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11772  THE STORY OF AN ARTIST'S LIFE 

first year I kept a strict account of all money spent, and it amounted to $365, including tuition and every expense; the next year it was about the same sum. The third year I had typhoid fever, which was no doubt caused by too much work and too little food of the proper kind. But I was determined at all hazards to make my money hold out. During this sickness I was taken to the old hospital, Hotel Dieu, where for six francs a day I had a room all to myself and was, I believe, wisely looked after. I had, when I entered the usual terror of a hospital that in those days went with them, especially among a class of people who, while poor, rather looked upon it as only a place for "homeless" people, where all sorts of experiments were practised. From my bed I could see though the window the building opposite, and in the annex (as it were) I could see a large table with all sorts of highly polished objects upon it. I looked upon it as an operating table and pictured to myself the suffering that must be continually occurring in that building. When I became well enough to walk about, I was surprised that this room of suffering, as I was wont to think of it, was a dining-room, and the table I had seen was a steam-heated carving table. Speaking a very little French, I could never make out from my nurses what I had been suffering with.  I knew it was some sort of fever.  Finally, I asked the nurse to write it on a piece of paper, and when I saw that dreaded word "typhoid" it was only by exercising all the will power I possessed that I kept myself from taking again to my bed.  I had to keep repeating to myself that I was no worse now that I knew when I had had than a few minutes before when I was ignorant of my disease.  When I was well enough to travel, I returned to Philadelphia for a convalescence, and to "recoup" a depleted treasury.  An auction sale of all the pictures I could lay my hands upon furnished a few hundred dollars, and with this and "promises" (never fulfilled) I returned again to Paris.

In 1895, I painted "Daniel in Lions' Den."  For this picture I modeled lions in the Jardin des Plantes, and also worked in the summer class of Fremiel.  Hoping to receive some help from him, I one day got up courage to show him a sketch of it. "Well," he said, "it all depends upon how you develop what you have here suggested - if you do it well, it will be a good picture; and, if not, why, it will be a very ordinary one."

Thinking it over now, what could he say?  Here was an unknown, untried student, and it was yet to be seen what he could do.  It was exhibited in the Salon of 1896 - and I received for it my first official recognition.  True it was but a "mention honorable," but it was an "honor."  I could have all the confidence in myself possible.  I could believe that I might do something some day, but the day I verified however small a part of that belief, that day was new hope given to me that I might also reach other "day dreams" which I would never have confessed even to my most intimate friend.  So it was that this first little "mention honorable" gave me a courage and a power for hard work, and also a hope that I had never before possessed.  It decided for me the question, whether it was better to do a few things - one picture, for instance - and bring it to a fairly successful conclusion, or to do many pictures, trusting to some chance that one of them would be better than any continued and more or less labored effort could be.  This little honor did spur me on to greater efforts, and these efforts were not completely unsuccessful.  The only "drag," was, as it has always been, the everlasting question of money.  A gentleman who had enabled me to gain a little by writing up art notes in Paris now withdrew this work because he thought I should come to America and paint "American subjects."  I refused to come home and paint things I was not drawn to, nor did I like the idea of quitting the helpful influences by which I was surrounded. So I ceased to the special correspondent of the Philadelphia. 
Therefore, the next year was even more trying than usual.  Where all the money came from I do not know; some came from Mr. O———, some from my father and mother, and I stayed on and worked all summer in Paris, not going to the country — as is usual  among the artists.  In the commencement of winter I finished the "Resurrection of Lazarus."  I had worked upon it all summer, because, in summer, models are not in such demand, and are willing to make "terms," and I very much needed all the "terms" that could be made. In the making of this picture, I was helped by criticism, but several times I felt somewhat as Voltaire must have felt when he said, "I will take care of my enemies if the Lord will deliver me from my friends."  I nearly made a shipwreck trying to follow the advice of a friend who counselled that a canvas that