and lower down, in small type, I read —

"The Catalogue compiled by T. R. Way."

Believing what your title-page tells me, I say to myself with empressement: "Mr. Whistler's Lithographs! Oh, let me see 'em, every one!" I turn to the first page, eager to see the first of Mr. Whistler's lithographs. It is not there. There are none of them there. The only lithograph I find is one representing a gentleman turning his back on his admirers and this is not the work of Mr. Whistler.

Now why do you announce that the contents of a publication are "Mr. Whistler's Lithographs" when in fact they are no such thing?

"Had you sent to me direct, and to me alone, the libelous little book, it would have been my pleasant duty to have thanked you for the kind courtesy - and to have recognized, in the warning given, the right impulse of an honorable man."

Moreover, I would have told you that your specially designed title-page should read "A Catalogue of Mr. Whistler's Lithographs" and that you ought not to announce that the "pretty work" contained the lithographs themselves - thereby avoiding "this grotesque" bewildering "of a distinguished and absent fellow countryman" (meaning myself, this time!).

"I have no doubt that, with the untiring energy of the 'busy' one, and thanks to your unexampled perseverance, you have smartly placed the pretty work in the hands of many another before this."

"Personally I am grateful to this activity of yours." "I am, Sir, Your obedient servant," FREDERICK KEPPEL.

Post Scriptum:

Note on the sentences enclosed in quotation marks:

All words so marked are Whistler's, every line;
For God's sake, reader, take them not for mine!
LORD BYRON (adapted).

Thus far I had kept my temper. "Bad had begun" but "worse remained behind." Having sent him, soon afterward, from New York, a detailed report of some business which I had transacted at his request, Whistler - with a refinement of insolence— called in the porter who worked in the house, and who, at the artist's dictation, wrote me a clumsily written and ill-spelled letter commencing: "Sir: Mr. Whistler, who is present, orders me to write as follows:" Then the letter went on to say that nearly every statement which I had made in my report was a deliberate lie! It was then that I first got angry with him; and so would you, “gentle reader," if he had given you the same provocation. Plain prose seemed inadequate to the occasion, so I "told him what I thought of him" in the rhymes which follow. To this communication he sent me a sort of receipt in duplicate, verbally, through two of his friends. His message in both cases was that when he saw me he would kill me; and through each of the friends I sent the return message: "Tell Whistler that I have no notion of allowing myself to be 'killed' in the simple manner which he proposes.

Here follows the poem for which Whistler twice declared that he would "kill" me!

Oh that I were

Upon the hill of Basan, to outroar

The horned herd, for I have savage cause."

SHAKESPEARE.

Oh Jimmie Whistler, ever fighting;
In rows and "ructions" still delighting;
Small- as your fellowman's despiser;
Great artistas self-advertiser!
Like cackling hens or cocks a-crowing
Your tireless trumpet keeps a-blowing.
We can't forget you! You won't let us;
With flippant brag you still beset us-
(I grant these lines are flippant too,
But then, they are addressed to you!)

You

pounce on all men, rend them, shake them; You give hard knocks and you must take them!

We know your foolish, glib verbosity,

But where's your moral generosity?

We know your moral color-blindness,

But where's your "milk of human kindness"?
Your least pronouncement full of venom is-
"The Gentle Art of Making Enemies"!

Great men don't beat their drum, dear James M.
Their work's their monument; bragging shames 'em;
"William the Silent" - glorious nickname!
Jimmie the Noisy! There's a "slick" name!
Artists make shows for fame or pelf,

It is obvious that at this point all my intercourse with this extraordinary man came to an end.

BRACQUEMOND AND BUHOT

THE

PAINTER-ETCHERS

HE etchings of two contemporary French painter-etchers present a vivid contrast. The two have very little in common except the fine quality of their work, but each artist is pretty sure to retain a permanent and distinguished place in art by right of his genuine originality as well as because of his technical power as an etcher.

Bracquemond, who was born in Paris in 1833, has survived his younger contemporary and he is still hale and hearty; while Buhot, who was born at Valognes, Normandy, in 1847, died in Paris in 1896.

The etchings of Bracquemond are very like the man who made them. He is a great, strong, virile man, and his forceful personality is reflected in every picture that he has made. As a technician in etching he is, perhaps, supreme; but he is not as well known among American connoisseurs as he deserves to be, and for the reason that his robust nature always scorned to descend to more or less feeble prettiness; and such prettiness is the quality which is the first to attract the great public everywhere. To demonstrate this let us contrast some very popular picture by

PORTRAIT OF M. EDMOND DE GONCOURT

Size of the original print, 18 by 12 inches.

From the etching by Félix Bracquemond, after his own drawing, of the same size, which now hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris. Edmond de Goncourt, the eminent author and art-collector, was born at Nancy, France, in 1822. In his will de Goncourt directed that, after his death, his art collections should not be "consigned to the cold tomb of some art museum," but that they must be dispersed at public auction, so that they would go into the possession of genuine art-lovers who could worthily appreciate them.