“Oh, Mr. Rintoul,” I said, “I haven’t worked at all.”
“Now don’t argue,” he said. “That was our agreement, so be placid!”
One day when I went to pose, he said that all the people in the studios were giving a tea, and they had asked him to open the doors of his studio, so the visitors could see it. He remarked that he would take that day off. I said:
“There must be an awful lot of artists here.”
He chuckled, and making his hand into a claw, said:
“Not all artists, but folks hanging on to the edge of art, and cackling, cackling! Now run along, and keep placid!” and he handed me a dollar for my “time.”
I never really posed for him at all, for he always had something else to do, but he would make me sit in the big armchair and “be placid.”
He is now gone to the land where all is placid, and whenever I hear that word I think of him, and my faith in good men is strengthened.
But not all of my experiences with the artists of Boston were as pleasant as that with Mr. Rintoul and Mr. Sands and some others. I had one terrible experience from which I barely escaped with my life.
I had posed several times for a Mr. Parker, who did a rushing business for strictly commercial firms. He made advertisements such as are seen on street-cars, packages of breakfast food and things like that. I had posed for him in a number of positions, to show off a certain brand of stockings as a girl playing golf, to advertise a sweater, and other things too numerous to mention.