simmons

Chapter XV: Paint and Painters

An old college friend of mine once wrote to me and asked what he should do about his son, who was in Harvard, but wished to give up college and become a painter. I answered and said: “Discourage him; discourage him to the point of starvation, for if he be sincere in his love of the fine arts, he will pay no attention to you. No man is a real artist unless he finds the impetus toward it so great that he sticks to it in spite of every deprivation.” I do not know whether my friend took my advice or not, but at any rate his son, Barry Faulkner, has become, with or without discouragements, one of our foremost younger decorative painters.

Emerson understood, perhaps better than anyone, as he tells us in his

To An Artist

Forget the hut and seek the palace,

Reck not what the people say,

For where’er the trees grow biggest

Huntsmen find the easiest Way.

George Lathrop told me that shortly after his marriage with one of the daughters of Nathaniel Hawthorne he was very much surprised at receiving a formal visit from Mr. Emerson one afternoon. The poet was old then and was not in the habit of going about much, so the call portended something of importance. After the usual conversation, Emerson said, pointedly:

“Mr. Lathrop, I understand that you have chosen words as a means of livelihood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lathrop.

“And have married?” continued Emerson. “An added insanity?”

Poverty is one of the strongest enemies that the artist has to fight. We should each one have a Mæcenas to keep us; I know of but one or two cases in this country where men have succeeded in gaining membership in the first rank in the opinion of other artists (for they are his peers and deciding fact) without money behind them. They inherit it, they marry it, or they are backed by some one so that they may have a security of rental, food, and materials. There is not enough market for the fine arts that a man may live by them alone.

After all, it is as it should be. We are a young nation, really in our infancy, and babies do not need art until they have been fed and kept warm. It takes many generations of growing wheat until the body is ready for something finer. So far, the fine arts have been an indication of the coming death of the country that produced them—like a bush or vine, a nation flowers and then dies. Only the seeds grow, and those in another place. If I were asked to give my opinion, I would vote against forcing the people to accept the fine arts, as I would vote against giving a baby tobacco or alcohol, which would most assuredly stop its growth. (However, Emerson says, “America has a genius for making new law,” and it may be that we can change this. I sincerely hope so.)

All this is hard for the artist whose only desire is to catch and keep some of the beauty that he finds about him, and if he is forced to depend upon the sale of these dreams to provide him with bread and butter, he is quite liable to starvation or cynicism. The ordinary person cannot possibly realize how close to the wind an idealist often gets. To say that you are “broke” means nothing to the business man. I once heard one of them tell a painter friend of mine that it was all wrong for him to owe his washerwoman, that he should do, as all practical folk did, go down and hypothecate a bond! It is unethical for an artist (as it is for a professional man) to go into the courts or to advertise. He must not ask for work or show that he is hard up in any way, and, like the stage folk, he must hold his work at a high price. The distance between the price of a work of art and the money one can obtain for it is a long road, however. I was astonished to read in a newspaper, not long ago, that a picture of mine, bought by a well-known millionaire, was appraised, at his death, for exactly ten times the amount I had received for it not more than ten years before.

If a man dies or goes crazy—so that the source of supply is definitely cut off—his work immediately jumps in value. I often think of John Twachtman, struggling along without any particular recognition, selling his pictures for little or nothing, and almost bankrupt when he died. His brother painters knew the value of his work and resolved to make the public see it. The dealers fought shy of it, as he had not been a popular seller when alive. Choosing the right week in February and the proper gallery (the American Art Association) such men as Thomas Dewing and Alden Weir, who commanded a position in the fine arts in this country, were joined by one of the unusual people in America—a man with a strange combination of business ability, overwhelmed by a love of beauty—Thomas W. Clarke. Twachtman’s pictures, of which there were a great many, were properly placed before the public, with the result that his bills were paid and a substantial sum realized for his widow. A number of his best canvases were reserved so that Mrs. Twachtman might have them for a nest egg.

What a contrast while he was alive! One friend of his has in his possession to-day many exquisite sketches which he purchased from time to time for twenty-five dollars apiece. They are now worth thousands. I remember walking wearily up and down Fifth Avenue all of one afternoon with Twachtman, each of us with one of his unframed landscapes under his arm, visiting dealer after dealer in a vain effort to sell one of them for twenty-five dollars in order that he might obtain enough money to remain a member of The Players. In one gallery we were offered fifteen dollars. By that time we were quite tired, and I had to restrain John from striking the man. In sadness we returned to the club and placing the canvases in the cloak room, went downstairs to cheer ourselves with a drink, where I (talking as usual) told our afternoon’s experience to a limited number of friends. I had hardly finished when the clerk reached out through the side window and handed John a receipted bill for his dues. Stanford White had heard the story and paid them.

