American people, to say anything against them.  It is strange how Uncle always refers to himself as the guest of the American people.  Living in this poor place, in these cheap surroundings, it seems so odd.  Often at our meals in the noisy dining-room down in the basement, in the speeches that he makes to the boarders, he talks of himself as the guest of America and he says, “What does America ask in return?  Nothing.”  I can see that Mrs. O’Halloran, the landlady, doesn’t like this, because we have not paid her anything for quite a long time, and she has spoken to me about it in the corridor several times.

But when Uncle William makes speeches in the dining-room I think the whole room becomes transformed for him into the banquet room of a palace, and the cheap bracket lamps against the wall turn into a blaze of light and the boarders are all courtiers, and he becomes more and more grandiloquent.  He waves his hand towards Uncle Henry and refers to him as “my brother the Admiral,” and to me as “the Princess at my side.”  Some of the people, the meaner ones, begin to laugh and to whisper, and others look uncomfortable and sorry.  And it is always on these occasions that Uncle William refers to himself as America’s guest, and refers to the Americans as the hospitable nation who have taken him to their heart.  I think that when Uncle says this he really believes it; Uncle can believe practically anything if he says it himself.

So, as I say, when he came home yesterday, after failing to sell his pictures, he was at first furious and then he fell into his other mood and he said that, as the guest of a great people, he had found out at last the return he could make to them.  He said that he would organise a School of Art, and as soon as he had got the idea he was carried away with it at once and seized a pencil and paper and began making plans for the school and drawing up a list of the instructors needed.  He asked first who could be Principal, or President, of the School, and decided that he would have to be that himself as he knew of no one but himself who had the peculiar power of organisation needed for it.  All the technical instructors, he said, must be absolutely the best, each one a master in his own line.  So he wrote down at the top of his list, Instructor in Oils, and reflected a little, with his head in his hand, as to who could do that.  Presently he sighed and said that as far as he knew there was no one; he’d have to do that himself.  Then he wrote down Instructor in Water Colour, and as soon as he had written it he said right off that he would have to take that over too; there was no one else that he could trust it to.  Then he said, “Now, let me see, Perspective, Freehand, and Crayon Work.  I need three men:  three men of the first class.  Can I get them?  I doubt it.  Let me think what can be done.”

He walked up and down the room a little with his hands behind his back and his head sunk in thought while he murmured, “Three men?  Three men?  But Ha! why three?  Why not, if sufficiently gifted, one man?”