16 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 
A WORD PAINTER OF LIVESTOCK MASTERPIECES 
3. The dean of American showyard reporters was WILLIAM 
RANSDELL Goopwin. Never was the story of a live stock exhi- 
bition fully told to a North American breeder until he had 
opportunity to read Mr. Goopwin’s virile comment, and never 
could he visualize clearly the incidents of the big ring battles 
until his forceful pen had touched up the higher lights. Mr. 
Goopwin’s indomitable energy and his extraordinary facility 
made a name for him that is almost immortal. He possessed a 
perennial potentiality to find in each new show an added luster 
in the animals on review, and from one season to another was 
able to classify each detail in which the exhibit of that day had 
surpassed its predecessor. His reports of the World’s Columbian 
Exposition, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the Alaska- 
Yukon Exposition, the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the Iowa and 
Illinois State Fairs, the American Royals and the Internationals 
were classic, no matter what the breed nor how unusual the feature 
he discussed. He was one of the most forceful personalities 
known to the field of agricultural journalism. 
Mr. Goopwin was born at Brookville, Indiana, August 19, 
1863. His father, WILLIAM RANSDELL Goopwin, Sr., was a Meth- 
odist divine, then president of a college at Brookville. His early 
education was in the public schools of Danville, Quincy and De- 
catur, I1l., and he spent three years at the Illinois Wesleyan Uni- 
versity. In 1883 he completed his college course at DePauw 
University, receiving his A. B. degree. Three years later his 
A. M. was conferred by the same school. He was a member of 
Beta Theta Pi in college, and for years was joint host with his 
brother, JupcE Joun B. Goopwin, to the Chicago Alumni Asso- 
ciation of the fraternity, either at Heatherton, his brother’s Naper- 
ville home, or at Oakhurst, his own estate near the same town. 
Following his graduation in 1883, he allied himself with his 
brother in the breeding of Aberdeen-Angus cattle at Beloit, 