As a sequel to this tale: a year or two ago at a picture shop of the second rate—the kind that is hung with framed canvases to the ceiling—I saw in the window, in a gorgeous and very vulgar frame, one of those pictures that we had carried unsuccessfully along the Avenue so long ago. On a card in large letters was printed, “One of the greatest landscapes of John Twachtman.” I went in and inquired the price. It was thirty-five hundred dollars!

Twachtman painted such exquisite small things. It made no difference to him—the size, shape, or texture of his material—he could always conjure up an idea that fitted it perfectly. Whenever I was working at a large decoration he would come up to my studio and carry away the triangular pieces of canvas that inevitably come off a work of this kind. I suppose the pictures he made on them have sold for more, since he died, than all of my decorations put together.

He looked like a faun; one would expect, upon moving back his hair, to find some furry ears. He had the nature of a faun. There was no place for him in the nineteenth century; he would have been a normal creature in the Golden Age. His simplicity of mind showed in his work. I have stood before one of his landscapes and thought: “How did you do it? How could you see the thing so simply?” My mind is always cluttered up with details, but, for him, they just did not exist. I cannot imagine John in an airplane; it would have been incongruous. His place was in the fields, living on berries and herbs, refreshing himself at the brooks and streams, as he went his merry way, here and there catching and keeping for the world a fleeting glimpse of Nature as she showed her secret self to him. John Twachtman is as good an example as I know, of my own definition of an artist—”one who shall show you the stars during the daytime.”

All the world is striving to manufacture what the people want, but an artist is in an entirely different position. There is no value to a picture at the pawnbroker’s. You can borrow practically nothing on a Corot; you can get more on the frame than on the canvas.

One day when I was very hard up, a young architect from Paris who was building the New Amsterdam Theater here telephoned me that Mr. Finn had recommended me to do some work for him. It appears that he had made a contract with a certain painter for a series of panels representing the development of the North River. Although the contract had been running two years and the theater was to open in two weeks, the painter had only half finished the work. There was nothing to do, as the theater must open, and Mr. Finn had told him I was the only man who could do them in a hurry, but he would have to pay a stiff price. I asked him what I thought was fair (I never know what my work is worth), and choosing the subjects, running from Eric the Red to the last international yacht race, I began.

I was living at that time in a studio which had formerly been a stable, with a cement floor graded to the central hole, where there was an outlet to the sewer. Just before this the sewer had become stopped up and, as it had rained heavily, the water had gathered on the studio floor. There was no time to fix it; I had only two weeks to do six panels, each one more than five feet long, and could not have the plumbers messing around. Of course, I had no money to hire another place to work. I had a time! Every morning I raced to the Library to look up the historical facts, and then came home to make my compositions. All this while there were four inches of water on a level all over the floor, a line of bricks to walk from my easel to my painting table, and another line from the table back to where I could get a point of view of my work. Of necessity, from the door to the bed was a third brick pathway. Every now and then, in the excitement of creation, I would fall off of my improvised bridges and drench my feet. But youth is lucky and I escaped pneumonia—also I finished the panels in time.

At another time in my life, I found myself with a lot of pictures and no money. There were four people depending upon me, no work, and nothing I could realize upon. On awakening one morning I discovered that the entire capital of the group was one nickel, which I found in a baby’s bank. This had been robbed sundry times before, but the little coin had somehow been missed. It was necessary to do something, and that immediately. A friend who had dined with us the evening before upon a stew made of thirty-five cents’ worth of beef neck and some potatoes had suggested that a certain elderly banker, the silent partner of a well-known financier, had just “turned down” a proposition made to him for an overmantel decoration. The artist had asked too much and my friend suggested that I go and make a bid.

The banker’s office was away downtown, and, arrayed in white shoes and hat and my best white serge suit from London (it was one of the hottest days of the year), I marched out with my nickel in my pocket. At that time I was living up on Ninety-sixth Street, so I sauntered casually over to the subway station, pushed the coin nonchalantly through the grating of the ticket office. The man promptly shoved it back with the curt remark, “No good.” I let it fall on the floor; it dropped with a dull thud and I threw it angrily away, not thinking so much of my own disappointment, but disgusted with the person who had been so cruel as to cheat a baby by putting a lead nickel into its bank.

