I PAINTED Mr. Coates the first time in Camp Elsinore, on the wild shores of Lake Saint Regis, in the Adirondack Mountains. It was an ideal spot for work or, it would be more just to say, for idleness. The warm, pine-scented air invited you to rest, and the still, clear water lured you to float on its surface in a birch-bark canoe.
But Mr. Coates, seated on the piazza, made an attractive picture: so I gathered my brushes into my hand and sketched him as he sat with his pet dog on his knee—a study in black and gray. This was the most interesting portrait of the three that were painted. The second was done in Murestead, when he and Mrs. Coates were making us a visit in London. The third was made in camp, during the third year of the war. Hidden away among the pines, in those peaceful mountains, the echoes of the conflict were very faint; for at that time America was only engaged in sending munitions to the Allies, and was not assisting them in the field.
There is a mystery in the charm of the north-woods which belongs to a time that antedates the life of man. Here man has left little trace of himself: and as one wanders northward, tracks are almost lost in the forests that are covered deep in moss. From these lands, from the great mountains of the West, and from the boundless deserts and
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