I had long admired his work and had been most anxious to meet him.

As a rule, Frederic did not attend any social functions, but he loved the army, and as Mrs.
Remington was fond of social life, they were both present at our first little invitation dance.
About the middle of the evening I noticed Mr.Remington sitting alone and I crossed the hall and sat down beside him.

I then told him how much I had loved his work and how it appealed to all army folks, and how glad I was to know him, and I suppose I said many other things such as literary men and painters and players often have to hear from enthusiastic women like myself.

However, Frederic seemed pleased, and made some modest little speech and then fell into an abstracted silence, gazing on the great flag which was stretched across the hall at one end, and from behind which some few soldiers who were going to assist in serving the supper were passing in and out.

I fell in with his mood immediately, as he was a person with whom formality was impossible, and said: "What are you looking at, Mr.Remington ?" He replied, turning upon me his round boyish face and his blue eyes gladdening, "I was just thinking I wished I was behind in there where those blue jackets are--you know--behind that flag with the soldiers--those are the men I like to study, you know, I don't like all this fuss and feathers of society"-- then, blushing at his lack of gallantry, he added: "It's all right, of course, pretty women and all that, and I suppose you think I'm dreadful and--do you want me to dance with you--that's the proper thing here isn't it ?" Whereupon, he seized me in his great arms and whirled me around at a pace I never dreamed of, and, once around, he said, "that's enough of this thing, isn't it, let's sit down, I believe I'm going to like you, though I'm not much for women." I said "You must come over here often;" and he replied, "You've got a lot of jolly good fellows over here and I will do it." Afterwards, the Remingtons and ourselves became the closest friends.
Mrs.Remington's maiden name was Eva Caton, and after the first few meetings, she became "little Eva" to me--and if ever there was an embodiment of that gentle lovely name and what it implies, it is this woman, the wife of the great artist, who has stood by him through all the reverses of his early life and been, in every sense, his guiding star.
And now began visits to the studio, a great room he had built on to his house at New Rochelle.