attained some reputation as a sculptor, though his entire lack of ambition prevented his achieving all that was expected of him by those who knew his delicate talent.  The boy Augustus attended the public schools of New York and received there all the formal education he ever had; but at thirteen it was necessary for him to face the problem of earning his living.  His artistic proclivities were probably already well marked, and to give them some scope, while assuring him a regular trade at which money could be earned, he was apprenticed in the good old way to a cameo cutter named Louis Avet, said to be the first man to cut stone cameos in the United States.  Thus it came about that the greatest of American sculptors had much such a practical apprenticeship as a Florentine of the fifteenth century might have had.  He himself always spoke of it as “one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to him” and attributed much of his success to the habit of faithful labor acquired at this time.  Probably, also, the habit of thinking in terms of relief, fostered by years of work at this ancient art, was not without influence in the moulding of his talent.

His relations with Avet lasted from 1861 to 1864, when his master quarrelled with him and abruptly dismissed him from his shop.  The boy was already a determined person; he believed that he had suffered an injustice, and, though Avet went to his parents and tried to induce them to send him back, he refused to return.  A new master was found for him in the person of a shell-cameo cutter named Jules LeBrethon, and with him Saint-Gaudens remained three years.  During his six years’ apprenticeship under his two masters the youth showed already that energy and power of will that made him what he was.  He meant to be something more than an artisan, and he spent his evenings in the classes, first of the Cooper Union, afterward of the National Academy of Design, in the hard study of drawing, the true foundation of all the fine arts.  It was one of the elements of his superiority in his profession that he could draw as few sculptors can, and he always felt that he owed an especial debt to the Cooper Union, which he was glad to repay when he modelled the statue of its venerable founder.  Of the other institution by whose freely given instruction he had profited, the National Academy of Design, he became one of the most honored members.  By 1867, when he was nineteen years old, he had saved a little money and was master of a trade that could be relied on to bring in more, and he determined to go to Paris and begin the serious study of sculpture.  He worked, for a time, at the Petite Ecole, and entered the studio of Jouffroy in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1868, remaining until 1870.  During this time, and afterward, he was self-supporting, working half his time at cameo cutting until his efforts at sculpture on a larger scale began to bring in an income.