wrote his wife: "I speculate and toil. Art is almost gone from my thoughts; it is a thing that was-and will be-but is not; it exists now in the chrysalis state; life is just perceptible by a few twitching jerks. In the meantime I endeavor to finish my machine. It is a new peg to hang hopes upon; we have had others before this and will have more after, but God alone decideth our ways.

"Is there no finger of God in the fact that all my works remain my property while things disconnected with art are thrown into my hands? Or do I seek them?"

In the early days of 1857 Capt. Montgomery C. Meigs came from Washington, seeking among the artists of New York for one to work upon the decorations of the Capitol. Oertel was engaged. This seemed to him a great opening, to work thus on a national building, and as it offered a regular salary he saw the chance of being able to save something for the furtherance of his darling plans of painting the great series.

CHAPTER IV.

On February 19 he left for Washington to take up the work, full of enthusiasm and true patriotic feeling for his adopted country. He wrote his wife (Feb. 20) "I have been up to the Capitol. I shall inscribe my name on its walls either as a man who will live-or as a nonentity that does not deserve to live."

The first work assigned him was the decoration of the Senate library. This evidently was decided at once, for in a letter to his wife (Feb. 21) he says: "I have to make four allegorical designs for the ceiling of the Senate library, each 11 by 6 feet. These are for frescos. Mr. Brumidi has made a sketch for them, together with the ornaments, but I am not to mind his, but follow my own ideas."

He made his design and at once began preparatory work. He intended to place allegorical figures on each of the four fields of the ceiling representing Poesy, History, Law, and Commerce, and to group under them on the respective side walls the greatest American poets, historians, lawyers and merchants.

He had worked some weeks on these preparations when Captain Meigs came to him and asked as a special favor that he would put off his work in

the building and draw for him the designs of the State arms for the use of the glass stainers who were to make the ceiling of the Representatives' Hall. He showed him how important it was that they should be put in the hands of an artist of varied knowledge, as they contain figures, animals, plants, and a variety of emblems, and that all the existing authorities were stiff and badly drawn, and would have to be entirely remodeled. Much against his will he consented to undertake this task to oblige Captain Meigs. Nearly a year was spent in the producing of about 50 water color paintings each in a 20-inch circle, having to repeat some of them because he was furnished with incorrect designs for copy. He then turned with a sense of relief to the consideration of the frescos. He went up to the Capitol for material, and in talking with Mr. Karsten, the superintendent, he was asked what room he was going to paint. He replied, "The Senate library." "But," said Mr. Karsten, "Brumidi is painting that." It seemed impossible; he went up there at once and found it about half done.

He turned to Captain Meigs for explanation. That gentleman professed to be surprised, himself, "regretted it had occurred, etc.," and wished Mr. Oertel would make another selection. This he did, choosing a suite of committee rooms, and so notified Captain Meigs, when he was informed it was not proposed to decorate these rooms expensively, he must choose again. He then went over the plans with Mr. Karsten and found that every part of the building of importance was already in the hands of Mr. Brumidi, he having made designs which had

been accepted by Captain Meigs, been photographed, and passed into commissions.

He at once sent to the captain the following indignant letter of protest and resignation:

"CAPTAIN M. C. MEIGS.

"WASHINGTON, D. C., April 27, 1858.

"DEAR SIR: I have endeavored three different times since Saturday to see you, and not succeeding I take this method of communicating with you.

"In consequence of your last letter of April 23, instant, annulling my choice of room No. 65. and wishing me to make another selection, I went at once to the Capitol to do so. The proposition to 'paint one half of the library, leaving the other half to Mr. Brumidi' I rejected once before verbally, as you will recollect. I could not now accept it.

"On carefully reviewing, with Mr. Karsten, the plans of all the rooms in both the extension wings I learned that there is in either of them scarcely a single room of importance left, which is not at present occupied as anticipated by Mr. Brumidi with a sketch or design for decoration and paintings.

"When last year I responded to your call I did so as an independent artist subject to no one but your own commissions.

"My position was then carefully defined. Agreeable to your wishes I submitted to the irksome, laborious work of revising and redrawing all the various State arms without ever entering a complaint, trusting the time would arrive when, according to your promise, I would succeed to a fair, impartial chance as a self-producing artist. The Senate library was to be my field and for this I labored hopefully, making studious preparations.

"When ready to begin upon the wall I was unceremoniously despoiled of my right and commission by Mr. Brumidi. For this wrong I have obtained no other satisfaction than a letter to Mr. Brumidi could afford me, informing him that I regard his proceeding as an 'unjust interference with my rights.'

"But I had looked for an adjustment of my claims to yourself, and could not honorably accede to a compromise-nor can I ever.

"Nor could I, after what passed, accept with self-respect any work by concession of Mr. Brumidi; the same insult, once practiced on me, would be liable to repetition. My feelings of professional independence will not brook any other than a position of republican level with any other artist.

"I could honorably descend to inferior work but not to an inferior position.

"But there is also another and stronger motive actuating my present course, from the fact of Mr. Brumidi having already initiated to himself, for decoration by ornamentation and frescos, nearly every available room in both wings at the Capitol extension. This truth was not revealed to me but on compulsory search for those rooms for. which nothing had been designed, and except for this circumstance I might have remained ignorant yet for a time.

"It would ill become me, as an American citizen, with the knowledge of these irregular facts, still to persist in writing my solitary name upon the walls of the nation's first and best building and to remain unimpressed by the entire absence of sympathetic national art atmosphere within its spacious halls, looking in vain around me for congenial society.

"Merely personal injuries I might have passed over and forgiven to trespass my self upon national ground, I dare not.

"I therefore beg of you, respectfully, to accept herewith my resignation and to kindly notify me of your acceptance. "JOHANNES A. OERTEL."

"Respectfully,

This letter was thrown into print by a friend of Mr. Oertel, though without his knowledge-a gentleman high in position in Washington—and widely copied, as at that time public sentiment was much aroused in regard to alleged abuses in the management of the Capitol building.

A copy of one of the newspaper articles follows. This is in Mrs. Oertel's scrap book, and there is nothing to indicate the paper from which it was taken.