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Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2012 with funding from

Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

http://archive.org/details/backgroOObeau

MRS. HENRY S. DRINKER AND SON (Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance)

BACKGROUND WITH FIGURES

Autobiography of

CECILIA BEAUX

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

Boston and New York

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1930

COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY CECILIA BEAUX

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

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CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

To MY SISTER

PREFACE

This book owes its existence to a dual motive. On one hand it is a purely selfish desire to retrace a series of adventures touching upon characters of world interest. The second motive rises nearer home, indeed so near as to be chiefly of family interest, and primarily for family record. As an intro- duction it precedes the adventure, and is responsible for it. It will be found to be an illustration of a certain type of edu- cation, now obsolete, but which is hoped to be worthy, al- beit still in the making, of wearing the patine of a veritable antique.

C. B.

Gloucester, Massachusetts October 5, 1930

CONTENTS

I. Parentage 3

II. Childhood and First Impressions 13

III. Education 29

IV. Class and Studio 64 V. Europe 100

VI. Incidents and Episodes 135

VII. An English Visit 179

VII I. Return to America 193

IX. War Portraits 235

X. Cardinal Mercier 239

XI. Clemenceau 278

XII. Quinze Rue de Cherche Midi 307

XIII. Baron Beatty of the North Sea 317

XIV. Green Alley 338 Appendix 347 Index 351

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mrs. Henry S. Drinker and Son (Les Derniers Joint!

d'Enfange) Frontispiece

Cecilia Kent Leavitt, Grandmother of the Author 4

From an early miniature

John W. Leavitt, Grandfather of the Author 4

From an early miniature

Miss Eliza Leavitt 8

The Book of Wolves {aquatone) 22

Drawing by C. Beaux

Cecilia Kent Leavttt {aquatone) 40

Drawing by C. Beaux

Child with Nurse: 'Ernesta' 56

Ernesta 72

Reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum, New York

SlTA AND SARITA 88

On the Terrace 104

Mrs. J. H. Richards 120

Reproduced by permission of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Cecilia Beaux 136

From a photograph

152

Mrs. Robert Chapin and Child

Oil drawing by C. Beaux

Flora Whitney 168

Mrs. James B. Drinker and Son i 84

Richard Watson Gilder 210

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Illustrations Dorothea and Francesga 2 1 8

Reproduced by permission of the Chicago Art Museum

At Home 222

Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Daughter 228

S. E. Cardinal Mercier 242

Mrs. Alexander Sedgwick and Christina 258

Cecilia Beaux 274

Self-portrait

Georges Clemenceau 292

Admiral Lord Beatty 324

Morning at Green Alley 338

From a photograph

In the Loggia 342

From a photograph

Natale 342

From a photograph

Except as otherwise indicated the illustrations are from paintings by Cecilia Beaux

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BACKGROUND WITH FIGURES

I

PARENTAGE

MY mother, Cecilia Kent Leavitt, was the eldest of the eight children of my American grandparents, the first born of their strong youth and rapture. I can quite clearly imagine the young pair, in their modest house in Dey Street, New York.

Two fine miniatures remain, painted in those first years, for my grandfather, even when a very young man, was keenly alive to fresh ideas of life and to a general survey of the moment. Though not well off, he thought it fitting that portraits of his young wife and himself should exist for their children, the little family just appearing. As the miniatures themselves attest, the best artist of the day in such work was commissioned. Unfortunately, no sign of signature can be found upon the pictures, set in oval frames, with red mo- rocco cases.

The portrait of my grandfather represents the handsome Puritan head of a young man about thirty, with strong dark eyes, firm mouth and jaw, enveloped in the white stock and wearing the high-collared coat of the period. The likeness of my grandmother was less successful. Her mobile face, a long oval, with dark eyes slightly pointing upward at the corners, and flexible lips, could not be seized so easily by the firm hand that modelled my grandfather's muscular, clean-shaven face.

My grandmother's small head on a very slender throat rises from a broad, delicate, lace-and-muslin collar. Her bodice is very short — a little jacket, in fact, of black velvet and silk, and high sleeves, plain, but very stylish, and fortu-

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nately still preserved. Her dark hair is dressed high, in puffs and a comb. I remember her telling me that her sister used to say, 'Cecilia, your hair is like a pound of black sewing silk.' Wonderful hair, fine and straight. In the last year of her life, when she was ninety-three, there was still a remark- able quantity of it, and I had the privilege of being chosen to brush and arrange it.

My grandparents were both of New England Puritan stock, English entirely. Their ancestors had been early settlers in the northern and western part of Connecticut. My grandfather, John Wheeler Leavitt, came from the township of Washington; my grandmother, whose name was Cecilia Kent, from Suffield. Her older sister, Sarah Evelina Kent, had married and was living in Brooklyn, and thither she brought her pretty young sister, twelve years her junior.

It was there that Cecilia Kent met young John Leavitt, lately started in business with a cousin of an older genera- tion in New York. Both were young, earnest, handsome, and vital. The same principles of life and religion were theirs; the same ideals of living and character. Her humor offset his sterner qualities; their mutual trust was perfect, and was never broken. Both had strong constitutions and perfect health of body and mind. In romance their married life began and continued, without record of obstacle or dis- aster, through the birth and upgrowing of their large family. My grandfather was more and more prosperous, and be- came a rich man for those days.

The two elder children of my grandparents were girls, only a year apart, Cecilia and Eliza.

As the family increased, it is probable that the earnest ideals of the young parents suffered some relaxation. They could hardly have maintained the personal watchfulness with which the two oldest were guarded and trained. But

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t

CECILIA KENT LEAVITT

JOHN W. LEAVITT

Parentage

no time was wasted in applying to these two the 'early les- sons' which in those days many parents believed to be in- dispensable for the proper equipment of their children for life.

The little sisters were full of energy, and apparently found no hardship in the accomplishment of their daily 'tasks.' Bible reading was replete with interest; sewing brought into being actual and finished objects, the sweetest and only real reward, of labor. Many walks and excursions were made. Dey Street, where they lived, was only a short dis- tance from Broadway, and one could walk there in the wide and elegant street, and to the Battery, a lovely park on the water, or at the foot of Wall Street take the ferry to Brook- lyn to visit cousins on Brooklyn Heights.

The happiness of these busy little lives is charmingly re- flected in records which have fortunately been preserved.

Cecilia, my mother, was not yet five years old, and her sister Eliza less than four, when their young father brought them each a diary. These were neatly bound blank-books, evidently carefully selected and with their names stamped in gold, on red morocco. Although both the little girls could read, and probably write also, it was thought best by their mother that the daily story should be dictated, and the care- fully written volume before me bears evidence of being a di- rect and unedited setting down of little Eliza's account of her day.

***

As the family grew, the house in Dey Street became too limited, and my grandfather built a house on the south side of Barclay Street facing what is now the Woolworth Build- ing. This house disappeared some years ago to make room for, or to be converted into, warehouses.

There was also a country estate, across the river upon the Palisades, at Hoboken. This place was called Oakland and was greatly beloved by all the family.

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For the Barclay Street house my grandfather had the whole attic constructed as a gymnasium for the children; also the first bathroom with accessories known to New York was put in, and the water piped to the second floor — an in- novation greatly relished by my grandfather, who welcomed all new conveniences.

As the older children matured, it was a very lively house- hold. There were tutors, German and French, music lessons and indefatigable practising: Professor Gloubenskly (and a tall, bony, and rather fearsome Scott for mathematics), and Otto Dresel, a young German musician, who later be- came very well known. He was a pupil of Mendelssohn, and my grandfather, hearing of him soon after his arrival here, and eager to give his daughters all possible advantages, en- gaged him at once to instruct them. This opened the new and fascinating world of German music to the two older girls, who never forgot the charm and happiness, as well as the immense advantage, of this connection. My Aunt Eliza, who became herself a brilliant musician, and who outlived her sister many, many years, looked upon Otto Dresel as the mainspring of her musical life. When I was a child, to whom, of course, these masters only existed as names, I never wearied of hearing my aunts chatting together over their work about former days in which strange foreign persons took an often amusing part. Rippling laughter, which was frequent in our house, nearly always accompanied these recollections.

When they were considered to be of the proper age, the three older girls, Cecilia, Eliza, and Sarah (the beauty of the family), began attending Miss Green's school at No. One Fifth Avenue. The large square house until a short time ago was still the same as in those days, and in passing it, I have often pictured to myself the gay little party walking up from Barclay Street on cold winter mornings, the three girls, their brother, and his friends, who later were to take a more seri- ous part in their lives.

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Parentage

When my mother was about twenty-three, the clouds be- gan to appear. My grandfather, in some large connection

in the South, in which his relation to the COtton industry was involved, failed in business, and his anxiety broke down his health. Everything went to his creditors. Both houses were sold. There were still young children. The family, from comfort and plenty, went into a small house in Twenty- Third Street, then a rough suburb. My grandmother cheer- fully took up her new cares and economies; her chief anxiety being the state of her husband's health. The two elder sons, just through college, were entirely impractical. One of them, Samuel, was a rivetted reformer, and went through life in poverty trying to establish impossible Utopias. The older son, whose tempestuous babyhood is much dwelt on in little Eliza's diary, lay, I remember hearing, all day on three chairs, eating nothing but dry bread, and reading Sweden- borg.

