’and,’ said Holmes, 'some of the crowd didn’t stop running 
till they got to Washington.’ 
Stories like these and the offer of a post if I could 
make satisfactory drawings - satisfactory, that is, from a 
government critical standpoint - induced me, for the first and 
last time, to compete for a post. I was given a sort of pro- 
file map which Holmes had made in pencil and told to copy it 
in ink. Holmes said he had made it with the thermometer away 
telow zero, thawing the lead pencil, or himself, over a fire 
between his legs as he drew. I felt like telling him, as I 
used to he told, ’there w r as no merit in that.’ The only 
other thing about it I can remember is that there was a Mount 
Pennell on the drawing, but where that Mount is or was, I do 
not know or care. I believe there is an Elizabeth River 
discovered by Landor in South America, but then both he and 
Teddy said the other never was there. I took the map and 
improved it, and I did not get on the Survey. But how Holmes, 
who could make the most stunning direct watercolors, should 
have preferred this sort of drudgery was beyond me mentally 
as well as artistically. There were other Washington artists, 
and the first American prize student, and Doctor Burnett, who 
was, I believe, the first person in Washington to collect 
etchings, whom I used to go to see. They are all, save Pro- 
fessor Holmes, rather vague in my rather dim memory of forty 
years ago.”' 
( rT The Adventures of an Illustrator,” by Joseph Pennell, pp 82-83) 
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