Further on in this same letter he says:  “I am occupied fully so that I have no reason to complain.  I have not a press like the first season or like the last, but still I can say I am all the time employed....  My President pleases very much; I have heard no dissatisfaction expressed.  It is placed in the great Hall in a fine light and place....  Mrs. Ball wants some alterations, that is to say every five minutes she would like it to be different.  She is the most unreasonable of all mortals; derangement is her only apology.  I can’t tell you all in a letter, must wait till I see you.  I shall get the rest of the cash from her shortly.”

Just at this time the wave of prosperity on which the young man had so long floated, began to subside, for he writes to his wife on January 28, 1821:—­

“I wish I could write encouragingly as to my professional pursuits, but I cannot.  Notwithstanding the diminished price and the increase of exertion to please, and although I am conscious of painting much better portraits than formerly (which, indeed, stands to reason if I make continual exertion to improve), yet with all I receive no new commissions, cold and procrastinating answers from those to whom I write and who had put their names on my list.  I give less satisfaction to those whom I have painted; I receive less attention also from some of those who formerly paid me much attention, and none at all from most.”

But with his usual hopefulness he says later on in this letter:—­

“Why should I expect my sky to be perpetually unclouded, my sun to be never obscured?  I have thus far enjoyed more of the sunshine of prosperity than most of my fellow men.  ’Shall I receive good at the hands of the Lord and shall I not also receive evil?’”

In this letter, a very long one, he suggests the establishment of an academy or school of painting in New Haven, so that he may be enabled to live at home with his family, and find time to paint some of the great historical works which he still longed to do.  He also tells of the formation of such an academy in Charleston:—­

“Since writing this there has been formed here an Academy of Arts to be erected immediately.  J.R.  Poinsett, Esq., is President, and six others with myself are chosen Directors.  What this is going to lead to I don’t know.  I heard Mr. Cogdell say that it was intended to have lectures read, among other things.  I feel not very sanguine as to its success, still I shall do all in my power to help it on as long as I am here.”

His forebodings seem to have been justified, for Mr. John S. Cogdell, a sculptor, thus writes of it in later years to Mr. Dunlap:—­

“The Legislature granted a charter, but, my good sir, as they possessed no powers under the constitution to confer taste or talent, and possessed none of those feelings which prompt to patronage, they gave none to the infant academy....  The institution was allowed from apathy and opposition to die; but Mr. Poinsett and myself with a few others have purchased, with a hope of reviving, the establishment.”