It was better than if the boys had been dissipated or spendthrift. Dreamers and reformers are seldom of much assistance in family crises. At least, their mother might have said that she 'always knew where they were.' But they took no part in retrieving the family fortunes. The two older sisters immediately took up the whole burden. Teaching was the only way open to them, and they were well edu- cated, in music and languages especially. The part taken by my mother in this was truly heroic. For women, teach- ing in those days was not the honorable and diploma'd pro- fession it is now. Cecilia and Eliza could only hope for posi- tions little above menial.

Oakland had been bought by a gentleman of means. He sought a governess for his daughters, and my mother, not will- ing to postpone for a day her valiant effort for her family, applied at once, and was accepted. A few weeks after the disaster in her father's business took place, she returned to the home and the scene of all her young happiness and power, for she was always the leading spirit in the house, returned

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to serve, and to see others enjoy what had been hers, and the scenes that were full of the faces and the hours she had loved best.

***

The family had friends and distant relatives in Philadel- phia, and after a year or two opportunities began to appear from this quarter for the young instructors. Cecilia went first, and soon her warmth and vivacity made her many friends. She saw much of the worldly side of the Quaker City. Although a poor girl earning her living, her brilliant spirits never failed. She was not handsome, but her beauti- ful carriage and figure and her flashing smile were perhaps more effective than more regular charms. There were, of course, lovers, and some of those who sighed for the interest- ing stranger would have been very eligible 'partis.'

But an admirer appeared upon the scene, unexpected, alien, foreign: M. Jean Adolphe Beaux, of Avignon and Nimes in Provence. Perhaps my mother's knowledge of the French language was a little more fluent than that of the Philadelphia belles. At all events, the Frenchman of thirty- eight, recently arrived in America, fell desperately in love with Cecilia, who wrote home that she had met a French gentleman; then that he had 'beautiful blue eyes.' She was in no haste, however, to succumb to their charm, and it was some time before M. Beaux was permitted to go to New York and call on her parents, which he did with both for- mality and determination. He, of course, had to undergo a grilling examination. He had come to this country to found a business, a silk factory. It was a recent enterprise, but promised well. He had many well-known friends to vouch for him, but letters from France and exhaustive research were necessary before her father would approve of Cecilia's choice. They were married in New York, and in the shad- ows overhanging the family destiny, it was a bright mo- ment, especially in the eyes of the bride's young sisters, who

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MISS ELIZA LEAVITT

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Parentage accepted their new brother with eager approval, and often

repeated, many years after, the words of the bridegroom (my father never achieved perfect knowledge of English) when he saw his bride in her wedding dress: 'She is fit to give the hand to a King.' Long afterwards, when I was a growing girl, watching me with saddened eyes, he said, 'You will never have shoulders like your mother.'

My grandfather's death occurred only a few years after the marriage, and it must have greatly lightened the gloom of his last days to know that his French son-in-law, besides being a devoted husband, was making his wife's family his own. This my father did generously and delicately, as long as it was in his power to do so. He was an idealist, not a suc- cessful business man. He never neglected his affairs, but it was not in his nature to — as the saying is — turn over money. He was a Huguenot, a devout Protestant, with the blood, if not of actual martyrdom, still with religious perse- cution, in his veins. Never has the battle between the two great opposing forces of the Christian Church been more bitter than in the South of France: one to reform, the other to maintain. Also, my father's character and personality glowed with the passionate idealism which is the birthright of the inheritors of the sunny land, where Greek, Roman, and Gothic power strove for possession, bringing together currents that were to civilize Europe and be the crucible in which the spear of Gallic intellect was to be forged. One of the well-known descents of the Nordic race was by the Rhone Valley, and there was a more profound origin than she was aware of in the great blue eyes that so captivated the young American girl. Of course, the sympathy between Puritan and Huguenot was a powerful bond between my father and his wife's family. Neither had inherited the harsh dogmas that had grown out of a too determined zeal, and done such harm to the first principles of Protestantism.

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Their ideal hope and belief was in the purest form of spirit- uality, an ideal, alas, impossible to apply to poor humanity, or to be maintained by them in the mass. They were lov- ers, as well, of Art and beauty, and willing to make constant sacrifices to enjoy them.

My father was intensely interested in the French Collegi- ate Church in America, and religion, as a part of daily life, took a deeper and deeper hold on him. M. Fargue, the French pastor, was a frequent visitor at our house when I was a child. My father often selected the hymns for the services at the church from a volume ofPsaumes et Cantiques, with music. All the music was in the plainest choral form, measured, and entirely in harmony with the solemn emo- tion of the verses. One was my favorite, and never forgotten :

Du Rocher du Jacob, Toute Pceuvre est parfaite. Ge que sa bouche a dit, Sa main l'accomplira. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Car il est notre Dieu, Car il est notre Dieu, Notre haute retraite.

Nothing could be plainer nor simpler than were these services, but there was something alive in the hearts of the small congregation that filled the bare ritual with a passion- ate ardor. A child could not be mentally aware of this, but could feel it with wonder, and almost with tears.

These worshippers were all exiles, voluntary, perhaps, but the French never forget France, and, like my father, in their blood was the idealism that could make of religious belief, or had made of it in the past of their race, something worth dying for. Most of the congregation were poor and obscure people. Nothing in the service had cost or could cost money.

The sermon was important, and the pastors of the Col-

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P A R B H T A 0 B

[egiate Church were few and were chosen for their spiritual ity and eloquence. I believe thai real refreshment was re- ceived by these humble and often homesick souls. The great theme was nearness to God and communion with I lim; per- haps more possible with the exile than with the comfortable American citizen, thoroughly at home by this time and prosperous.

■ ***

Strange is the existence in which there is no memory of a mother; no vestige of even a momentary, vague, child-im- pression. This was my fate, and, although it was so, there has been no stronger reality in my life than the reality of my mother's person and influence. She was an adored being, and all through my childhood and youth, the friends who had worshipped her used to gaze long at me, in pity, and de- siring to find traces in me of the beloved. I was accustomed to, and took great pride in, this pity and interest. I knew her to have been one whose memory caused the eyes turned on me to have that strange absorbed gaze, in which com- passion and wonder were blended.

Sometimes chests were opened, and cloaks, dresses she had chosen and worn were taken out and refolded. There was an exquisite fan or two; a bit of frilled ribbon, and, above all, the square white box edged prettily with gold, in which lay her wedding veil and the wreath, the narrow satin slip- pers, and a pair of short white kid gloves, with lace at the wrists.

The glamour and awe which lay about these relics was one of the great emotions of my childhood. Their elegance was to me a positive possession, a sort of patent of nobility, I would not have parted with for the most longed-for and special personal adornment of my own.

I was proud, too, of not being thought worthy to be called in any ordinary way by her name; that name which was pronounced by the last breath upon her dying lips, as the

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name to be given to me, the newly born she hardly knew herself.

What of those twelve first days of my life which were passed near, or upon her breast, before the chill, and the devastat- ing fever, and the end? No one ever did, or could, speak of them to me. Those who knew what they were turned away speechless when they were alluded to. I never knew aught of them except that whisper of my name, her sister's and her own, 'Eliza — Cecilia.5 After two years these names were formally given to me in baptism, and I walked up a long aisle between my grandmother and my father, to receive them; but my father could not endure to hear her child called by his wife's name for years, after her death, and I was always called 'Leilie.'

II

CHILDHOOD AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS

A MOTHER, in her thirty-third year, has died. We would say now, unnecessarily, perhaps, but there again are the stars, the never interrupted current ofdestiny. She has left an infant daughter, and her mother, who has borne eight children, has taken the child. She is a widow and will always remember. She has little to live upon and is of independent spirit. She has taken also Aimee Ernesta, the older sister of the child, and the father, in his distraction, and as far as the children are concerned, leans completely upon his dead wife's mother. There, too, are the sisters — Eliza, whose name the child bears, and a girl of sixteen, Emily, both ready to serve and able. She, the grandmother, is the child's first visual memory. It is morning; there is a pleasant light room, with two windows. The small girl is standing up in her crib, having just found herself awake, and alone. The door opens, and her destined friend and protector enters; a small stout figure in black, gliding swiftly, with white cap a little flowing, perhaps. The child does not remember the embrace, nor greeting; only that her hands are joined, and upon the dear shoulder she whispers the morning saluta- tion: T laid me down, I slept, and the Lord sustained me.' The second vivid memory of Leilie's earliest years is of the afternoon of her third birthday. It is the first of May. She is sitting on her nurse's lap, before an open window, looking out on Locust Street. The gliding step and silken rustle are heard in the hall. The same figure enters. The grandmother has been out, shopping. She wears a black silk mantilla, and her bonnet is tied under her soft chin with a bow of black ribbon. A gauzy black veil floats out, and she carries a small parcel. The box is opened. The child has never known such joy. It is a very small, bright, silver thimble.

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She has been promised to learn to sew, and very soon may wear it. Before the thimble was outgrown, it was worn out. Firm usage had pierced it with several holes; firm usage, but without tears.

There is one more memory of this time. The child is seated upon a low stool before a chair (a chair-seat was fre- quently used as a work-table) ; she is drawing upon a slate framed in wood. She, herself, has no memory of the draw- ing, or of the effort of producing it, but only of heads bent over her; the slate exhibited among delighted young aunts; exclamations, calls to look; 'Leilie has drawn the organ- grinder!'

