Saint

Many persons, of envious temper, or lacking in aesthetic sense, have sneered at the face of John D. Rockefeller Sr. The legends that Mr. Rockefeller is fond of vinegar-pickle, that he drinks hot milk, plays golf in trousers ten years old and never tips more than a dime have so prejudiced these persons that when they see the face of Mr. Rockefeller in the rotogravure section, smiling at golf balls or giving dimes to children, they perceive that the face is old, and say that it is mean. John Singer Sargent, greatest of U. S. portrait painters, had another opinion of that face. Last week Mrs. Frederick Arthur Osborn, wife of the famed physics professor, told how Sargent first showed his portrait of the financier in 1917.

He finished the picture in his workroom at Woodsome Lodge. Professor and Mrs. Osborn drove through a violent storm to see it. Sargent met them and then disappeared behind a partition, returning with an easel made of lima bean poles. "Turn round and hide your eyes," Sargent said; Professor and Mrs. Osborn obeyed.

"Now look," said Sargent.

"We were lost," related Mrs. Osborn, "in contemplation of that portrait, and after a few minutes' silence Professor Osborn said 'Sargent, you have captured a quattrocento mystic, a saint, a Saint Francis of Assisi.' Whereupon Sargent, in the ebullience of youth, literally jumped from the floor, saying, 'Osborn, do you see that in that face? That's what I saw. . . .' "