When the creditors at last landed a bailiff in the painter's Chelsea
mansion, he tried to wear his hat in the drawing-room and smoke and
spit all over the house. But Whistler, in his own airy way, soon
settled that. He went out into the hall, and, selecting a stick from
his collection of canes, he daintily knocked the man's hat off. The
bailiff was so surprised that he forgot to be angry, and in a day or
two he had been trained to wait at table. But though he was now in
possession and a favored household servant, he could not obtain his
money. So he declared that if he was not paid he would have to put
bills up outside the house announcing a sale. And sure enough, a few
days after great posters were stuck up all over the front of the house
announcing so many tables and so many chairs and so much old Nankin
China for sale on a given day. Whistler enjoyed the joke hugely, and
hastened to send out invitations to all his friends to a
luncheon-party, adding as a postscript: "You will know the house by
the bills of sale stuck up outside." And the bailiff proved an
admirable butler and the party one of the merriest ever known.

As the guests were rising from the table a lady observed to the host:

"Your servants seem to be extremely attentive, Mr. Whistler, and
anxious to please you."

"Oh, yes," replied he; "I assure you they wouldn't leave me!"

But the bailiff stayed on, and the day of sale approached; so
Whistler, having been educated at West Point, determined to practise
strategy. Some one had told him that a mixture of snuff and beer had
the property of sending people off to sleep. So he bought a big parcel