* * *

Although my grandmother never gave me 'lessons' (that service falling to the aunts until my fifth year), I was very close to her during morning hours, and in those very early years certain habits became fixed. I sat on a little chair beside her and learned, chiefly, that anything undertaken — whether it was threading a needle, finishing off a hem, or conquering a line of three-letter- word-reading — every- thing undertaken must be completed, conquered. Oh, the joy after the struggle with the obstinate thread, the knot, to fold up the finished dish-cloth, close the defeated spelling- book, and spring into well-earned release!

In my opinion, no child's life should be without the zest of such contrasts. They are like the strong summer breeze shaking out the dew from young branches, and teaching them to bend, resist, and regain their poise.

Such very early memories are, of course, significant only in the revelation they give of an important truth; that be- fore the seventh year a child has not been consciously mixed with the life around it, or rather with the scenes. Impres- sions are made in the very young years, which later are re- membered as being the first realization of something ever after familiar or beloved, but never again so separate or so

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Childhood and First Impressions dear. In childhood, attrition has not begun; the page is

spotless, and in some natures, at least, is open to receive what will be remembered during a lifetime, as the moment or two, and the first, of ecstasy.

In the case which I am trying to record, these impressions are almost entirely visual; that is, they are not dependent on incident or other forms of sensation.

There is a carriage full of people; who must have been the grandmother, the aunts, and the older sister. They are go- ing on a journey; it is morning, in early summer. The car- riage hurries along through unknown, narrow streets. It has rained; the pavements are wet. Every one knows where wre are going, except the youngest one, who is absorbed by her mysterious joy. Only one moment, however, does she really remember: the arrival at what must have been a dock. Out of a delicate mist, shot through with morning sunlight, stand the masts of ships, and some drooping sails. It is the child's first realization of the light of morning on such — or, indeed, on any — scene. Where we went, the journey, the details of travel, all are a blank, but nothing in the years between has dimmed the peerless vision; the child's first meeting with the sun-god, or rather the first flash of his spear in rising mist. Little did she know that it was the hour, always destined for her to be the best, the productive, the creative hour; the hour of fearless hope, for in memory it is sheer beauty, at its opening, and nothing else, that re- mains.

*

* *

There are two more of these supreme child-moments: one was in the morning, the other at noon, and neither could have been complete at other times of day. The first is Mal- lory Brook. It is a warm morning in the hills of western Con- necticut. Broad hats and sunbonnets are the equipment, and with other delicious odors, such as that of cows, hay, and the general sweetness of the place and time, is mingled

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the good homely one of fresh-starched muslin, spreading its shade over a freckled nose, and the best of all perfumes, where the grassy road passes through the woods. It rained yesterday, and now the sun is drawing out the pine and the earth's essence, where arbutus was and has left its breath behind.

This memory, it is plain, will be complex, not entirely of the visual sense, nor nearly all of it. Scarcely less sweet is the fresh touch of the breeze on hot cheeks and forehead, when we stop in the shade on a big rock and hats and sun- bonnets come off. There is the short steep descent of the Connecticut hillside, so steep that it is pleasant not quite to know what is coming below. Then a silken rustling sound, a cool odor, pungent, new, mint; Mallory Brook.

The first sight of crystal water purling over warm-hued pebbles, and foaming around dark-hued stones, struck through and through the city child's heart, and made chan- nels there through which all after beauty, seen, would find room to pass. The pain of the inexpressible was there, too; the child's first sense of the inarticulate.

Paddling in it would not do; it was soon evident that this stirred up murk and the loose debris under shelving stones. The confluence of the ripples was broken, too, around ankles and over toes that the cold water soon troubled, for the stream was not far from its rocky source.

Crouched on a warm stone, one could touch the ripples with a fern or twig, or bit of mint. Her vast ignorance of what it was that formed the diapason of her bliss had no power then to puzzle the child, nor hinder visual emotion, which was as supreme perhaps at that moment as it ever would be. Long afterwards, she knew more about it; knew why it was that a child who wanted all there was of sensuous joy, and all at once, should have apprehended with uncon- scious directness a brook's high place in created things; a portion of one of the indispensable elements close to its virgin spring and just emerged toward the sun; the best of

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Childhood and First Imp kiss ions

earth'i distilled offerings, under the rayi of the source of life.

Children easily accept a miracle, even when it is only beauty, and have DO sense of being 'marked for life' by it. That knowledge comes later, when memory records and feels again the charming details. It is a miracle that some- thing as invisible and pure as atmosphere should have conduct, action, so much more actual and present than air, to our faculties. Unseeable clarity, that we have known as water, have drunk in hot thirst, and bathed in in ignoble tubs, now is ours without benefit of clergy. It ripples around her fingers, as, crouching, the child presses them inches down upon the very color of the pebbles, that are strangely cold, firm, and resistant to the tender intruding substance of her palm; cool runnings are about an arm turned so much whiter below the surface. These cannot be seen, only revealed, by a film of sky reflection on a ripple's tilt sunward. But that dove's iris moves, for an impercep- tible instant only, over the yellow, bronze, and white of the brook's floor that lies between grey rocks and the fern's dip- ping. Thus heaven and its blue summer mood touches and joins in the miracle.

Clumsily, indeed, one sums up a drama where all Nature at her dearest is present, and there is soon even the pine perfume of high noon.

* * *

There are one or two adventures in this early period of the child's life which have the importance of being all but the final one; such as her narrow escape, at the age of four, from drowning in the dark waters of the cistern, beneath the kitchen floor in the old house at Washington, Connecticut. Heedless, as usual, she walked into the square of darkness, left uncovered by some careless person. She was carrying a clam-shell full of peas from the garden, gathered for the en- richment of earnestly constructed mud pies. Some one en-

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tering saw fluttering petticoats in the black abyss, and, di- rected by the stars, put down the long, hooked stick used for drawing up the rainwater by bucketfuls. Rising from her plunge, perhaps for the third time, as only her sister had seen her disappear and had rushed for help, the small ad- venturer clutched the bent pole and was drawn up and out, safe and sound. Her own memory has no record of fear; in fact, contains nothing but the square of light she saw over- head, and the black-and-gold motion of the smooth element she had disturbed. For some reason a vision of the group she had left just before her adventure still remains, also. Ladies, her aunts and cousins, are seated together under tall trees on the grass, reading aloud, as usual, and working at crochet or embroidery. There is a wide leghorn hat or two; flowing skirts of white, or pale colors, and one very smooth, dark head. The alarm, the rush for help, not needed, shall not be dwelt on. The only concern of the 'casualty' being the loss of her clam-shell.

* *

Scenes reappear, but only the clearest should be recorded. It was at about this time, and while the white clematis bloomed, that I saw death for the first time. A playmate, just my age, died suddenly. I was taken to see him, and to leave a flower beside him as he lay upon his little bed; his pale beauty noble, beyond all words, in memory. Richard's curls, fallen back from his forehead, lay upon the pillow, and wreaths of clematis, fresh, white and green, and perfumed, seemed the covering of his bed. There was sorrow, a new pain I had not known before, in my heart; but no shock, no horror, not even surprise. Absorption in the unimagined loveliness that I saw transcended every other emotion, and that is what remains. The odor of clematis never reaches me without this memory, and it is one of the ones I should most regret to have missed. Doubtless the appreciation of this beauty, in the mind of the one whose hand led me into

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Childhood and First Impressions

that not darkened room (I remember the afternoon sun came in), was the motive in leading me to receive the acco- lade of death, and beauty, at the same moment. The guard- ian was right, as seen from the result upon my conscious- ness, even in that unformed hour of my life.

***

My sixth summer was memorable from a complete change in the family environment. We turned from our native Connecticut hills from necessity, not choice, and united with a whole series, uncle, aunt, and cousins, in settling for the summer in a farmhouse in middle Pennsylvania.

I was not very happy; there was a roughness in existence I had not known before. On the way I encountered a great, hot feather bed, and a tiny basin to wash in, and there was a husk mattress at the end, and gingerbread for breakfast. The latter I approached with joy, but found not to be quite up to the level of the routine I knew. There was a screaming baby in the group, and two boys older and younger than myself. Of one of these I stood in terrible fear; the other was a spoiled darling with long golden hair. I suspect that a proud little girl was rather envious of the charms of this pretty child who was the pet of the household. But all this is dim, fortunately, in recollection. It has become only general noise and turmoil. What clearly remains is full of pleasure.

The farmhouse stood on a side hill, its rear and barns look- ing down on a pretty valley, where a small river, called a creek, passed through wood and meadow. A long footbridge crossed it where it was broad and shallow, and lower down it narrowed into a dark deep pool among evergreens, where the grown-ups, or a big companionless boy, might bathe. This was a dismal spot to me. The bottom could not be seen, and contained all sorts of probable horrors, such as slime, old roots and creepers, and what not — even eels, perhaps.

The house, which was of unfinished stone and partly whitewashed, had the pleasantest verandah facing the slope

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upward of the orchard. The porch, which ran the length of the house, was really a grape-arbor, over which spread an old vine, where, later, purple clusters hung. It had a brick floor, often dappled with leafy shadow and light. Here the elders sat with their work, although one or two of them, who had hearts for child adventure, were generally with us at our favorite playground, the creek. Above the bridge we could bathe, and the strong and fearful boy was too busy to be alarming.

