the dim ages to come you may be remembered as the proprietor of the
Peacock Room."

* * * * *

Whistler's butterfly was the moth of the silkworm borrowed from
Hokusai. Otto H. Bacher thought the addition of a sting to the
signature came from this incident at Venice: In 1880 he found a
scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. As the little creature
writhed and struck, Whistler exclaimed: "Look at the beggar now! See
him strike! Isn't he fine? Look at him! Look at him now! See how hard
he hits! That's right--that's the way! Hit hard! And do you see the
poison that comes out when he strikes? Isn't he superb?"

* * * * *

Referring long after to his retirement from West Point, where he had
been a cadet for three years, the artist explained his fall by saying:
"If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a soldier!"

* * * * *

He was always proud of his West Point cadetship. "West Point is
America," he would say. Julian Alden Weir, son of Whistler's
instructor at the Academy, once dining with him in London, chanced to
remark that football had been introduced at the school. "Good God!"
cried Whistler. "A West Point cadet to be rolled in the mud by a
Harvard junior!"

* * * * *