principles. Which is noble, of course, and not at all a bad sort of reputation to have, but upon the whole, in this country, rare.
Personally, I was slow to take on Boardman Robinson and all the time that he caricatured for the Tribune I stood aloof. The very thing that enchanted the young people—"so like Rodin, so like Forain"—chilled me, for I preferred to take my Forain straight and un-diluted. Later came the biblical series, imbued, so the now quite exalted young admirers said, with the true stuff, but which failed to put the fear of God into this perhaps calloused heart. They seemed theatric. Religion à la Belasco. Of course, as Evangeline Booth says, it doesn't matter how you get your religion so long as you get it. But I—there's no use longer trying to conceal it—being a sentimentalist, never really fell for Boardman until he began to publish love songs. Love drawings, I mean, of course. The poor dear was preaching, I suppose. He meant to reform us, probably. So much is being done for the sex-life in these days. But he succeeded merely in being beautiful. The young men clasping maidens and defying the world in rape-of-the-Sabine attitudes made perfectly satisfactory compositions and seemed resoundingly eloquent.
All this, however, in regard to Boardman Robinson's past may not assist our British cousins much with his present—and that was the object of this writing. They may, though, get a reassuring line upon him if they look up a back number of The Dial and find his analysis of the present American minister at the court of St James. Boardman ought to have that caricature engraved upon his visiting cards whilst in London. It would give him instantly the entrée to the best sort of minds there. The best sort of minds there are fully persuaded that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark and that the cure or the surgeon-specialist for their ills must come from these States. Convinced of our invincible superpracticality they are nevertheless brought face to face with our astounding representative! Hence, a confusion of thought that it may be Boardman's first job to dissipate.
The expected zip is missing from the first exhibition of the new society called, awkwardly enough, The Salons of America. It will be recalled that the curtain rang down darkly last spring upon a scene of confusion in the rooms of the Independent Artists. The officers of that institution quarrelled among themselves. It was