But in all this there is only one very vivid recollection. Perhaps, for a wonder, I was alone with the aunt who al- ways had her sketch-book and pencil with her. Strangely enough, though the scene before me was to bewitch memory for a lifetime, I had no wish to draw it.

Looking up the stream, the little river was quiet, almost noiseless, and, unusual in an American landscape, its banks and stretches, as far as one could see, were lawns of vivid green; a grassy pasture, kept close by grazing creatures of the farm. Great trees, without undergrowth, threw broad delicious shadows, between which long shafts of summer sunshine lay upon the grass, and down the greensward walked solemnly a long line of snowy geese, bending necks here and there, spreading wings, or lowering yellow bills to taste the grass. From shadow, through streams of light, they came. It was my first conscious perception of the beauty of white plumage moving in a setting which had the undisturbed perfection of a classic pastoral. I knew nothing, probably thought nothing; I am sure said nothing; I was nought but an unsullied page that was constituted to hold unfaded the scene impressed upon it by the same hand that made the image. Later there accompanied this memory, and became part of it, the incomparable language of the Twenty-Third Psalm:

'Thou makest me to lie down in green pastures; Thou leadest me beside the still waters.'

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Childhood and First Impressions

And since I have known whence I came by birth, it does not seem Strange that my infant SOU] should have suddenly Ixcn at home in a scene where Nature has made use of a few creatures as her craftsmen, in forming a place lit for the gods to rest or wander in, or pursue their careless joy.

Perhaps the stability of memory is always due to the in- fluence of atavism, upon the subconscious mind. What we have come from — which is what we fundamentally arc — revives suddenly, under the stimulus of a remote, germinal, ancestral urge, recognized and desired as it appears unsum- moned, in the unlike present; and so it passes into the cruci- ble of performing energy, as the closest, strongest ally of creative impulse; in fact, the guardian and inspirer of our Taste. Taste that in its indomitable demands has nothing in common with the ready-made whimsicality dictated by weariness and satiety.

*

The aunt, doubtless thinking of her unfinished sketch and her vagarious niece, trudged up the dusty hill to the farm- house, the noisy family, and dinner, neither of them aware that anything had happened during their quiet morning. The child, perhaps, lagged behind to pick and peel a mullen pod, and had to be called and hurried on. She hated the dusty road that burned her feet, hated the roadside dust on leaf and fern. At all events, the fecund morning passed un- noticed. Well is it that most really important matters are un- observed at their advent, that no ticker-tape is thrown upon the breeze, nor are reporters present, when a seed falls into a furrow that will bear the richest corn in the crop, or the small hard vessel drops to earth with the grandest of oaks in its vitals.

*

* *

For the next few years very few indelible impressions of beauty, or indeed of anything, are to be recorded. The child

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could read now, for her own pleasure; did not like fairy stories, nor the abridged edition of the 'Arabian Nights,5 which was bestowed upon her and was expected to entrance her. 'Mother Goose,' with a few crude illustrations, was her secret favorite; perhaps from its rich assimilation of inti- macy, with unsoundable mystery. She loved to sit upon the stairs in the city house, on the first flight from the lower hall, at the hour just before the gas was lighted. She exactly fitted the stair-lifts at this time, her feet on one and her back against another. The front door and the hall table could be seen and a glimpse of the parlor — all quiet, no one about. But it was not lonely, for voices on the second floor were audible, grandmother and aunts finishing their evening toilet. Mysterious it was on the stairs without being fear- some, and here the child said over to herself Tommy Tucker, and enjoyed the leap from the problem of cutting white bread and butter, so comfortable and pleasing, to the strange and sudden problem of something called a wife. She knew all the ageless lines by heart, and tasted and savored each in turn.

Another keenly relished moment was that when she could stand by her grandmother's toilet-table and watch the pro- cess of dressing. This procedure had really something in it akin to the quiet order, and Nature's exquisite way of 'finish- ing,' that had appeared in the valley at Eschelman's. She, of course, was only present at the closing scenes of the drama. But she knew the then important garment, that, in the in- stance before her, depended alone for its charm on the finest of linen and needlework; it had not other decoration. Grandma's stockings were the whitest — in summer called 'open-work' ; her slippers the blackest. Dresses were various in form, and never colored, and are unremembered; but the hair, fine and abundant, was brushed and patted to satin smoothness. The last touch, a small lace cap, being care- fully adjusted, was secured by two gold pins whose points never came through nor appeared. The child's idea was

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•I

THE BOOK OF WOLVES Drawing by C. Beaux

Childhood and First Impressions that the pins entered the dear head itself, and that Duly the

calm and courage ofher gentle divinity could have sustained

BUCh torture with a smile. She would have died rather than question this, and the goddess never knew of this tribute to a more than mortal fortitude.

***

It was at or near this time that the family moved to West Philadelphia. The house was not a 'country' house, but it had a garden, or what could become one, and there were at that time outlying fields, a spring-house, a tiny stream, and a few large trees. There was a hillside, with a small farmhouse at the top, and on the slope a fallen apple tree, not too derelict to prevent its producing in the spring a full harvest of blossoms, which could be climbed in, sat in, and gathered, with perfect freedom and happiness. A bed of violets spread beneath it, which gave the ultimate touch of ecstasy to a city-bred child. But the constant and devouring interest that life developed in these and the next few years was in the existence and persons of dolls. Privately there were two families, her sister's and her own. Husbands were absent on business, but often and solicitously mentioned in family letters that passed between the sisters on rainy days. The ladies, earnest mothers of three children apiece, were Mrs. Henry Franklin and Mrs. Charles Wood. Every available moment of the day was given to maternal duties.

Mrs. Wood's family was younger than their cousins, which was natural, and she was the mother of the only infant in long clothes. Providing for the needs of these children; con- cocting doses in bottles for their frequent illnesses; making their dresses, and full line of underclothes; hemming and marking dozens of miniature towels, napkins, and bed linen — certainly developed real skill with the needle which was already well advanced. Mrs. Franklin possessed a bureau and bed. There was a cradle for the baby, but sleeping ac- commodation was limited, and 'tucking in' almost impos-

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sible. A constant source of anxiety during the winter months was the sense, the certainty, that the children were not warm in their beds. The third story of a not very well-heated house was the scene of these domestic crises. The dolls' beds and the cradle were in our room, and many a bitter night have I risen from my sweet warm nest and my sister's dear proxim- ity, to gather up two of the least protected, as any mother would, and go to sleep clasping their icy china heads to my breast.

I see 'Mrs. Wood,' even in her earlier years, as both a real- ist and perfectionist, pursued by an uncompromising pas- sion for 'carrying through.' Perhaps it was the perception of what might be the value of this characteristic in the child's future that made her elders and guardians so indulgent of this intense preoccupation. Her sister's conviction was less strong, perhaps on account of her superior age. She had zest, but there was a lurking sense that it was only a game after all, which damped the energy of her attention to de- tails; or did some fairy whisper that she was to brood, some day, over living children?

As there has thus far seemed to be one aspect only, and that a happy one, in this story of infantile years, I feel called on as a truthful historian to record the only really ugly epi- sode in the child's life. A tardy justice calls for it, also, but the narrative shall be short.

An uncle, the reformer mentioned some way back as hav- ing made no effort to assist his parents in trouble, made a visit to his family, and when he inquired for his nieces, who had long since retired, and wished to have a look at them sleeping, he was permitted to do so, and was escorted up- stairs by a young and mischievously inclined brother.

When the uncles entered and turned on the light, the scene before them produced an effect quite the opposite of what a civilized soul should feel. A redresser of wrongs done

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Childhood and First Impressions

to humanity, that is, to the 'working1 classes, and a (aide , youth, thought it was humorous to drag all the dolls from

their beds and hang them by legs, arms, and hands to gas fixture, door handles, and any exposed point. The night was bitter cold, and when the girls awoke in the early morn- ing, the shadowy forms hanging about (he room proclaimed the outrage. Here a veil must be drawn. Suffice it to say that there were neither tears nor cries. The effect was far- reaching. The nieces went down to the breakfast-table silent, and refusing to salute or to notice their visiting rela- tives, who were quite ready to be forgiven. They never for- got to shrink from the reformer when he appeared as a guest. His mother had had a severe reproof for both her sons who wished to conciliate, and it is not going too far to say that one of the mothers has since then never really trusted the ethical principles of professional philanthropists.

* * *

In spite of the early and intense development of the ma- ternal instinct, the education of the child went on. Although the aunt (with the sketch-book) was devoting all her energy to giving music lessons, and returned from long courses to in- convenient places with dripping skirts and wet gaiters, she had time, not only to correct French exercises and hear French read aloud, and to instruct in history, but she also put in thousands of fine stitches in delicate cambric, that her youngest niece might be suitably arrayed. When the loveliest of these garments was outgrown and letting-out of tucks would no longer suffice, it was a great grief to the child, who can remember and cherish the memory of the dress's beauty, and the sweetness of the act that produced it, in combination.

The grandmother's part, as the years passed, wras to read aloud while work went on. She was the house's head and director, and took no part in actual lessons, nor in needle- work, except to examine and criticize.

