only to the subject itself but to my appreciation of the subject which at the time was unbounded. I do not know whether to be more amazed at my failure in it to say what I wanted to say, or at the Editor's amiability in publishing it. The article may not have lost all its eloquence for me, since between the halting lines I can read the story I did not know how to tell, but for others it would prove a dull affair and it is best left where it is, forgotten in the old files of a popular magazine.
The story I read is one of a series of discoveries with a romance in each. The way the article came about was that J. had made etchings of Philadelphia, and the Editor, who had wisely arranged to use them, thought they could not be published without accompanying text. When he asked me, as a young Philadelphian just beginning to write, to supply this text, he advised me to consult with J., whom I did not know and whose studio address he gave me.
I was thrilled by the prospect, never having been in a studio nor met an artist, and when it turned out not half so simple as it looked on paper, when the first catching my artist was attended with endless delays and difficulties, it did not lessen the thrill or take away from the sense of adventure.
J.'s studio, which he shared with Mr. Harry Poore, was at the top of what was then the Presbyterian Building on Chestnut Street above Thirteenth, quite new and of tremendous height at a time when the sky-scraper