However, I still had a journey to make, and gazed about, looking for an idea. My eye fell upon the shop of my barber where I was in the habit of having my hair out. Going in, I asked him to lend me some change. My clothes and my manner must have deceived him, for he pressed me to take a dollar, although I asked only for a dime and said that I would not be responsible for returning more. Armed with the ten cents, I was on my way.

Mr. Lungren, for it was he, was in his office, received my proposal with enthusiasm, and I got my order. He was just about to dismiss me politely, when I said I must have one third cash on the spot. He asked why, evidently thinking I did not trust him, but I replied with Bill Nye’s well-known story of going into a shabby little restaurant, ordering two boiled eggs, and receiving a check for one dollar. Upon a demand for the reason for such an exorbitant charge, the proprietor replies:

“Look around you. I need the money.”

Mr. Lungren laughed and started to make out a check, but I insisted upon currency, saying that a check was only a promise to pay and no good to a drowning man. Then I added, “I want it in small bills, please.” I got it in twenties and tens.

On the way home, I stopped at every subway station, went up to the surface, and bought a drink and broke one of the bills. By the time I had traveled from Wall Street to Ninety-sixth Street my mind was in a very mellow condition and my pockets bulging in every direction. Marching into the house, I yelled for the startled members of my family and, emptying my pockets, hurled the bills into the air so that they flew into every part of the room. These high spots in a man’s life are worth all the years of poverty and struggle.

In spite of the fact of the manner of my receiving the order, I think I made a pretty good representation of “Hospitality” for Mr. Lungren.

During these periods of “hardupness” in my life, I was constantly having the strangest things happen—things that almost made me believe in miracles. I am often criticized for being too optimistic, but my experience has made me so. Luck has always come to me out of the empty air. The telephone, the mail, a chance meeting with a friend, any one of a thousand occurrences may happen to change the tide of affairs at any moment. Oftentimes, in Europe, would come a letter from mother, with a wholly unexpected check. Mothers seem to have a seventh sense which tells them when their children need help, and I always felt that there was an especial bond of sympathy between my mother and myself. She probably knew that I was rather an outcast and needed her more than the others, and I am sure that I understood her better than anyone else. For example, when I painted mother’s portrait, everyone criticized me because I did not have her knitting. I never saw my mother knit; she did not have time. Whenever she had a moment’s leisure to sit down, she had some sewing in her hand, so I made her mending a stocking.

This was a time of portraits—I did President Hill of Harvard, Mr. Sayre of Bethlehem, and many others—and small decorations, including several overmantels and ceilings, but finally, out of the clear sky came along one of the largest orders that I ever received—to help do the Capitol of the state of Minnesota, at St. Paul.

It was rather a big idea for a state to decorate its building so extensively, and Cass Gilbert, the architect, deserves a great deal of credit for the venture. I was given four huge panels below the dome of the rotunda. They were about twenty-eight feet long and thirteen in height. Placed ninety feet from the ground, they looked like postage stamps when finished. The two rooms where the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives met were given to Blashfield and La Farge.

The subject chosen was the Settling of the West. The first panel represents the Young Man Leaving Home; the second, the Cleaning Up of the Land; the third, Breaking the Soil, which he does by lifting a great stone out of a hole from which issues a young girl bearing maize; and the last, the Young Man Is Crowned and sends the Four Winds to the Four Quarters of the globe bearing the gifts of Minnesota. In every panel he is accompanied by Hope and Minerva.

“CLEANSING THE SOIL OF THE BAD ELEMENTS”
Panel by Edward Simmons, Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul
Copyright by Edward Simmons; from a Copley Print, Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston

There were several guides in the Capitol employed to show the visitors around and explain the sights to them. I thought it would be splendid for me to give them special instructions about my work, so that they would not make the usual ludicrous mistakes. But guides seem to be a different breed of animal chosen for the wide range of their imaginations. I supposed everything was going all right, when one day a particularly loquacious one came to me and showed me a miniature palette in his buttonhole, telling me he was an artist himself and belonged to a club of artists. He knew all about the ladies in my decoration—the one veiled in chiffon (which I had made for Hope) he called Sin, entirely neglecting the nude woman in the foreground (Sin) clinging to a grizzly (Savagery). He had probably received his early education in and about a Burlesque show.

