"You couldn't have done better!"
"Where have you studied?"
"I have never studied anywhere, Mr. Whistler."
"I am sure you could not have done better!"
To the young lady who told him that she was painting what she saw, he answered, "The shock will come when you see what you paint!"
To the man who was smoking, he said, "Really, you had better stop painting, for you might get interested in your work, and your pipe would go out!"
Of a superior amateur he inquired, "Have you been through college? I suppose you shoot? Fish, of course? Go in for football, no doubt? Yes? Well, then I can let you off for painting."
We asked Whistler how much truth there was in these stories. His answer was: "Well, you know, the one thing I cannot be responsible for in my daily life is the daily story about me."
But he admitted they were, in the main, true. He added one incident we have heard from no one else that explains a peculiarity to which we have referred. In Venice, he said, he got into the habit, as he worked on his plates, of blowing away the little powder raised by the needle ploughing through the varnish to the copper, and, unconsciously, he kept on blowing when painting or drawing. Once, after he had painted before the students and had left the studio, there was heard in the silence a sound of blowing. Then another student began blowing away as he worked, and so they went on. "Well," they said, "already we have la manière, and that is much." Whistler heard of it and broke himself of the habit. One day he saw on the wall in the men's studio, written in charcoal:
"I bought a palette just like his,