member of Congress from that district for the years 1916, 1917 
and 1918. 
While at school at Willoughby Holmes visited the studio 
of Miss Caroline Ran some , the artist, in Cleveland, but failed 
again to find the way open to an art career. Later he returned 
to Hopedale and graduated at the Normal School there in 1870. 
Hot being satisfied with his acquirements as a teacher, he . con- 
ceived the plan of talcing a course of instruction in a teacher's 
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school of high grade, the State Normal School, Salem, Massachusetts, 
and his father advanced $200.00 to enable him to carry out this 
plan. But here good fortune came to his rescue and the course 
of his life was wholly changed and his art tendencies, never 
wholly lost sight of, came anew to the surface. He happened one 
day to be in Neri Hanna's booh store in Cadiz, Ohio, and while 
talking with Mr. Hanna of his plans, was introduced to Mr. John 
bimmons, a native of Cadiz who had just returned from Washington, 
where he occupied a clerkship in the War Department. On hearing 
of Holmes 1 disappointment at having to give up art, he advised 
him strongly to abandon the Salem plan and go to Washington in- 
stead arid study painting under Theodore Kauffman, a painter of 
much local repute. Mr. Simmons wrote to Mr. Kauffman, making 
inquiries, and the reply was so encouraging that Holmes decided 
to stop in Washington and make inquiries. Kauffman's studio 
was found on Twelfth Street, just below F, and it was not long 
bexoie tne idea o± a school teacher's career v/as relegated to 