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Until my fourteenth year I had no schooling outside the home circle. I was slow to learn, or to remember what was dealt to me through channels unmixed with some sort of 'aesthetic' (for lack of a better word) appeal. I learned, by heart, long portions of both the Old and the New Testa- ment, revelling in such passages as Jacob's address to his sons: many of the Psalms, the 'As the hart panteth' being my favorite; also the Twenty-Third before alluded to; the impassioned appeal of Isaiah; the Song of Solomon; and in the New Testament, the visit to Emmaus, and the last chapters of Revelation. There was less eloquence in the Shorter Catechism, which I was expected to learn by heart, and in which I was pretty nearly letter perfect, but the English language at the time it was produced has been the model for the centuries since, and moved me profoundly even when I did not exactly apprehend the doctrines set forth. Some of the rhythmic phrases sound now in my ears, and their 'tempo' is slow and measured, like the theme in a choral.

Lighter excursions in poetry were Scott's poems, the poetry of Thomas Hood, and of course Longfellow. The 'Pilgrim's Progress' was read aloud, and the opening lines charmed me so that I used to steal away to con them over to myself. I had a common, abridged copy of 'Robinson Crusoe,' and knew later, when the real one fell into my hands, why I had not relished the book more.

* * *

Our house had a third story, which had all the virtue of an attic, as no one passed through or beyond it. It was auto- matically private. Dim sounds came up from below. The piano, flights down, was like smooth waves under a light pinnace. There was no harsh voice in the house, so that the mingled tones and often laughter that rose from downstairs were only agreeable.

I often ask myself, when I glance up at the mountainous

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Childhood and First IlfPRESSIONI

perforated Cubes Of Park Avenue, how children arc raised

without a third story. How can an apartment, however spacious, be anything but promiscuous? Children, as indi- viduals, need privacy Tar more than grown people, and it

should be automatic. It should not be obviously pro- vided, still less should they be sent to it. Clumsy methods, where delicate tentacles shrink and are folded away to atrophy.

The third story of a semi-country house is a place free from jar or intrusion. The upper hall was the very home of silence, and, as for the guest-room at its far end, a heart stung by supposed injustice, or wounded by misunderstand- ing, might find place for alleviating recollections in its deep armchair, and the mere sight of the white bed, the Marseilles quilt, and the full dimity valance were comforting. The fact that the room was not lived in and belonged to no one, not even myself, made it as distant as a cave in the hills, yet withal sweet with protection and homeliness.

But beside the soothing elements of the place, there were shelves, where books, outgrown by progressive minds or 'read to pieces,' rubbed shoulders with a little light Victorian fiction for the sleepless guest, and a few standards. Here I discovered a volume bound in brown cloth — 'The Cabinet Edition of Classic Tales.' Its contents were ample, being printed in two columns in the smallest type. In it I found 'Gulliver's Travels,' 'The Sorrows of Werther,' and the 'Castle of Otranto.' These were my favorites. The 'Senti- mental Journey' and 'Theodosius and Constantia,' I looked into, but they were too mature for the taste of a girl of my age. Children's minds are, I believe, rarely 'poisoned' by browsing undirected among grown-up books. What they do not understand they glide over, and seldom ask ques- tions about books they have discovered themselves. If their private researches have been in real literature by chance, which they may be incapable of grasping, they will still, if they are sensitive, get the flavor, the aroma, of certain sent-

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ences that will throw an armature around their tender taste, which will guard it from the attraction of poorer stuff and make arid for them books of shallow import and clumsy workmanship.

Ill

EDUCATION

IN an attempt to gather and observe the formative influ- ences in the life of any child, exact sequence is not worth attention. All that this record holds occurred before the age of fourteen, when, although she was to remain more or less a child to the end of her days, the one in question mourned deeply on her fourteenth birthday that her childhood was over.

One of the aunts, the youngest, the one with the sleek brown head and long, shy, dark eyes, had married a Phila- delphian who was of the old school; an engineer by profes- sion, who had served on McClellan's staff during the Civil War. My aunt had assisted in my education, and my uncle was to be, after my grandmother, the strongest and most beneficent influence in my life. I know that my Aunt Emily's contribution to my bringing up had several channels. My lessons, with her, took place in the dining-room, rather a gloomy spot by day, on winter mornings, and we sat at either end of the green-felt-covered table. I am sure she labored over the sums and geography we bent over, but what remains consciously of these hours are the periods de- voted to dictation. The use of the pen did not trouble me. Spelling was not one of my difficulties, and the appearance of new words, and of phrases far from anything I could have dreamed of, were a delight. Above all, and the real source of the living word enduring in this episode, was the choice of the material used.

How had her Puritan ancestors managed to bequeath to my instructress the really elfin slant of her humor, the soft droop of her head, and her almost whispered sallies, that were followed by the shouts of the family? It must have been

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something of this strain that caused her to choose from our library, for the hour of dictation she was to offer to her young niece, Heine's 'Pictures of Travel.' A translation, of course, it was a green cloth volume much used, and, as the sentences clearly and softly issued from her curving lips, the child before her passed far away from the chill dining-room and irksome tasks.

Around her was warm sunshine and above her heaven's loveliest blue, in a glamorous land that her imagination seemed to actually move in, as the words, slowly pronounced, gave her time to conceive the reality. But infinitely more relished were the intimate presentments of sensation and emotion, always exquisitely balanced, and graced, by the only witty German. She knew nothing of style, or penetra- tion, and form without emphasis, but the paragraphs glided in upon her welcoming consciousness and remained.

Chapter IV of 'Italy,' beginning, 'While the sun gleamed ever lordlier and lovelier from heaven,' and the next, 'As I drew aside the green silk curtain, which covered the entrance to the Cathedral,' etc., had even a more subtle flavor. There were other portions, one about 'The little Veronica,' which charmed me most of all. I am sure that I took dicta- tion from many other sources, but certainly these had less penetrating power, for I remember none of them.

The same sleek head and wily humor took part in my in- struction as a beginner in music.

* *

Music, in our house, was of capital importance. Of three grown-up members of our family, one was a finished artist; another, the uncle mentioned above, was not a brilliant per- former. He was a learned musician and explorer in new fields, with full veneration and constant study of the old masters. His wife, my youngest aunt, was able and ready to take her place in a duet when needed, and when, at odd moments, when no one else was at the piano, her hands

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Education Stole OVCT the keys, I always stopped to listen, for always

some of her fluent charm swept into the chords,

Being, of course, introduced to music very early, and given my opportunity, I was her pupil. I practised dutifully and learned to play 'The Happy Farmer,' and its like, w lien alone; but I was bitterly afraid of the standards of those who might not help hearing me, upstairs, and if either of them was present, all connection between hand and spirit ceased.

They tried to encourage me, but I did not like my play- ing, not being accustomed to mediocrity, or worse, and had an instinctive feeling that I should never admire it. I hated blundering, and did not see that it would ever be a satisfac- tion to try to convey my feelings crudely.

Of course, I did not know what the trouble was, but when at the age of eleven it was decided that there was not enough of the essential gift to make it best to devote me to it, I was not sorry. There was no trifling on our piano; there were too many sensitive ears about; and also it would never have occurred to me to drum on the piano. It was sacred. It was a privilege, and often mine, to dust it carefully, with its especial silk handkerchief. I crawled about under it, knowing every line of the pedals, and the rest of the fine light wood of its under side.

In fact, I was often crouched beneath it when some one was playing, and loved the muffled, thunderous sound that flowed about me like a cataract. The piano was a Chicker- ing grand of a souche now unfashionable, but immensely esteemed in its day. Years afterward my uncle changed it for what became a succession of later makers' models that he esteemed for one reason or another, and the really aged instrument had to retire. I fear that there are no pastures where fine old pianos can be turned out to finish a beautiful life in comfort, like old horses who have been family pets. It was rosewood with lines, but no carving. When later I saw a black glistening instrument, with elaborate and bunchy carved legs, I was shocked, and never knew a rack

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that compared in elegance with the fine straight lines of ours.

* * *

So much for the sanctuary. Its oracular demonstration established my taste. In our house there was music every evening, generally duets, when my uncle was at home. If not, the chief artist put down her embroidery early in the evening and sat down to the piano for as long as she wished.

But there were unwritten, and really unspoken, rules. The musician must never be asked to play, nor might any given piece be asked for, and in the long narrow 'parlor,5 where the piano occupied the whole end of the room, there must be silence. In the adjoining room, the family in general sat with open doors. But a child might lie all the evening, face downward, on the parlor sofa, or on the rug, or under the piano; a beating heart makes no noise; and I dare say the musicians had some idea when they rose that something equivalent to instruction had been going on in the tousled head on the sofa pillow.