It was in St. Paul that I saw the most wonderful collection of paintings ever gathered together (as far as I know) by a private individual. Mr. J. J. Hill had built a special room, especially lighted with everything adequate to show them to the best advantage. And such pictures! He had numbers of Corots—one of the nude Magdelen—Millet’s “Goose Girl,” and beautiful Daubignys. One Corot (of Biblis) was stunning. I could have lain on my back under the trees of the landscape and gone miles and miles through the distances between the clouds.

There were capitals and capitols to decorate after St. Paul, but none of them such a large order. In the Law Courts of Mercer, Pennsylvania, I put figures representing the different characteristics of the law; at Des Moines, Iowa, I was given a long and narrow half-moon panel, twenty-five or thirty feet in length and only about five feet in width at the center, and they would have for a subject, the Presentation of the Flag to the First Regiment that went to the Civil War. Of course, I couldn’t get in a human figure and a flag in the proper way, so I made an awkward girl holding it and letting it sag to the ground.

In the Capitol of Pierre, South Dakota, I painted a panel of the Lewis and Clark expedition which camped at about this place. I made the river and the bluffs, with a voyageur in a coonskin cap sitting on an overturned canoe and bargaining with an Indian who is showing him a buffalo pelt. An amusing incident, which my friends would say shows how “Simmy always falls on his feet,” is the way I painted the Indian. The librarian of the building was a great expert on Indian lore and had ferreted out much obscure knowledge, much to the annoyance of some of the painters, who were constantly having to change their figures to agree with his statements. I made an Indian with two braids of hair, but later added another, as he had his back turned and it suited my composition. This librarian wrote me an enthusiastic letter saying that he had supposed himself the only man in existence who knew that the tribe of Sioux Indians that lived in South Dakota were the only ones who wore their hair in three braids.

About this time (I was sixty years old) I thought it wise to stop and take cognizance of myself. My work was too literal, too full of details, and I wondered what the causes could be. First, there was my natural timidity. As a boy, I was taught not to fight. Surrounded by women all my childhood, with natural tendencies to stay in the house and read or draw, the baby of the family and always ailing—all these circumstances kept me away from a rough-and-tumble boy’s life. I can remember only one real fight in my young days. It was when I was seven years old.

I had a little spotted overcoat which in the opinion of the authorities had gotten too shabby. It must have been very old, for it was given to the small son of our washerwoman, a boy about my age. In front of the schoolhouse one day, we were coasting, when some one put a stick on the coast. I hit it and was thrown off my sled. It happened again, and I realized that it had been intentional. I lost my temper and threatened all sorts of things happening to the boy who did it, and dared him to do it again.

It happened again. I was furious and told the offending boy to step out. Lo! my washerwoman’s son with my overcoat on! Of course, I was badly pummeled, but I can remember the mystic feeling of striking my spotty overcoat. Though I really was worsted in the battle, I bore but few signs of it, and as he got a black eye, when asked who won I very meanly pointed to the evidence and left the questioner to his own inference.

This quality of timidity has always been accompanied in my nature by a great love of heroic deeds, and I find that it is so of many persons of my type. My brother told me of meeting Charles Reade when he went to England with the Harvard crew to row a match with Oxford. Mr. Reade lived close by, on the Thames, and he dined and wined the boys. In return they invited the author to go out in the launch to see them get into their shell. This very tall man, whose stories redounded with feats of bravery, walked down the fixed steps which led to the float, but when he felt the raft moving under his feet, he drew back and would go no further.

Reade was also overwhelmed by love of facts and could always produce the proof of any statement he made. (I see a lot of myself in this.) The great joke among the Harvard boys was when he declared, after a long recital of something that he thought had occurred in America:

“I found the statement in one of the reputable journals of your country”—and he produced the Police Gazette!

Other faults in my work were caused by my early New England environment and education. To me, modern education is like a puddle in the road—very broad, but only two inches deep—and one must remember that truth has never been said to come from a puddle. In pictures, truth dwells in deep places. There is a painting in France of “Truth Arising from a Well” and the scandalized burghers fleeing in every direction. It isn’t considered decent, even in New York, to listen to naked truth, hence the crucifixion of all geniuses, from Christ to Whistler.

It is so strange to see mothers teaching their girls; for example, to take care of babies by giving them dolls, but as to the method of procuring these babies—no! My early ignorance had driven me in the opposite direction later in life. In my desire to be truthful, I went too far and filled my work with a mass of unimportant details.

