Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/64

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS autumn and winter. For some reason Mr. Richards was curious about Mt. Tacoma, and in 1885 he took a trip to the Pacific coast to see it. If two or three large paintings of the mountain are excepted, no visible results to his art seem to have followed, as he went on in his accustomed pathways, holding his homes intact in Chester Valley and Conanicut until March, 1890, when he bought a cosy, homely house at an angle of one of those pretty Newport streets that go nowhere but to your own front door. This he alternated with "Gray Cliff" and with seasons in Europe between 1885 and 1890. He would disappear for a time to come back laden with canvases and a smiling and genial vitality which made his welcome glad and warm. He rarely spoke of his absence, sometimes to point an anecdote or explain a picture; and I remember, once, how he brought back a series of bewitching water-colors trellised all over with roses, of a country house in England and its lovely court-yard, where he had been staying. 40