“I have often thought that I should like to see a sculptor. Sit down till I get you framed and hung in my portrait-gallery.”
“I must go,” said he. “Perhaps you will do me the honor to call.”
I agreed to do so, just to show that I entertained no grudge, and with that he left me.
Before going to bed that night I cabled to my secretary as follows:
“Ship to me immediately four well-made American pitchforks, three tines each.”
I said nothing to Betsey of the proposed duel, but broke the news that I had met a great sculptor, and she wanted to see his studio, and next day we called there. Mrs. Mullet was sitting for a bust, in her dinner gown. Before we had had time to recognize the lady the artist had introduced her as the Madame Mullette, from Sioux City.
“Isn't this an adorable place?” she asked in that lyrical tone which one hears so often in the Italian capital. She pointed at busts of several Americans standing on pedestals and awaiting delivery.
“Look at the whiskers embalmed in marble!” Betsey exclaimed, as she gazed at one of the busts. It had that familiar chin tuft of the Zimmermann hay-seed and a dish collar and string tie. The face wore the brave, defiant, me-against-the-world look that I had observed in the statue of Titus, made after he had turned Palestine into a slaughter-house.
“Why, that is our old friend from Prairie du Chien who came over on the Toltec,” I said. “You remember the man who is studying the history of the world, all about the life of the world, especially the life of the ancients?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Betsey.