About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a plaster cast of Houdon’s “Washington.”  It was the first bust he had ever seen, and he says it moved him strangely.  He had an intense desire to know how it was done, and a vague consciousness that he could do work of the same kind if he could find an instructor.  The instructor he soon found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts and busts, and from him he learned the secret of the art.  He proved an apt pupil, and surprised his teacher by his proficiency.  His first effort at modeling from life was the bust of a little daughter of Mr. John P. Foote.  She sat to him during the hours he could spare from his regular work.  His model was made of beeswax, as he was afraid that clay would freeze or stiffen.  His success encouraged him very greatly.  “I found I had a correct eye,” said he, “and a hand which steadily improved in its obedience to my eye.  I saw the likeness, and knew it depended on the features, and that, if I could copy the features exactly, the likeness would follow just as surely as the blood follows the knife.  I found early that all the talk about catching the expression was mere twaddle; the expression would take care of itself if I copied the features exactly.”

The true principles of his art seemed to come to him naturally, and having the genius to comprehend them so readily, he had the courage to hold on to them often in the face of adverse criticism.  While conscious of having a perfectly correct eye, however, he did not scorn the humbler method of obtaining exactness by mathematical measurement.  The following incident, which he related to Dr. Bellows, illustrates this: 

“One of the first busts I ever made was of an artist, a Frenchman, who came over with Mrs. Trollope.  He proposed to paint my picture, while I was to make his bust.  He was older, and considered himself much my superior, and, indeed, undertook to be my instructor.  I was to begin.  His first canon was that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted Michael Angelo’s saying—­’A sculptor should carry his compasses in his eyes, not in his fingers,’ I humbly submitted to his authority, and finished the bust without a single measurement.  He was very triumphant at what he called the success of his method.  I begged permission of him, now that the bust was completed, to verify my work by the dividers.  He graciously consented, and I was pleased to find how nearly I had hit the mark.  A few imperfections, however, appeared, and these, in spite of his objections, I corrected without his knowledge, for I was determined to have the bust as near right as I could make it.  It had taken me, however, at least five times as long to measure the distances with my eyes as it would have done to measure them with the calipers, and I saw no advantage in the longer and more painful effort.  The measurements are mere preparations for the artist’s true work, and are, like the surveyor’s lines, preparatory