"Well," he confided, "I'm building another just like it. It's costing me
three hundred dollars, and the passenger-cars will cost as much more.
Now, I'm going to fix up some scenery on my roof--a gorge, a line of
woods, a river, and a bridge. I'm going to make the water tumble over
big rocks just above the bridge and run underneath it. Then I'm going to
lay this track around these rocks, through the woods, across the bridge
and off into the woods again.
"I'm going to put on the two trains and time them so they'll meet on the
bridge. Just when they come into view where they can see each other, a
post on the side of the track will strike the cabs in such a way as to
throw the firemen out on the steps just as if they were going to jump.
When the engines take the bridge they'll explode caps that will set fire
to oil and powder under the cars and burn them up."
"Then what?" I asked.
"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people
jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames
springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe
it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a
model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to
show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the
practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that
instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at
such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality
of the occurrence would do the rest.
Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second
train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and
the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and
several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was
perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized.
As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of his
dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He
surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with
which he went about all things.
"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_," he said to me one
day. "They came to me."
"Good," I said. "What is it?"
"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York."
He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a
midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks
blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It
was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich
in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms.
"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some
good."
A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could not
disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an
air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he
was to do related to the navy.
He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine
construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making
studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the
mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that
he felt.
"You know those drawings?" he said the day after he delivered them.
"Yes."
"I set a good stiff price on them and demanded my drawings back when
they were through."
"Did you get them?"
"Yep. It will give them more respect for what I'm trying to do," he
said.
Not long after he illustrated one of Kipling's stories.
He was in high feather at this, but grim and repressed withal. One could
see by the nervous movements of his wiry body that he was delighted over
it.
At this time Kipling came to his studio. It was by special arrangement,
but S---- received him as if he were--well, as artists usually receive
authors. They talked over the galley proofs, and the author went away.
"It's coming my way now," he said, when he could no longer conceal his
feelings. "I want to do something good on this."
Through all this rise from obscurity to recognition he lived close to
his friends--a crowd of them, apparently, always in his studio jesting,
boxing, fencing--and interested himself in the mechanics I have
described. His drawing, his engine-building, his literary studies and
recreations were all mixed, jumbled, plunging him pell-mell, as it were,
on to distinction. In the first six months of his studio life he had
learned to fence, and often dropped his brush to put on the mask and
assume the foils with one of his companions.
As our friendship increased I found how many were the man's
accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies. He was an expert
bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make
an amateur envious. He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I
heard the very day I learned that he could sing. It so happened that it
was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with
me that especial evening.
"Can't do it," he replied.
"All right," I said.
"I'm part of an entertainment tonight, or I would," he added
apologetically.
"What do you do?" I inquired.
"Sing."
"Get out!" I said.
"So be it," he answered. "Come up this evening."
To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with
which he rendered his solo. He had an exquisitely clear and powerful
voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to
acknowledge by singing again.
The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a
nature. It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day,
the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success. He
was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was
told in his eye. Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I
called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my
office door. It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself,
something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it "I
called," together with any word he might have to say. This day he was in
his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was
only a blind. He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his
personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very
interesting, to himself, to communicate. At last he said,--
"I'm going to Europe next summer."
"Is that so?" I replied. "For pleasure?"
"Well, partly."
"What's up outside of that?" I asked.
"I'm going to represent the American Architectural League at the
international convention."
"I didn't know you were an architect," I said.
"Well, I'm not," he answered, "professionally. I've studied it pretty
thoroughly."
"Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis," I remarked.
"I'm doing all right," he answered.
He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was
doing. He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse
most entertainingly at the same time. He seemed to enjoy company under
such circumstances.
"You didn't know I was a baron, did you?" he finally observed.
"No," I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment.
"Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?"
"In Germany, kind sir," he replied, banteringly.
Then in his customary excitable mood he dropped his brushes and stood
up.
"You don't believe me, do you?" he exclaimed, looking over his drooping
glasses.
"Why, certainly I believe you, if you are serious. Are you truly a
baron?"
"It was this way," he said. "My grandfather was a baron. My father was
the younger of two brothers. His brother got the title and what was left
of the estate. That he managed to go through with, and then he died.
Now, no one has bothered about the title--"
"And you're going back to claim it?"
"Exactly."
I took it all lightly at first, but in time I began to perceive that it
was a serious ambition. He truly wanted to be Baron S---- and add to
himself the luster of his ancestors.
With all this, the man was really not so much an aristocrat in his mood
as a seeker after life and new experiences. Being a baron was merely a
new experience, or promised to be. He had the liveliest sympathies for
republican theories and institutions--only he considered his life a
thing apart. He had a fine mind, philosophically and logically poised.
He could reason upon all things, from the latest mathematical theorem to
Christian Science. Naturally, being so much of an individualist, he was
not drifting toward any belief in the latter, but was never weary of
discussing the power of mind--a universal mind even--its wondrous
ramifications and influences. Also he was a student of the English
school of philosophy, and loved to get up mathematical and mechanical
demonstrations of certain philosophic truths. Thus he worked out by
means of a polygon, whose sides were of unequal lengths, a theory of
friendship which is too intricate to explain here.
From now on I watched his career with the liveliest interest. He was a
charming and a warm friend, and never neglected for a moment the
obligations which such a relationship demands.
I heard from him frequently in many and various ways, dined with him
regularly every second or third week, and rejoiced with him in his
triumphs, now more and more frequent. One spring he went to Europe and
spent the summer in tracing down his baronial claims, looking up various
artists and scientists and attending several scientific meetings here
and there at the same time. He did the illustrations for one of
Kipling's fast express stories which one of the magazines published, and
came back flushed and ready to try hard for a membership in the American
Water-Color Society.
I shall never forget his anxiety to get into that mildly interesting
body. He worked hard and long on several pictures which should not only
be hung on the line but enlist sufficient interest among the artists to
gain him a vote of admission. He mentioned it frequently and fixed me
with his eyes to see what I thought of him.
"Go ahead," I said; "you have more right to membership perhaps than many
another I know. Try hard."
He painted not one, but four, pictures, and sent them all. They were
very interesting after their kind. Two were scenes from the great
railroad terminal yards; the others, landscapes in mist or rain. Three
of these pictures were passed and two of them hung on the line. The
third was _skyed_, but he was admitted to membership.
I was delighted for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the
intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his whole nervous
system.
Not long after this we were walking on Broadway, one drizzly autumn
evening, on our way to the theater. Life, ambition, and our future were
the _small_ subjects under discussion. The street, as usual, was
crowded. On every hand blazed the fire signs. The yellow lights were
beautifully reflected in the wet sidewalks and gray wet cobblestones
glistening with water.
When we reached Greeley Square (at that time a brilliant and almost
sputtering spectacle of light and merriment), S---- took me by the arm.
"Come over here," he said. "I want you to look at it from here."
He took me to a point where, by the intersection of the lines of the
converging streets, one could not only see Greeley Square but a large
part of Herald Square, with its then huge theatrical sign of fire and
its measure of store lights and lamps of vehicles. It was a
kaleidoscopic and inspiring scene. The broad, converging walks were
alive with people. A perfect jam of vehicles marked the spot where the
horse and cable cars intersected. Overhead was the elevated station, its
lights augmented every few minutes by long trains of brightly lighted
cars filled with changing metropolitan crowds--crowds like shadows
moving in a dream.
"Do you see the quality of that? Look at the blend of the lights and
shadows in there under the L."