The moment the General’s letter reached China a telegram came back from the Chinese government which was almost a copy in detail of General Grant’s letter and the cablegram ended with the peremptory command to old Minister Wong to continue the Chinese schools.

It was a marvelous exhibition of the influence of a private citizen of one country over the counsels of an empire situated on the other side of the globe. Such an influence could have been wielded by no other citizen in the world outside of that empire—in fact the policy of the Imperial government had been reversed from room 45, Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, by a private citizen of the United States.

Gerhardt

1884. (September: at the farm at Elmira.)

Gerhardt arrived home from Paris,—leaving his wife and his little boy behind him. He had found living much more expensive at Paris than it had been in J. Q. A. Ward’s day. Consequently Ward’s estimate of $3,000 for five years had fallen woefully short. Gerhardt’s expenses for three years and a half had already amounted to $6,000. There was nothing for him to do—so he made a bust of me in the hope that it might bring him work. The times were very hard and he was not able to get anything to do.

(October.)

About this time Gerhardt heard that a competition was about ready to begin for a statue of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary spy and patriot caught and hanged by the British. This statue had been voted by the Connecticut Legislature and the munificent price to be paid for it was $5,000. The speech which ex-Governor Hubbard had made in advocacy of the proposition was worth four times the sum.

The committee in whose hands the Legislature had placed the matter consisted of Mr. Coit, a railroad man, of New London, a modest, sensible, honorable, worthy gentleman, who while wholly unacquainted with art and confessing it, was willing and anxious to do his duty in the matter. Another committeeman was an innocent ass by the name of Barnard, who knew nothing about art and in fact about nothing else, and if he had a mind was not able to make it up on any question. As for any sense of duty, that feature was totally lacking in him—he had no notion of it whatever. The third and last committeeman was the reigning Governor of the state, Waller, a smooth-tongued liar and moral coward.

Gerhardt designed and made a clay Nathan Hale and offered it for competition.

A salaried artist of Mr. Batterson, a stone cutter, designed a figure and placed it in competition, and so also did Mr. Woods, an elderly man who was sexton of Mrs. Colt’s private church.

Woods had some talent but no genius and no instruction in art. The stone cutter’s man had the experience and the practice that comes from continually repeating the same forms on hideous tombstones—robust prize-fighting angels, mainly.

The figure and pedestal made by Gerhardt were worthy of a less stingy price than the Legislature had offered, decenter companionship in the competition and a cleaner and less stupid committee.

In the opinion of William C. Prime and Charles D. Warner, Gerhardt’s was a very fine work of art and these men would not have hesitated to award the contract to him. The Governor looked at the three models and said that as far as he could see Gerhardt’s was altogether the preferable design. Mr. Coit said the same. But it was found impossible to get the aged Barnard to come to look at Gerhardt’s model. He offered among other excuses that he didn’t like to give a statue to a man who still had his reputation to make—that the statue ought to be made by an artist of established reputation. When asked what artist of established reputation would make a statue for $5,000 he was not able to reply. It was difficult for some time to find out what the real reason was for this old man’s delay, but it finally came out that Mrs.