building, on the top floor of which he occupies a large and magnificent studio. He ascends to this in a gilded elevator, scorning the stairs on which he climbed to success. His first contribution to Life was a sketch of a dog barking at the moon, which was drawn during the run of the "Mikado" in New York, and the picture was labelled after a very popular song in that opera, called "The Moon and I." Mr. Mitchell looked at the picture of the absurd little fox-terrier barking at the round genial moon, and wrote out a check for four dollars for Mr. Gibson, while that young man sat anxiously outside in the hall with his hat between his knees. He then gave the check to Mr. Gibson, who resisted the temptation to look and see for how large an amount it might be, and asked him to let them have "something else." Mr. Gibson went down the stairs several steps at a time, without complaining of their number, and as he journeyed back to his home in Flushing he argued it out in this way: "If I can get four dollars for a silly little picture of a dog," he said, "how much more will I not receive for really humorous sketches of men and women. I can make six drawings as good as that in an evening, six times four is twenty-five dollars, and six sketches a day, not counting Sunday, will bring me in one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. Fiftytwo times one hundred and twenty-five dollars is about seven thousand a year. My income is assured!" And in pursuance of this idea he actually sat down that night, under the lamp on the centre table, and drew six sketches, and the next morning took them to Mr. Mitchell, of Life, with a proud and confident bearing, and Mr. Mitchell sent them all out to him again, and said that perhaps he had better try once more. That he did try once more, is very well known to everybody in this country, and, since he exhibited in Paris last spring, to people on the other side of the water as well. Over there they gave him a whole wall to himself in the Salon of the Champ de Mars, and the French art critics were delighted and extravagant in their written "appreciations." But long before that exhibition of his work, the queer running signature of C. D. Gibson, with the little round circle over the i, had become significant and familiar. He had introduced us in those last few years to many types, and each possessed its own peculiar and particular virtue, but it was his type of the American girl which made an C.-D. GoGo. entire continent of American girls profoundly grateful. Gibson has always shown her as a

AN AMERICAN GIRL.

ARGUMENT.

fine and tall young person, with a beautiful face and figure, and with the fearlessness on her brow and in her eyes that comes from innocence and from confidence in the innocence of others toward

her. And countless young women, from New York and Boston to Grand Rapids and Sioux City, have emulated her erect carriage and have held their head as she does, and have discarded bangs in order to look like her, and fashioned their gowns after hers. It is as though Gibson had set up a standard of feminine beauty and sent it broadcast through the land by means of the magazines and periodicals, to show his country women of what they were capable, and of what was expected of them in consequence. But with all of this evident admiration for the American woman Gibson is somewhat inconsistent. For he is constantly placing her in positions that make us fear she is a cynical and worldly-wise young person, and of a fickleness of heart that belies her looks. And

the artist's friends are constantly
asked why he takes such a de-
pressing view of matrimony, and
why he thinks American girls are
always ready to sell themselves

for titles, and if he is not
a disappointed lover him-
self, and in consequence a little
morbid and a good deal of a
cynic. To Mr. Gibson's friends
these questions are as amusing as his pictures of
ruined lives and unhappy marriages are curious,
for it is only in his pictures that he shows cyni-
cism, and neither in his conversation nor his con-
duct does he ever exhibit anything but a most
healthy and boyish regard for life and all that it
gives.

It is quite safe to say that Gibson is not a disappointed lover, or if he is, he has concealed the fact very well, and it cannot be said that his conduct toward the rest of womankind shows the least touch of resentment. As an artist, however, he is frequently disappointing to strangers, because he does not live up to the

part, or even trouble to dress it prop-
erly. He does not affect a pointed
beard or wear a velvet jacket, or talk

LE NEZ PARISIEN.

quiry, and their observations are received with a look of the most earnest attention.

