The Princess Aline (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Princess Aline

At the age Of twenty he had found him self his own master, with excellent family connections, but with no family, his only relative being a bachelor uncle, who looked at life from the point of view of the Union Club's windows, and who objected to his nephew's leaving Harvard to take up the study of art in Paris. In that city (where at Julian's he was nicknamed the Junior Carlton, for the Obvious reason that he was the Older Of the two Carltons in the class, and because he was well dressed) he had Shown himself a harder worker than others who were less careful of their appearance and Of their manners. His work, of which he did not talk, and his ambitions, of which he also did not talk, bore fruit early, and at twenty-six he had become a portrait-paint er Of international reputation. Then the French government purchased one Of his paintings at an absurdly small figure, and placed it in the Luxembourg, from whence it would in time depart to be buried in the hall of some provincial city; and American millionaires, and English Lord Mayors, members of Parliament, and members of the Institute, masters of hounds in pink coats, and ambassadors in gold lace, and beautiful women Of all nationalities and con ditions Sat before his easel. And so when he returned to New York he was welcomed with an enthusiasm which showed that his countrymen had feared that the artisticatmosphere of the Old World had stolen him from them forever. He was particu larly silent, even at this date, about his work, and listened to what others had to say Of it with much awe, not unmixed with some amusement, that it should be he who was capable Of producing anything worthy of such praise. We have been told what the mother duck felt when her ugly duck ling turned into a swan, but we have never considered how much the ugly duckling must have marvelled also.

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