"I never was born, my child; I came from on high."

The model retorted:

"Now that shows how easily we deceive ourselves in this world, for I
should say you came from below!"

* * * * *

Invited once to dine with some eminences, the dinner-hour found him
busy with his brush and engrossed in his subject. A friend who was to
accompany him to the feast urged that it was frightfully late. "Don't
you think you had better stop?" he asked.

"Stop?" shrieked Whistler. "Stop when everything is going so
beautifully? Go and stuff myself with food when I can paint like this?
Never! Never! Besides, they won't do anything until I get there. They
never do."

* * * * *

Whistler was in a London shop one day when a customer came in who
mistook him for a clerk.

"I say, this 'at doesn't fit!"

"Neither does your coat," observed the painter, after eying him
critically.

* * * * *