So, in four months, he designed and superintended the
erection of houses, churches, schools, and hospitals for a town
of several thousand inhabitants.
Commander Belknap's report spoke of him as "the first to
volunteer, and the most devoted worker, sharing every hardship
with unfailing good humor and leaving his beautifying touch on
every part of the work."
On June 12, 1908, having built his town and recovered his lost
knuckles, John Elliott returned to Rome, where the soil did not
rock, and set quietly about making twenty-four small pastel
drawings to illustrate a fairy story! From building houses for
the wretched homeless sufferers, he turned to the play tales of
childhood. He laid down the T square and the hammer for a piece
of pastel crayon. But he had triumphantly refuted the scorn of
the "practical man" for the artist. He had shown the stuff that
dreams are really made of. Incidentally, he had won for himself a
decoration from the King of Italy, and the medal of the American
Red Cross Association.
"Diana of the Tides," which now covers the end wall of the
right-hand gallery of the new National Museum at Washington, is
akin to the Boston Library ceiling in its employment of horses
symbolically, its light, luminous color, and its subtle play of
illumination.
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