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-painter 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 conditions 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 artistic atmosphere of the Old World had stolen him from
them forever. He was particularly 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 duckling turned into a swan, but we have never considered
how much the ugly duckling must have marvelled also.

"Carlton is probably the only living artist," a brother artist
had said of him, "who fails to appreciate how great his work
is." And on this being repeated to Carlton by a good-natured
friend, he had replied cheerfully, "Well, I'm sorry, but it is