The subject of education reminds me of an experience I once had with a man of high authority, in the question of the teaching of youth. In fact, he was the president of the board of education of the largest city of the country. Also, he was in the “art” business—that is, he made what were supposed to be the most artistic calendars and pictures used by large firms for advertising purposes. During my hard-up days a friend of mine suggested that I send him a canvas of a girl’s head that I had done out of pure chic, thinking it was the style of thing he could use. I have never been successful with illustration (it needs a special talent), and I would have been surprised if he had accepted it, but I was surely not prepared for this statement from a man occupying so prominent a position in the educational world as he.

“Too much character in the face, Mr. Simmons, too much character. We mustn’t have any at all.”

And this man’s productions go all over the United States, in many obscure and out-of-the-way places. They are the only specimens (besides those atrocities—the Sunday colored supplements) that the people have upon which to form an artistic taste.

Then there is that tendency to “follow de crowd.” We all have it, and in attempting to get away from it resort to the other extreme, resulting in so-called Cubism and Futurism, etc. We are like the sheep I saw on Scott’s ranch in California. Although for two generations the rail fence leading from one field to another had not existed, these creatures still skipped in the empty air, just as did their grandfathers long ago. We are the same, else why do sculptors make statues in marble when there is an abundance of wonderful jasper in this country? Tradition and the Greeks say so. I have no quarrel with the man who goes to the other extreme, provided he first learns what the world has found out, up to his time, about his art, and then chooses to differ. He may possibly add something. But if he insists upon being ignorant, it is like the Sultan’s order to his general to burn the library at Alexandria. “If the books agree with the Koran, they are needless; if they disagree, they are wicked. Burn them.”

We speak of Realism and Idealism—it seems to me that we just go around in circles and all such discussion is futile. First, we dig with our noses, like the ground hog, producing Realism; then we gradually climb up, going through all the stages of Idealism, Super-idealism, Æstheticism, and Euphuism. Then bang! we drop back again to the ground hog and dig for the truth.

Kenyon Cox gave us the best idea of this question that I know of. He said (to paraphrase): “Every honest worker is striving to realize his ideal. He maintains, if he succeeds, that he has produced Realism, but it is not the way we outsiders see it. To us it is Idealism.”

Hawkins told me about following Corot in the fields when he was painting. One day when the master had made a particularly beautiful landscape, with cows browsing in the foreground, Hawkins objected to the fact that Corot had painted in a pond when there was really none in sight.

“My cows will be in my picture for a thousand years,” he answered, “and I put in the pond to give them some water.”

In 1913, the order for the Panama Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco came along, and in order to free my mind of old ties and get a new point of view, I took a boat to the Barbadoes, before starting my compositions.

If any man wishes to find a perfect figure with purely Greek movement, let him go the Barbadoes. The black women walking past his window will give him the sensation of Greek statues in motion. I was not long enough there to see much of the islands, as recovered health and spirits and a great new urge for work drove me home long before I had planned. On going to the steamship office, I found that my return ticket could not be used for more than two months, no berth being free until then, but I resolved to go home, and when I make up my mind to a thing I generally succeed.

A steamer came in three days, of course full, and I made a bet with a friend that I could return by it. So, getting my duds together and arranging with a boatman to do just as I told him, I set out for the steamer in the harbor. I chose the hour when most of the officers would be on shore, dining, sent the men up ahead of me with my baggage, to be deposited in a corner of the deck, following it with my return ticket. Then I hid behind a fresh-air funnel. When the ship was well away and the pilot dropped, I emerged, sought the smoking-room and the steward.

“When does this room close?”

“At midnight.”

“Could you make me up a bed there?” tipping him.

“It’s against the rules, but I could.”

I then sought the purser. A big fight, but I won out, and all during one of the pleasantest voyages I ever made I slept upon a mattress placed upon four chairs in the smoking room.

It was the delight of my life to be able to carry out, in the San Francisco work, an idea that I had been mulling over for years—namely, that of doing a large panel with only three pots of color—red, yellow, and blue—and three brushes. Somehow, I felt that this would simplify my work, and I think I was right. The canvases, forty-six feet long, were to be placed high in the open air, and needed a certain boldness of treatment which I meant to acquire, so I made a flesh-color sky, white drapery, pink roses, black hair, etc., all with three colors, crisscross, using red, white, and blue stripes about as wide as my finger, for the entire composition. I was in doubt as to whether I could express form in this way, but found that I could, and there is not a single outline in the two panels.

