Another square:  “This is the sideboard.”

* * * * *

Cope Whitehouse once described a boat-load of Egyptians “floating down the Nile with the thermometer one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade, and no shade.”

“And no thermometer,” interjected Whistler.

* * * * *

A lady sitter brought a cat with her and placed it on her knee.  The cat was nervous and yowled continuously.

“Madam,” said the vexed artist, “will you have the cat in the foreground or in the back yard?”

* * * * *

While painting one of his famous nocturnes a critic of considerable pretensions called.  “Good heavens, Whistler!” he cried, “what in the world are you splashing at?”

“I am teaching art to posterity,” Whistler replied, quietly.

“Oh!” said the critic, visibly relieved.  “I was afraid you were painting for the Royal Academy.”

“Oh, no,” answered Whistler; “they do not want masterpieces there, but some of their picture-frames are exquisite and really worth bus-fare to look at.”

* * * * *

Walking in the Champs-Elysées in Paris one morning, Whistler heard one Englishman say to another: 

“See that chap over there?”

“What?  That chap with the long hair and spindle legs?”

“Yes, that’s the one.  That’s Whistler, the American, who thinks he’s the greatest painter on earth.”

Walking up to the pair, Whistler held out his hand and said gravely to the last speaker: 

“Sir, I beg your acceptance of these ten centimes.  Go buy yourself a little hay!”

* * * * *

Sitting for a portrait was an ordeal.  Many were quite upset after a siege in the studio.  One man annoyed the artist by saying at each dismissal: 

“How-about that ear, Mr. Whistler?  Don’t forget to finish that.”  At the last session, all being finished but this ear, Whistler said, “Well, I think I’m through; now I’ll sign it.”  This he did in a very solemn and important way.

“But my ear!” exclaimed the victim.  “You’re not going to leave it that way?”

“Oh,” said Whistler, grimly, “you can put it in after you get home.”

* * * * *

He occasionally contemplated visiting America in his late years, but the dread of the journey was too much for him to overcome.  “If I escape the Atlantic,” he said, “I shall be wrecked by some reporter at the pier.”  Finally, he definitely canceled his last proposed trip, observing airily:  “One cannot continuously disappoint a continent.”

“America,” he once said, lightly, “is a country where I never can be a prophet.”

* * * * *