My uncle brought home all the new music, and as they, the chief artists, were consummate sight-readers, there was no jar from stumbling, and no repetition, except of the whole piece. There was little of what could be called practising, though they once worked over the Jupiter symphony for a whole winter, and my uncle was sometimes, for months, at grips with certain compositions he could not master, techni- cally. He played with superb tone, conception, and feeling, but could never reach my aunt's virtuosity in the left hand. One of my choicest memories is of warm mornings in spring, when, with open glass doors upon the side verandah and little garden, we women-folk noiselessly busy with the breakfast silver and glass, passing in and out, could do so to the rhythmic passion of the Chopin Polonaise, Op. 53, which my uncle was drawing from the very vitals of the piano. Over and over the bass octaves rolled, under never-

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E D IT C A TION

satisfied fingers, until, between the morning moment, al- ways pregnant for me, the tides of spring in my veins, and the vast billows of romantic rhythm and sonority, my small heart seemed actually to experience an ecstatic- growth, and

hounded in my breast. Years afterwards, when I w.i the accepted age for romance, and was having my share, some one played the same music in my hearing with what seemed a prophetic significance and deep note of warning.

*

* *

Was it because it was too good, too far out of my reach, that I never could throw myself into actual participation in an art which was such a necessary part of my life? I was to participate, but as a communicant only. I was never to serve at the altar. In 'Indian Summer,' Emily Dickinson has spoken for me. How often she has done so

Oh, sacrament of summer days, Oh, last communion in the haze, Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake,

Thy consecrated bread to break,

Taste thine immortal wine.

*

* *

But, although I was to do nothing in instrumental music, other doors were open. I had as much voice as the average child, and could be counted on for surety of ear and for time and rhythm. My sister and I always did close harmony (we did not know its name), and wove about between soprano and alto, while we were at wrork, at anything but lessons. Somewhat before this, however, when I was nine, some- thing quite ambitious wras undertaken. At this time the uncle and aunt mentioned above were living near an 'iron wrorks,' called Freedom, in central Pennsylvania, of which

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he had charge. My sister and I spent the winter there with them, in a long, interesting old house, in a big abandoned garden. A rough shaly mountain rose at one side, and at its feet ran a gruff sort of river, unapproachably guarded by thick alders, and, as an unwelcoming meadow came first, the stream had little part in our lives. The house was charm- ing, though shabby. It was spacious, and just enough mys- terious, and it seemed the sun had full entry everywhere and made up for rather scanty furniture.

We had lessons every morning. There were no neighbors, and no visitors, except an occasional official caller on my uncle.

There was only a square piano, which was much in use, and during several long absences of my uncle, when my aunt, my sister, and myself were entirely alone, she organ- ized and directed a surprise for him. We learned, in fact, to do such parts of Mendelssohn's 'Elijah,' as could be per- formed for home consumption only, by three voices, so- prano, contralto, and tenor, which part was taken by my aunt, who led, and played the piano accompaniment. Of course, my little voice was soprano, and my sister took the contralto parts. Needless to say, we did not perform the solos, though we were familiar with them. I suppose I never knew again a rapture more moving than that which I felt in the tenor solo, Tf with all your hearts.' I knew all the so- prano parts, except the solos. We did the Terzetto , of course; and cO rest in the Lord' in unison, the quartette, 'Cast thy burden,' without the bass, and could sing them correctly with some shading and without strain.

Later, at home, and with the assistance of tenor and bass, we did choruses, arranged for eight voices, from other oratorios; the entrances and weavings of the parts in 'He watches over Israel,' from the 'Elijah,' again, and, apart from its solemn beauty, no country dance or cotillion could have been more relished. When I was seventeen or eighteen, we were singing English madrigals and German quartettes

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Education

with our boy friends, and ducts, and even had ringing les- sons, though we were never expected to become soloists. Sunday evening hymns had always been part of the home

ritual. My uncle Was deeply interested in church music,

and gave His sen-ices as organist to our suburban church. He compiled a hymn-book, rearranging much of the music. A whole shelf in our musical library was devoted to hymn

literature, as my uncle drew much of the material for his book from the English school of cathedral music.

*

Long before it was discovered that I had more proficiency with a pencil than I had on the piano, I accompanied my aunts on visits to what picture galleries and special exhibi- tions there were.

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was at that time quite far downtown, in a dark old building. Memory re- tains only one impression of our visit there. While my aunts were wandering and examining, I fell behind, 'intrigued,' as they say now, by an enormous oil painting which hung over a descending stairway. A railing, or balustrade, prevented visitors from plunging downstairs from the gallery floor, but also prevented guests of my size from adequately viewing the picture. No one was near to see, and I lay down with my head on the floor and 'got' the picture very well from between the posts of the railing. The huge canvas depicted three life-size horses in full career, ridden by enigmatical personages; cloud and flame surrounded; prostrate and sup- pliant figures filled the foreground. The foremost steed was white, with flowing mane and tail, and wras rearing in the pride of conquest. The title of the picture was 'Death on the Pale Horse/ by Benjamin West. I knew my Book of Revela- tion, so it was only an illustration, to me, and in spite of foaming bit and stretched nostrils of Arabian flexibility, not a very impressive one. Still I remained curiously gazing until I was found and put upon my feet.

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Children register their impressions with astounding exact- ness, but they seldom manifest, or remember, surprise or astonishment. To them one novelty is no more wonderful than another, and lighting the gas quite as much of a mira- cle as Aladdin's carpet, so there is no registered sensation, though a perfect recollection, of the first painting I con- sciously observed.

***

It must have been several years after this that a private collection was opened in Philadelphia to privileged persons on certain days. Mr. William G. Gibson was the fortunate and generous owner, and my uncle had a card for the gal- lery, which was in the Gibson house.

Mr. Gibson had progressed beyond, and no doubt be- lieved that he had improved on, the old red brick and marble that, where it remains from the eighteenth century, is the only architectural glory of Philadelphia, now. His new house was on Walnut Street, and people knew no more what to think of it than they do now of 'Tart moderne* in furniture.

The facade of the four-story 'residence' was of grey gran- ite, in large blocks. The steps and entrance were massive, and were of the same stone, brilliantly polished. Over the front door was a portico of elephantine lines and Egyptian suggestion. As the house faced north, all this stood in shadow, and was of a gloom that would have befitted a mausoleum or a prison. As a witty French critic has said, 'Art changes; it does not progress'; and this house, built by a collector of works of art, is a forcible supporter of the theory.

I was first taken to the gallery on a cold winter day. After our long bleak journey in the horse-car, the entrance, and the door opened by a solemn servant, were not very hopeful; but once inside, at the end of a dark hall shone Paradise itself. Light filtered through immense pale green fronds of

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Education

lofty ferns. Here were perfumes of hidden flowers and moist earth; the voice of a bird; delicious warmth; summer.

I had IICVCT dreamed of a conservatory before, and my ddight was unmixed with knowledge of a furnace and steam pipes. But, far more than even this, there were a number of small galleries opening from it where the pictures hung. The lighting, all daylight from above, was soft and equal, and showed every touch of color and value at its best.

Very few of the pictures were large, and all could be easily seen. Of course, I knew nothing of these virtues of pres- entation; I knew nothing but my own happiness. I must have been taken several times to the gallery, for I had my fa- vorites and was unembarrassed by the difference of schools. The pictures were all as 'modern,' or nearly so, as the front entrance of the house, only Art, in her wilful way, had not answered when evoked for it, and had turned in many dif- fering directions indoors.

My favorites were, first of all, a head of a young man, by Couture. It hung rather high, but this suited the design of the head, which had been seen from below. The rich model- ling — 'found' as the French say with learned accuracy — had been mixed with the eye's brooding imagination; the beauty of the head itself, in which no choice line had been missed by the artist; the ripe, fruity quality of the very sub- stance of the material that had conveyed all this were felt with awful joy and ignorance, the former of which has never changed or diminished.

The 'Angelus' itself was there, with less of the sensuous in its purple-grey and black, and, to my ignorance, this re- duced its power, for, as to the subject, no one explained to me that there was a kind of prayer that could be uttered publicly, in a wide field, by two people facing each other. Of course, the picture had a central position, where its ro- mantic dignity made the paintings near it look common. This I dumbly felt. The idea of the French peasant and his life, I met first here. Utterly unknown before, I saw it with

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a sort of wondering recognition, as of something appearing dimly, out of great distance. The pink and polished sweet- ness of the peasants of Bouguereau and Merle had the appeal of dimpled flesh, limpid eyes, and dewy lips, and the much more realized costume touched my curious eye with some- thing of the same atavistic mystery of when and how and 'Where hast thou stayed so long?'

I little knew why I liked the great tree by Courbet, stand- ing alone in a smallish canvas, and the only object there, but it is one of the pictures most vividly remembered.

On one wall bloomed in foamy splendor Cabanel's 'Birth of Venus.5 I am not sure that it was not opposite the 'Angelus.' I can remember only a sense of unfamiliarity. It was not one of my friends among the pictures. It was some one else's friend, but what child's eye is not pleased by tur- quoise and cream?

If I did aught but gaze, if I pondered at all, it was before the Boldini and the Fortuny that I stood longest and puzzled most. The Boldini was a small picture. A young lady walked on a summer day, in France, when the air was fresh and pure. French clouds I did not know, but they seemed somehow good, marshalled overhead. There were a few strange-looking small trees, of a bluish-green color, un- familiar to me. But the mystery of the painting was quite another thing. It is sometimes difficult to separate memory from later knowledge, but I am still thrilled by the recollec- tion of those fresh, pure strokes, mixed with morning light, the pearly light of France, strokes so enigmatical when examined, so wrought with whim and fantasy, yet so sure, with the firmness of reality when one walked away. T can- not understand, I love,' I would have thought, if I had known my Tennyson. The small Boldini and I were more than friends, but it must be confessed here that it is the only Boldini I ever really loved.

