One day while working at the Chicago Art Institute on my sculpture The Orator, a small man with long white hair and beard came into the room and introduced himself as Professor Cho Yo. He was Chinese, though his hair and beard were wavy. He admired my work and showed genuine appreciation of aesthetics, revealing great knowledge of Oriental Art. He had almost as much interest in every detail of my sculpture as if he were the sculptor himself.

Professor Cho Yo came to visit me practically every day bestowing his gentle friendship. I learned that when the World's Columbian Exposition was being prepared in 1893, he had been delegated by China and Japan to supervise and lecture on Oriental Arts. He remained in Chicago for the rest of his life and became an honored member of the Press and University Clubs. He was said to have written a book on the mathematical laws of chance recurrences, based on the principle of the numeral 9.

Cho Yo owned a large collection of Chinese and Japanese Art, including thousands of the finest woodblock prints and paintings on kakemonos. Having been absorbed in his scientific pursuits, his income was very limited. Frank Lloyd Wright met him eagerly, for it was through him that eventually his Imperial Hotel in Japan was erected. Wright, the world renowned architect, was unappreciated in the U.S. His ways of being, his thinking shocked the Americans, who at that time were very unworldly. The Japanese government was the first to offer him a commission to erect the now famed Imperial Hotel. Whenever Cho Yo needed a few dollars, he practically gave Wright one of his pieces from his collection. Thus, Wright acquired a great number of bronzes, carvings, prints and archaic bells for little money. Professor Cho Yo being an Oriental of high breeding and great culture, was extremely gracious and generous to the architect on whom his finesse of manner was futily lost.

I did not know the professor for very long, for eventually he stopped coming to the Institute, since I was too young to be an equal companion to a man of his learning and age.