28 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



His greatest service to livestock men in general, however, is his 

 founding of the portrait gallery in the Saddle and Sirloin Club. 

 While at Blairgowrie he had made the beginnings of such a gal- 

 lery by securing mezzotints, etchings, engravings and oil paint- 

 ings of the principal contributors to the art of breeding in 

 Britain throughout the early part of the last century, and the oils 

 were loaned to the Club as a nucleus from which the present 

 gallery has grown. The idea has been copied since by the Uni- 

 versity of Illinois in its Hall of Fame, in which portraits of 

 notable contributors to the agriculture of the state are hung, but 

 as yet there is no real rival to the gallery of this Club, both 

 because of the extent of the interests affected and the breadth of 

 appeal in the achievements of the different men honored. Nowhere 

 in America does there exist any rival for inspirational value to 

 rural youth, to the portraits hung here. 



Mr. Ocilvie is an inspiration himself to every young lover of 

 purebred livestock. He possesses a wealth of memories and asso- 

 ciations with the men of the last generation rivalled only by 

 William Miller (116), and Richard Gibson (113). This kin- 

 ship was felt strongly by the three, and resulted in an intimate 

 relationship whose sentiment and charm has been rarely equalled. 

 Each possessed a love for high thoughts well expressed, and each 

 was a master in his own way of this art. So it came that in the 

 fall of 1905 there was an almost prophetic quality in the words 

 of Mr. Miller, as he sat on the veranda of the old Transit House 

 in the cool of the evening, during his last return to his Iowa 

 home after visiting in Canada: 



"Robert, I shall never see you again. This is my last trip. I 

 must say goodbye. I feel sorry for you. All of us whom you 

 have loved are passing on and you will be left here alone, the 

 solitary oak in the tilled field, whose leaves drop one by one, and 

 lonely waits the day when he too shall fall beside them." 