Then there was the Fortuny, a little canvas in a wide black frame, which was much more puzzling, and even

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more magical, though it had do beauty except in the making of a chicken-fight, in a small green patio, a solved problem

in art.

*

There were handsome compositions in the collection by Gerdme, Yibert, Madrazzo. By the latter, a pretty Spanish girl at a window. In all such pictures as these I plunged at once into the story, of course, and above all into the aspect of life that they explained, without compromise. I found much more in the gallery than painting. I had my first taste of foreign ways, places, light, palaces, churches, gardens, and ceremonies and people of the past, or moving in the scene and atmosphere of old Europe. My embryonic sense took hold, once for all, of something that was mine, and that nothing should cheat me of some day; but I had no con- scious reservations in past or present, and 'time to go' was the only interference of which I was aware.

How could I dream of being an artist? I never did. I was too much occupied, and I did not see 'myself as having any possible relation or participation in what I saw around me.

This gallery was my outstanding opportunity, but there was also the sporadic exhibition of 'important' single works, which, placed alone in a darkened room under a strong light, might be seriously viewed by art-lovers for whom were arranged chairs in shadow. Under such circumstances I saw Bierstadt's 'Rocky Mountains,' a monumental example of German, or Swiss, faith and energy. Indeed, I highly honor the artist's pursuit of place and proper distance, across the wide valley, where rivers, forests, fields, and 'laboring wains' maintained their dignified existence, until the eye reached (though it did this first, by the way) the snowy peaks and perilous crevasses of the backbone of our country.

I was quite cool about the picture, but my eye enjoyed travelling from one natural object to another, over cascade and precipice. Where is the picture now? Its green was

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fresh then and its shadows no darker than the unrelated truth. Now, what color it had must have sickened and per- ished in a brown-grey limbo, although its excellent drawing and well-arranged masses may have embalmed it in a dig- nity, and even fearsomeness, and almost poetry, it never had before.

* *

Damascus is said to be no hotter than Philadelphia in summer, and as our house stood rather low, with a hill in front of it, this was probably true for it. Generally the family scattered to any possible refuge during July and August, but I remember rather pleasantly one year, when my grandmother, my sister, and myself went into summer quarters and remained. The garden and side porch were shaded in the afternoon, and in our thinnest of summer garb did very well, for us. The morning hours were intolerable out-of-doors. In the house there was cool semi-darkness of shuttered windows, India matting on the floors and linen- covered furniture; and my grandmother in her 'linen- cambric' dress would have freshened any environment. She was well aware that an occupation must be devised that could be combined with entertainment. She brought down from the storeroom a pile of immense, slightly worn linen sheets. My task was to restore them. I was to cut out weak places and put in enormous patches. The most worn of the sheets were to be cut up for this, choosing the strongest parts. The sheet in hand was spread upon the floor, and I crawled about on it, cutting out and laying on the patch, with per- fect precision, and the neatest stitches. There were no crooked corners — all was done by the thread. The prepa- ration needed for this, the skill to be expended, the delicious cool fabric which the needle seemed to rejoice to enter — all these things had a quality for me that gave them a place with other pleasures in memory, but whether the hours would have flown as they did, without my grandmother's

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CECILIA KENT LEAVITT Drawing by her granddaughter, C. Beaux

E 1) U CATION

contribution aa a stimulant, I cannot say. She gave all her

mornings to this, In our house much had to be done in the family that, in easier circumstances, would have been put

out or done by servants. These tasks were always accom- panied by loud reading, which for us eliminated all of the

monotony and much of the fatigue. On this occasion my grandmother chose an American novel, 'The Gayworthys/ She probably chose it first because the scene was laid in a village that might have been our beloved Washington, Connecticut. The characters resembled, remotely, people WC knew. If we could not go to our dear Connecticut hills, we might (never seeing the book, which was put away be- tween-whiles) have them with us fresh and lovely during hot mornings in Spruce Street. This was my first novel (to be more than peeped into). I was eleven at this time. The interest and expansion I found in it were devouring, and oc- cupied my thoughts much of the time when the precious volume was closed and put away. My grandmother had never heard the dictum of Anatole France, 'Pas d'emphase^ but she illustrated the maxim in her reading.

In her earliest girlhood she had assisted one of her older brothers, Aratus Kent, in his theological studies. The young man was to become a pioneer missionary in remote Illinois, and had a serious handicap in very inferior eyesight. His young sister, Cecilia, was wont to read aloud to him many hours a day, I know not from what sources of Philosophy and 'Divinity.' Clarity, and just the right amount of delib- eration, were needed for this, and the sister never forgot her training. Her reading was so little personal that one's own interpretation or conception of the drama or scene described always found room for harmonious development and reali- zation, unencumbered by any claim from the reader, who had no personal tricks of accent or pronunciation; no man- nerisms.

A description by negatives, however, can give no idea of the voice or of the phrasing so unconsciously practised. She

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would have said, T know no other way,' and for her hearers, engaged in patching and perhaps furniture polishing (my sister could not use her eyes for sewing), she knew just when the moment had come for a break, and one would be sent flying on some errand downstairs or up.

Furniture polishing — a great deal of it was done in our house, and not by servants, and of course never without the accompanying mental stimulant. There was quite a little of the old waxed furniture in the house, and once a year these pieces, generally table-tops or the fronts of large, deep bu- reau drawers, had to be treated. This was done by the use of a hard lump of beeswax about the size of one's fist. The lump was irregular in shape, and one could only rub it on in streaks and patches. Having, so to speak, 'written' the wax pretty generally over the table-top or bureau, one took a strong, short-bristled brush, somewhat like a scrubbing- brush and proceeded to exercise it strengthily upon the surface. This was done until the wax, warmed by friction, was perfectly distributed over the whole — no streaks visi- ble. Then came rubbing with a soft old linen cloth, until, final test, a finger-mark would not show upon the wood. The result was not a shining sparkle, which would have been thought vulgar, but a soft, delicious patina the hand loved to linger upon, and a profound reenforcement, rich and sombre, of the color of the wood.

How could a child with a natural penchant for textures help developing into an individual to whom liquid dressings, artificial silk, and impure linen were anathema, and who found that touch was a close second to eye in the apprecia- tion of plastic art?

* * *

I was now a nondescript girl of thirteen, well-grown, amenable, and with energies too deep for evidence as yet. I was, in fact, languid, but my guardians saw to it that I did not waste my time. I felt unoccupied. Secretly I wrote

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Education verses, and kept a journal, long since disposed of. I had

perfectly straight and very thick light brown hair, my

father's fair complexion, and, people were foolish enough to tell me, his eyes.

My instructress in drawing, though T have no recollection of further work with the Harding studies, used to brush my hair for more than an hour a day. The brush used freely and vigorous patting were an effort toward the much-de- sired shiny smoothness that in default of curls was consid- ered the only alternative, and it was then braided in two tight substantial plaits upon my shoulders.

There is one more short halt to be made before closing the door on childhood.

My aunt, the chief musician, was also a painter of flowers in water-colors. She also designed the patterns for her em- broidery and had been present with her sketch-book at Eschelman's and our other summer sojournings.

She returned from town one day with a small package of lithographs, drawings by the English artist, Harding. They were in outline only and were the simplest form of present- ment of a small house and tree, careful studies of leafy boughs, stones with a neighbor weed, or plantain drawn with fond attention to every curve and curl of large leaves.

I was entirely ready to undertake what was suggested, that I should try to copy one of them. Harding was a true artist. Every touch had quality and charm. Selected con- tent and simplicity were predominant. I did not think of the Couture, but the little studies had the same spirit, full of grace and truth. But my dear aunt had not thought of introducing me at a lithographing establishment. She had carefully selected the models; I had a well-sharpened, hard lead pencil, and a nice sheet of fine white drawing-paper, a rubber, and a penknife. How good it all looked. I took a deep breath, and began to find, by dots and almost invisi- ble lines, the proportions of the little hut, the size of the tree, etc. All very well so far, but I began to see, as I continued,

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that there was something about the soft black broken line of the model that my lead pencil would not produce. I tried to exactly imitate the breaks; no good. Nevertheless, I per- severed. Frequent approval came from my instructress leaning over me. The house was exactly the right size; the walls upright, and the drawing was in exactly the right place on the paper. The joyless adventure grew pale, monotonous; hard and hairy, at the same time. I wondered why my touches had no beginning or end. What was the matter? With my usual reticence, I did not ask. I was told that it was quite good, and that I might do another one to- morrow; but I remained alive to this early disappointment for the rest of my life.

Later I was to know more of lithography.

* * *

Home education continued for me until I was fourteen, when it was thought best to send me to the school in town; that is, in Philadelphia, where my sister had preceded me. The school chosen was considered the best and was cer- tainly the most exclusive school in Philadelphia.

