334 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



His next employment was as assistant in the Cincinnati Museum. 

 Here he began by making a head to represent a cannibal of the Carib- 

 bee Islands. Out of a common wax figure he worked up a monster 

 that brought in much money to the museum. He made also other 

 wax figures, some of them likenesses of known individuals, that caused 

 admiration and astonishment by the resemblance. He contrived a 

 representation of the infernal regions, in which he played at first the 

 chief part, that of Beelzebub, placing himself in connection with a 

 powerful invisible electrical machine behind the grating, whence with 

 a long wand he would, in the darkened room, suddenly transmit a shock 

 to the alarmed spectators. 



He was now frequently told that he ought not to waste his life in 

 such employment, but that he should go to Europe and study sculp- 

 ture. But he had not the money needed to carry such a plan into 

 effect. 



He had been in the museum about two years, when he accepted 

 from Mr. Longworth, of Cincinnati, an offer to supply the means for 

 his spending some time in Italy ; and he went to New York to take 

 ship. The plan failed on account of an informality in the letter of 

 credit, and he returned to Cincinnati and to the museum, where such 

 prospects were held out to him as induced him to give up for the time 

 the voyage. He did not regret in after life the failure, at that early 

 period, of the scheme to study abroad, alleging that he might have been 

 misled in the schools of Italy into a vicious path of art; whereas by 

 having remained longer at home, and there studied nature intently in 

 making many busts, he became proof, through this wholesome disci- 

 pline, against the errors and artificial doctrines and practices of Euro- 

 pean Academies. . . . 



His kind friend, Mr. Longworth, now offered to furnish the means 

 for him to go to Washington, to try there to get such orders as would 

 enable him to j^roceed to Europe. Accordingly he quitted finally the 

 museum, where he had in a measure wasted seven years of his life, 

 having in all that time executed but three busts, and done nothing else 

 that directly furthered him in the art for which he was by nature des- 

 tined. Before leaving the^ museum, he married, on the 1st of May, 

 1832, Miss Elizabeth Gibson, of Cincinnati. 



In 1833 he arrived in Washington, provided with letters to some 

 of the leading public men. Several of them declined to sit to him, 

 even without charge. Others not only allowed him to take their busts, 

 but treated him with kindness and encouragement, particularly Colonel 

 Preston of the Senate, and Mr. Calhoun. He took the busts of Geu- 



