"The idea of this exquisite little collection of frauds and forgeries," said Cooper, "—and I don't believe I am boasting when I speak of my few treasures as exquisite—came to me in a natural enough way. One of the bitterest trials the connoisseur has to contend with, is the consciousness that no amount of care and expense can guarantee him an absolutely flawless collection. The suspicion of the experts has fallen upon not a single picture, brass, marble or iron in his galleries; and yet as he walks those galleries the unhappy owner groans under the moral conviction that there are spurious pictures on his walls, spurious marbles in his halls, spurious carvings and coins under his glass cases, and that there they must stay until discovered and exposed.

"A perfect collection, therefore, in the sense of a collection in which every object can be traced back with absolute certainty to its author and its place of origin, is impossible. Unless, and that is how the inspiration came," said Cooper, "unless one set to collecting objects of art which have been proved to be fraudulent. Then and only then, could one be sure that one's treasures were just what one believed them to be. And that is just what I set out to do. I began buying objects of art, which, after masquerading under a great name, had been exposed and given up to scorn. I have kept at it for twenty years, and I can now point to what no American multi-millionaire can ever boast of, a collection made up entirely of 'fakes.' When I stroll through my little museum I am obsessed by no doubts. I am as certain as I am of being alive that no genuine Leonardo or Holbein or Manet or Cellini has found its way under my roof.

"I must admit," Cooper went on, "that the question of economy has been an important factor in the case. When we first set up housekeeping, a year after our marriage, our means were not unlimited and our tastes were of the very highest. Buying the best work or even the second-best work of the best painters was out of the question. But buying cheap copies of the masters, replicas, casts, photogravures, was equally impossible. The idea of owning anything that some one else may own at the same time is abhorrent to the true collector. On the other hand, if we went in for spurious masterpieces, we were sure of securing unique specimens at very small expense. And I will not deny that the bargain element appealed very strongly to Mrs. Cooper. Most of our things we got at really fabulous reductions. There was the crown of an Assyrian princess of the twenty-fourth century b.c., for which one of the leading European museums paid $75,000, and which, after it was shown that it had been made by a Copenhagen jeweller in 1907, I purchased from the museum for something like fifty-five dollars, plus the freight. This charming little landscape with sheep and a shepherd boy brought $23,000 in a Fifth Avenue auction room two years ago. Three months after it was sold, a certain Mrs. Smith on Staten Island sued her husband for desertion and non-support, and in the course of the proceedings it was brought out that Smith made $10,000 a year painting Corots and Daubignys, and that the $23,000 picture was one of his latest achievements. I got it for a little over one hundred dollars. I am really proud of the picture, because Smith has put into it enough of the Corot quality to deceive many an expert observer. If I were not in possession of the documentary proof that Smith painted the picture in 1908, I should myself be tempted at times to believe that Smith and his wife lied in court and that the picture is really a Corot.

"But these are the chances," said Cooper, "that every art-lover must take. I have said that at present I feel perfectly sure that not a single genuine work has crept in to vitiate my collection. And that is true. But only a few weeks ago I had a very bad quarter of an hour indeed over this spurious Tanagra figurine. It had been bought for a museum not one hundred miles from here by a patron who was a good friend of mine, and who had paid several thousand dollars for the statuette. I was in the room with Hawley when Stimson, our very greatest Greek archÆologist and art-expert, entered, and, catching sight of the little figure, picked it up, studied it for a few moments, smelt it, licked it with his tongue, pressed it to his cheek, and handed it back to my friend with a single, blasting comment—'fake.' We two were incredulous, but within fifteen minutes Stimson had convinced us that the thing was a palpable fraud. Quite beside himself with vexation, Hawley lifted up the statuette and was about to dash it into fragments on the ground, when I caught his arm. 'Let me have it,' I said; and I carried it home in great glee.

"Well, a few weeks later I was showing my collection to Dr. Friedheimer of Berlin, who is a much greater man even than Stimson. The German savant stopped in fascination before the Tanagra figurine. 'A pretty good imitation,' I said. He seized the statuette with trembling fingers. 'Imidation!' he shouted. 'Chenuine, chenuine as de hairs on your het. Himmel, wat a find!' And he proceeded to do what Stimson had done, and he smelt it and licked it, and rubbed it against his beard, and I am not sure but that he knocked it against his forehead to test its texture. And then in his agitation he let the figure fall, and it broke in two on the floor, and inside we found a bit of newspaper dated Naples, January 27, 1903. Dr. Friedheimer could only say, 'UnerhÖrt!' but I was nearly frantic with delight. I repaired the statuette, and it now holds, as you see, the place of honour in my collection."

As we sat over our coffee and cigars, Cooper grew reflective. "After all," he said, "is not the fabricator of frauds fully as great an artist as the man whose work he imitates? Take the famous marble Aphrodite of a few years ago, which was attributed by some critics to Praxiteles, and by some critics to Scopas, until proof came that it had been made in Hoboken. Consider the labour that went into the fraud. For years, probably, the dishonest sculptor was engaged in preliminary studies for the work. He spent months in libraries, museums, and the lecture-rooms of learned professors. He impregnated himself with the spirit of Greek art. He devoted months to searching for a suitable piece of antique marble. How long he was in carving it, I can only guess. When it was completed, he boiled it in oil; then he boiled it in milk; then he boiled it in soap; then he boiled it in a concoction of molasses and wine; then he buried it in moist soil, and let it age for three years.

"Now, suppose the statue had been really carved by Praxiteles. That joyous master and genius might have put two weeks' work, three weeks' work, a month's work, upon it, and there you were. What was the labour of a lifetime to the other man was to Praxiteles just an easy bit of routine. If art is a man's soul and hopes and brain and sweat and blood put into concrete form, who produced the truer work of art, Praxiteles or the unknown sculptor of Hoboken? I speak only of the comparative expenditure of effort. So far as the artistic result is concerned, it is evident, from the ease with which we were taken in, that there is no great difference between the school of Hoboken and the school of Praxiteles."