He had a desire to reform the world and he wanted to be a great painter or sculptor, or both; and he entered New York with a new sense developed.
He was keen to see, to do, and to feel.

He wanted to make the world ring with his name and fame, yet he wanted to do the world good also, if he could.

It was a curious state of mind for the English boy, who talked French like a native and loved French literature and the French people, and was angry with those English-Canadians who were so selfish they would never learn French.
Arrived in New York he took lodgings near old Washington Square, where there were a few studios near the Bohemian restaurants and a life as nearly continental as was possible in a new country.

He got in touch with a few artists and began to paint, doing little scenes in the Bowery and of the night-life of New York, and visiting the Hudson River and Long Island for landscape and seascape sketches.
One day he was going down Broadway, and near Union Square he saved a girl from being killed by a street-car.

She had slipped and fallen on the track and a car was coming.