WALKING with my son, in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, one day long ago, when the boy's curls were still hanging over his small shoulders, I said to him, "Do you see that tall old man over there with long hair like yours? That is Mr. Richard Vaux, Mayor of Philadelphia. Go over and speak to him, and tell him that your father has sent you to greet him with the message that he will be at his office at eleven o'clock for a sitting for the portrait. He will understand. I want to see you standing together."
And a remarkable sight it was to see the tall and erect figure of Richard Vaux, one of the great characters of the city, bend over to the little boy with golden curls and take his hand. The flowing, ash-coloured hair of the Mayor had a crinkle in it that held it out, fan-like, beneath a broad-brimmed silk hat, whose crown was much too tall and elegant to be the hat of a Quaker. The tight-fitting, closely buttoned frock-coat, with ample skirt that hung shapely over trousers that wrinkled upon the instep of polished low shoes, tied with bows, made up a personality that had no counterpart in that or any other city. The Gladstone collar should not be forgotten, although to call Richard Vaux's collar a Gladstone was post-dating a style—a sort of atrophy of the old stock—used in America when Gladstone was an Oxford undergraduate.
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