larity, but that is really not the case. I was not in the least unhappy 

 because of my isolated position, but accepted the situation, to which I 

 had long been accustomed, as a matter of course. What makes this want 

 of popularity actually important, was the condition which arose some 

 time after our graduation. With some individual exceptions, such as 

 Osborn, Speir, and Pyne, the class never devoted any of their generous 

 gifts to the support of my work or the development of my department. 

 This proved a serious handicap to me, increasing the difficulty of 

 securing vitally necessary funds. 



The remainder of my Junior year passed off in very quiet, routine 

 fashion, until near the end of it. The old house had become very still, 

 for the great family had dwindled to four, my Grandparents, my 

 Mother, and myself, and there was no young life left. We did no enter- 

 taining and accepted no invitations, save for the three annual dinners 

 held in the various households of the connection. Thanksgiving at 

 Uncle Wistar's, Christmas at Morven, and New Year's at our house. 

 On such occasions we mustered some twenty-five or thirty strong, count- 

 ing the children, for always some kinsfolk from a distance turned up. 

 Though we had no social life outside of our own four walls, none of 

 us cared anything about that; we were all very busy in our several 

 ways, happily occupied with congenial work, I was much attached to 

 both families of my small cousins and saw as much of them as my busy 

 life allowed. 



For many years before my Grandfather's death, he and my Grand- 

 mother regularly spent the month of May in Washington. My Mother 

 usually took advantage of their absence to visit among her Philadelphia 

 kin, leaving me alone in the house with the servants. Thus, I learned 

 to live happily in almost complete solitude, an accomplishment which 

 afterwards stood me in good stead. 



On May lo, 1876, the Centennial Exposition was opened in Philadel- 

 phia with appropriate ceremonies and I, with a small party of friends 

 and classmates, attended. That was really the beginning of a new era 

 in American art. We were then at the very nadir of mid-Victorian bad 

 taste, what a wit has called "the early Pullman period," and the Ameri- 

 can and German exhibits of furniture, textiles, wallpaper, pottery, and 

 the like were, with few exceptions, abominable. I can remember, with 

 a shudder the acres of furniture, heavy, costly and hideous, spread out 

 in the vast "Manufactures Building." 



The eflort of the Germans was best described by their own Com- 

 missioner, Roux, as "billig und schlecht," his translation of "cheap and 



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