The light, to be
sure, was not all that might have been desired, but it was abundant,
window screens were cheap and the sculptor not over sensitive to
subtile gradations of values. He made no attempt to decorate the room
for his exhibition, partly from a certain indifference to its bareness,
and partly from a native shrewdness which enabled him to feel both the
difficulty of doing this adequately, and the fact that the statue
appeared better as things were. There were a few benches, scantily
cushioned, two or three chairs, not all in perfect repair, with the
paraphernalia essential to his work. A few sketches in crayon and
pencil were pinned to the wall, and among them the artist had had the
fatuity to pin up a photograph of that most beautiful figure, the
_Winged Victory_ of Paionios.
The study for _America_, which was of colossal size, represented a
woman seated, leaning her left hand upon a rock. The right hand held
slightly uplifted a bunch of maize and tobacco plant; her head wore a
crown in which the architectural embattlements not uncommon in classic
headdresses had been curiously and wonderfully transformed into the
likeness of the domed capitol at Washington. The figure was completely
draped, only the head, the left hand and the right arm to the elbow
emerging from the voluminous folds in which it was wrapped, save that
the tip of one sandalled foot was visible, resting upon a ballot box.
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