But he lets the subject drop when they cease talking. Like all great men, Gibson apparently thinks much more of the things he does indifferently well than of the one

RUSSIA thing for which he is best known. He is, for instance,

very much better pleased when he is asked to sing "Tommy Atkins," than when editors of magazines humbly supplicate for the entire output of his studio; and if anyone should be so brave as to ask him to sing a sentimental song, his joy would know no bounds. His reputation as a sailor is another thing that he guards most jealously, and all of this last summer art editors telegraphed him for promised work until the wires burned, while the artist was racing in a small canoe around the rockbound coast of Buzzards Bay. It is certainly a very healthy sign when a young man of "twenty-five, going on twenty

four," can return after a nine months' residence in Paris, and con-
tentedly spend his first month at home seated on the tilting edge of
a canoe in a wet bathing suit, for ten hours a day. It is also a good
sign, and one that goes to show that Gibson is far from being spoiled;
that after having Sybil Sanderson sing and Loie Fuller dance in his

Paris studio, before a polite circle of ambassadors
and numerous pretenders to the throne of France,

IN THE PARK.

he can find equal entertainment in the lazy quiet of a Massachusetts fishing village, and in drawing posters to advertise the local church fair. Now that he has given up his flannels and sweater, and returned to his work in New York, Mr. Gibson has developed a desire to pose as a Bohemian, which his friends who live in hall-bedrooms resent, as they consider a Bohemian with a grand piano, and tapestries four hundred years old, something of a curiosity and a fraud.

At present Gibson is full of a plan to bring out a selected number of drawings in book form, that they may not be lost in the cov

ers of the magazines, and his in-
terest in this book is as great as

though he did not know that his pictures are already preserved in the memories of many thousands, and actually in scrap-books and on the walls of offices and cabins and drawing-rooms. I have seen them myself pinned up in as far distant and various places as the dressing-room of a theatre in Fort Worth, Tex., and in a students' club at Oxford. But it will be a great book, and it will

be dedicated to "A Little American Girl," and only Mr. Gibson's friends will know that the picture of this sweet and innocent little maiden which will appear on the fly-leaf of the book is of his little sister.

I fear this article does not give a very clear idea of its hero, and it would be certainly incomplete if I did not add that among Gib

son's other wick

ed habits, is the

serious one of never keeping engagements, and his friends are now trying to cure him by never asking him anywhere. When he is older he may overcome even this, and in the meanwhile, I will ask those who have read this not to judge Mr. Gibson by what I have said. so ineffectually of him, but by his work, and they will understand that the artist that is capable of producing it, must be a pretty good sort of a man himself.

HOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the group of men of whom their countrymen should be most proud. He has taken a noble part in the battles on behalf of freedom, which the last halfcentury has seen, and everywhere has borne himself with a nobility, a devotion and a courage worthy of all praise. The man who was driven from his church because he preached the freedom of the slaves, who sat with Parker and Phillips under indictment for murder for their part in attempting to rescue a fugitive slave, who was colonel of the first regiment of freed slaves mustered into the army of the United States, who bravely fought and patiently suffered for the cause of the Union; surely this man, if he had no other claims upon our respect and attention, should hold a high place in the hearts of his fellows.

Colonel Higginson is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1847, when he was twenty-four years old, became pastor of a Congregational Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here his anti-slavery preaching allowed him to remain but three years. From 1852 until 1858 he was pastor of a free church in Worcester, after which he left the ministry and devoted himself to literature. During all this time his activity in the anti-slavery agitation was frequently getting him into trouble, and, with his friends who participated in the attempted rescue of Anthony Burns, he was discharged from custody only through a flaw in the indictment. He took part in the organization of the bands of free-state, emigrants to Kansas, and was personally acquainted with John Brown. With his regiment of colored troops, he took possession of Jacksonville, Florida; but was wounded in 1863 and was compelled to resign from the army. He has been an earnest advocate of equal suffrage for men and women and of the higher education for both sexes. He has served in his State Legislature and as a member of the State Board of Education. Colonel Higginson's contributions to literature consist largely of volumes of essays that originally appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly" or other periodicals, and historical and biographical work. Some of his best known books are "Atlantic Essays;" "Young Folk's History of the United States;" "Young Folk's Book of American Explorers;" "Short Stories of American Authors;"" A Larger History of the United States;" "The Monarch of Dreams;" and "Brief Biographies of European Statesmen." Besides these, he has translated his "Young Folk's History of the United States" into German and French for publication in those languages, and