That fund, which is called the
Artists' Annuity Fund, is, so to speak, a joint and mutual
Assurance Company against infirmity, sickness, and age. To the
benefits it affords every one of its members has an absolute right,
a right, be it remembered, produced by timely thrift and self-
denial, and not assisted by appeals to the charity or compassion of
any human being. On that fund there are, if I remember a right,
some seventeen annuitants who are in the receipt of eleven hundred
a-year, the proceeds of their own self-supporting Institution. In
recommending to you this benevolent fund, which is not self-
supporting, they address you, in effect, in these words:- "We ask
you to help these widows and orphans, because we show you we have
first helped ourselves. These widows and orphans may be ours or
they may not be ours; but in any case we will prove to you to a
certainty that we are not so many wagoners calling upon Jupiter to
do our work, because we do our own work; each has his shoulder to
the wheel; each, from year to year, has had his shoulder set to the
wheel, and the prayer we make to Jupiter and all the gods is simply
this--that this fact may be remembered when the wagon has stopped
for ever, and the spent and worn-out wagoner lies lifeless by the
roadside.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I most particularly wish to impress on you
the strength of this appeal. I am a painter, a sculptor, or an
engraver, of average success.
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