He once slumbered through a dinner where Edwin A. Abbey was a
fellow-guest. The next morning he blandly asked Mr. Chase:

"What did Abbey have to say last night? Anything worth while?"

When Dan Smith was at the beginning of his career as an illustrator he
was employed by an important lithographing house. One day, while
making a large picture of Antony and Cleopatra in the barge scene,
which was to be used by Kyrle Bellew and Mrs. James Brown Potter as a
poster for their joint starring tour, Whistler, accompanied by a
friend, visited the studio:

Whistler examined, with evident interest and approval, the canvas upon
which the youthful artist was at work, holding his glass to his eyes;
then, looking quizzically over it, remarked to his friend, "What a
mercantile wretch it is!"

* * * * *

Whistler presented a copy of his edition of _The Gentle Art of Making
Enemies_ to "Theodore Watts, the Worldling."

Asked why he started the unlucky school in the Latin Quarter, he
answered:

"It was for Carmen Rossi [long his model], poor little Carmen, who is
a mere child and has no money, and is saddled with the usual Italian
burden of a large, disreputable family--banditti brothers, a trifling
husband, and all the rest of it."