I was, as I have been in many other cases, forbidden to use the nude, the idea being that the Westerners would not stand for it. As usual, I paid no attention to the order and painted a nude female figure nine feet tall, directly facing one, for the Fine Arts. No one seemed to notice it, as I heard no objections raised. As Thomas Dewing says, “Vulgarity is in every human being and will out. With some it shows in their acts or talk, and with some in their work. It would seem wiser to have it come out in some less permanent way than work.”

The two panels were painted in my studio with the help of my assistant, Ira Remsen, and in 1914, before the fair opened, all of the artists assembled in San Francisco to add the finishing touches and see their work placed. It was my second visit to the Coast, and my earlier memories of the good times, hospitality, and generosity were repeated. Childe Hassam and Robert Reid were among those who helped beautify the buildings, Hassam proving that he was a decorator as well as a picture painter, and Reid making one of the hits of the fair by those fine things in the Fine Arts Building which the city of San Francisco has seen fit to preserve for all time.

Our membership in the Lambs’ Club gave us the privilege of enjoying the Bohemian Club, with whom courtesies are exchanged, and in the summer we made the trip to the Bohemian Grove to see the annual play produced. Here in the Outdoor Theater, with the giant redwoods forming a background, one gets a unique impression, if not purely artistic. The proscenium is two hundred feet high and the stage too large for the human animal, making an effect (as the play which I saw was based on purely modern ideas, fit only for an intimate audience) rather disappointing. Like everything else in California, however, it is overwhelming.

Over in the Greek Theater in Berkeley, during this summer, it was my good fortune to see Gilbert and Sullivan in the right setting for the first time. The idea of “Trial by Jury” (with the inimitable DeWolf Hopper), played in this theater which has been copied from one of classic times, seemed rather incongruous. But to my surprise it was as Greek as Aristophanes.

One is always having surprises out West. I saw one of the three or four best decorations in America, painted by a Californian and totally unknown. They say that a prophet is never respected in his own land, so, instead of giving Charley Dickman, the artist, one of the important jobs at the Exposition, the committee came east to New York and even went to Europe for painters.

The decoration that I speak of is across the bay from San Francisco in Oakland, in the office of a Borax company. Dickman has given a picture of the desert, where the product is found, using that Corot gray of Death Valley as a basic color harmony, making the figures and a horse, all of the same tone, chime in with no discord. It shows an unusual ease of treatment of a very difficult question. Again he has managed to turn two corners (which is supposed to be against all laws of decoration) so successfully that one is unaware of the fact. To me, it was a remarkable work of art, but no one in town seemed to know about it.

I had hoped to stay in California; every one dreams of dying there, I suppose, but I found it would be impossible to make a living. They will not purchase anything that has not already been hallmarked by New York or European approval. Then, too, the climate produces a strange effect upon the Eastern temperament. I saw an apple tree with fruit larger and different from any I had ever eaten. The farmer assured me, upon his word of honor, that he had brought it from New England as a young tree and that it had been a true Eastern russet.

EDWARD SIMMONS
At the age of seventy

After my return to New York I carried out two ceilings for Mr. Rockefeller, which were placed in the tea houses at the entrance to his Tarrytown home; I made a decoration for a lumber man down in Mississippi, and then came the War. I was too old to go; they even refused me in the Camouflage section, although I insist I would have been of use.

Although I was not allowed to take part in the War, my whole world changed. The color of everything—we were enmeshed in khaki. To eyes accustomed to riotous shades, this deadening of the whole tone of things was tremendously depressing. And then the strides—machine guns, tanks, bombs, poison gas, everything came tumbling and tossing, one over the other, in a mad strife for something to end it all. But all the time they were only getting farther involved. I wanted to keep step, and felt as if I were marching, marching, marching—until I would suddenly become conscious that I was only sitting still. I had never found the necessity of realizing the meaning of the old saying, “He also serves ——.” For the first time I was forced to acknowledge that it was the age of the young. I saw a picture of myself as the perfect Uncle Sam, his long legs stiff, his gray hair flying in the wind, his coat tails standing out farther than they had ever done, struggling to keep his footing; while all about him, over him, and under him were a mass of young men and boys in uniforms of tan, bearing the modern equipment of war and heeding not at all this old-fashioned figure who was gradually being left behind.