issued this modest card: "John Rogers, Artist, Designs and Executes Groups of Figures in Composition at his Studio, 599 Broadway." The success of his works had been so marked as to induce him to believe that he would have no difficulty in establishing a permanent business, and he set to work with enthusiasm. In quick succession he produced his "Fairy's Whisper" and "Air Castles," the latter of which is the only commission he has ever executed. The war began soon after, and supplied him with an abundance of popular subjects. These war subjects attracted universal attention, and sold as rapidly as he could supply them. A New York journal thus describes the "sensation" which they created in that city:
"All day, and every day, week in and week out, there is an ever-changing crowd of men, women, and children standing stationary amid the ever-surging tides of Broadway, before the windows of Williams & Stevens, gazing with eager interest upon the statuettes and groups of John Rogers, the sculptor. These works appeal to a deep popular sentiment. They are not pretentious displays of gods, goddesses, ideal characters, or stupendous, world-compelling heroes. They are illustrations of American domestic and especially of American military life—not of our great generals or our bold admirals, or the men whose praises fill all the newspapers, but of the common soldier of the Union; not of the common soldier, either, in what might be called his high heroic moods and moments, when, with waving sword and flaming eye, he dashes upon the enemy's works, but of the soldier in the ordinary moments and usual occupations of every-day camp life. For the last year or more Mr. Rogers has been at work mainly on groups of this latter class and character. Thus he has given us 'The Returned Volunteer, or How the Fort was Taken,' being a group of three gathered in a blacksmith's shop, the characters consisting of the blacksmith himself, standing with his right foot on the anvil block, and his big hammer in his hands, listening eagerly, with his little girl, to a soldier who sits close by on his haunches, narrating 'how the fort was taken,' We have also another group of three,