It was by no means an Institution or Academy. The principals were Miss Lyman and Miss Charlotte Lyman, of the pure New England strain of that family. Miss Lyman was a queen, benignant and charming, who held the school in the hollow of her small, plump white hand. She had a rich, deep voice, which she never had to raise. Her astonish- ment, when there was occasion for it, was conveyed by a slight but fearful gesture of raised eyebrows, and, in extreme cases, the culprit's name pronounced with resonant sug- gestiveness of judgment. She reigned over the whole school, but had emphasized contact with the big girls, some of whom might have been seventeen or eighteen years old, and whose desks were in the vicinity of her throne. Could this have been nothing but an ordinary chair, beside a small table? How I venerated the group! Ellen and Rosalie

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E D U CATION

EvailS, Rebecca Lewis, Julia Strong, Mary Whitney, Char- lotte Humphrey, Susie* Ritchie, and Lily Moore could

not err, or fail in anything. At least they never did. The

school was not graded, and I have always frit that this method was a much more intelligent and direct one, from being more Stimulating, than the usual one of classification, where the pupil is put through a course of several years, never leaving the group into which she is placed on entering, and which is regulated largely by age. There were no exam- inations in our school, but there were monthly reports, which were a serious or happy occasion, as the case might be, when set before parent or guardian.

I was placed, regardless of age, where I was thought to belong. In Latin, in which I was a beginner, and arith- metic, I was with girls younger than myself. But in French, English composition, and natural history, I ranged with the peeresses and heard their clear, able statements to Mr. Chase or M. Gardel. In other classes, I was with girls of my own age, and in history (American) was even led by Miss Lyman herself, and suffered shame unspeakable by utter loss of memory through agitation.

Two-Twenty-Six South Broad Street was one of the deep, roomy red-brick and white-marble houses for which Phila- delphia is famous. The big front parlor was Miss Lyman's throne-room. Her entrance at nine punctually was drama- tic. She was of medium stature (a really commanding person is seldom tall) and verging on embonpoint. Her step was gliding and noiseless. Her habitual dress — I never saw her in any other — was a light-grey Irish poplin, with a short train. If I had ever heard of Worth, I would have believed that no one else could have fitted it. Her head was superbly set, and she wore upon her grey hair's smooth waves a bit of fine old lace and lavender ribbon. The same lace showed below her firm plump chin, and at her wrists.

In the silence that greeted her approach, the only sound was the soft rustle of her train, until she was seated, when

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prayers were at once read to the whole school, kneeling at their desks. This ceremony was punctilious, and, without a shade of sentimentality, it was faultless in style, the rich timbre of Miss Lyman's voice lending itself perfectly to the 'office,' which might have been as conducted by a Bishop.

After this, the whole school standing, a general spelling exercise took place, the girls in close rank around the front room. There was no preparation for this, nor for the exer- cise in mental arithmetic which followed. Both were con- ducted by Miss Lyman with great promptness. Swift cur- rents of shame and exultation swept about the room. Miss Lyman's 'Next' instantly followed failure, and little time was given for reflection.

By this time every girl who had arrived in the mood of having overslept, was wide awake, and the irrepressible and recalcitrant were ready with fresh devices for tormenting the teacher who remained in charge when Miss Lyman had taken her august departure. There were many who were 'good' only when she was in the room, though the influential dignity of the older girls, who sat at their desks with low- ered eyes and open books, had a certain effect upon the in- corrigible whisperers in the back room, some of whom, in

response to the rebuke of poor Miss M , made use of the

wit they had inherited from ancestors who had mingled the same with their Madeira and terrapin.

* *

Although individually I entered very little into the sphere where Miss Charlotte Lyman moved, the dramatic contrast between the two sisters was one of the most vivid of my many impressions.

Miss Charlotte's domain was in the second story 'back- building,' the room that, if the house had been inhabited by a family, would have been the library or dining-room. Here all the younger girls in the school, some of them not more than ten years old, and wearing pinafores, spent their days,

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Education

under the firm and gentle rule of Miss ( lhaiiotte. She was a good many yean younger than Miss Lyman, a brune, with clustering jetty ringlets, arranged, however, with dignified reserve. She had the kindest of twinkling black eyes tilting

up considerably at the corners, behind high pommetUs of bright color. Her face was full of pleasant, homely curves, which were much set off by her dress, which was habitually of soft woolen material, of a rich red. I went up the back stairs to her room for Latin and algebra, in which I took my first steps with the 'little girls.' Although I did not con- tinue long enough in the school to feel the zest of these studies, and have very little memory of them beyond rules learned by heart, Miss Charlotte's room had a pleasant at- mosphere, and I was always glad to go there.

* *

The absorbing novelty of my whole school experience was greatly intensified by the fact that I witnessed nearly every phase of the school's life. Each class was a pageant to my devouring observation. Teachers, small girls and big, and the intermediates to which I belonged, offered endless new objects to my gaze. Some of the girls of about fifteen were unimaginably beautiful; some of the little ones had thin pale faces and irregular teeth, which I had never seen before. Stringy hair, or hair that had known curl-papers, were equally unknown to me, and aroused endless curiosity. Some of the larger girls had the tiniest feet ever seen, and wrore high buttoned kid boots, made to exaggerate this very much esteemed charm. Many of my mates, though there was nothing to indicate this at the time, belonged to wealthy families and lived within the sacred precinct that lay be- tween Spruce and Chestnut Streets, but to the credit of their parents be it recorded, none of these showed the slight- est sign, on their persons, of either money or fashion. We all wore woolen dresses; sometimes these were a homely plaid and were made at home by the seamstresses, who, in all well-

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ordered households, sewed all day long in some remote up- stairs chamber which the furnace could not reach, and which was made rather cosy by a small coal stove. Very familiar was that bowed silhouette against the window, sur- rounded by billows of tulle that had been torn to shreds in last night's ball, or making over the heavy edges of skirts that had swept the pavement of Walnut Street. I am sorry for the young who in town can visit only in apartments, and am thankful that I have the memory of long vistas in deep, quiet houses, where there were high ceilings, rich damask curtains, long wide halls, softly carpeted and curving stairs, mounting up and up to regions where running and peeping could be slyly enjoyed. There were views, too, of great bed- rooms, where everything was ample and spatial; big smooth pillows, white bedspreads, heavy furniture, for which there was plenty of room, and spotless comfort, everywhere.

But the luxury of home was little reflected in the habits of the young daughters of the house. Dresses were plain and rather formless. Stockings were black or white cotton, our shoes low-heeled and nondescript. Most of us kept an apron in our desk, which we put on on arriving at school.

One or two of the older girls had watches, and some of those of my age had a little jewelry, which they were asked to show at recess, and which always gathered a group of ad- mirers, begging to be allowed to try on the ring or bracelet.

One of my especial friends had a sister, perhaps four or five years older than herself, who was 'out,' and nothing could be in greater contrast than these two in dress and manner. Christine's appearance on Walnut Street showed all that the extreme of fashion could add to her own beauty and elegance. How we all admired her, her proud carriage and marvellous hats and dresses! But imitation, even if it had been possible, no one would have dreamed of. Her younger sister, in her comfortable dress and coat, would have been the last to even wish for it.

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E i> re AT I ON

I can remember only one incident among my experiem es at school (in fact, I believe there was but one) that wai in the least Battering to my pride or ambition. The distrac- tion and novelty of the whole scene, and the ac tors therein, so absorbed my attention that I never gave to my 'lessons' the concentration they should have had. My reports were not bad, but they were not very good, and I fear rather sad- dened those at home who were making real sacrifices for my education.

In English composition I was entered among girls of my own age. Our master in this was Mr. Chase, a serious man, who had the appearance and manner of an Oxford Don, humanized and disciplined by life, though, even to us, he was not old. I believe the idea of our behavior never crossed his mind. It was entirely unnecessary that it should. His personality had a governing charm which never had, con- sciously, to deal with our conduct. Any of us would have died rather than be eligible to a rebuke from him, and our tremblings before him did not arise from any severity on his part. I still believe (what I then felt as only a sort of stam- mering obsession) that he was one of the most charming men I ever knew, and, alas, how little I knew of him. I sup- pose he taught all day long, Latin, the higher mathematics, rhetoric, in various schools. Even then I had a groping consciousness of what this meant and his resigned steadfast- ness in relation to it.

Mr. Chase sat at a table writh our productions, which he had already gone over, before him. He picked up one of these, smiled a little, and then began to commend it, not dis- cussing, as usual, only the spelling, punctuation, and gram- mar. The paper was mine. No one looked my way, or guessed this, but he seemed to know it, for after the class he 'saw' me, and raised his hand. When I stood quaking before him, he looked down on me with kindly eyes and said:

'You don't belong here. After to-day you will be in the first class.'

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How long can emotion last and be forever fresh; not a memory, but a present actuality? Perhaps its life is longer when it has never been expressed. There may have been tears in my eyes, but what I said was, 'Yes, Mr. Chase5; which was proper, and I passed out with the others.

I cannot help feeling that the quiet mornings at the big green table at home, the dictation from Heine, my discovery of the 'Essays of Elia,' the hours of reading aloud from Scott's novels and his poems, as well as the Psalms and Bible chapters, learned by heart, had a good deal to do with my small superiority over my mates, in English, at this time.

* * *

As in all schools at that time, at Miss Lyman's there were 'extras' in what might have been called 'accomplishments' at a still earlier date. There was a drawing class, which was held somewhere in the upper regions of the house. It was popular, and quite a number of the girls rushed gaily off, on certain days, to partake of it. I never saw the teacher nor the models, but when the participants descended in about an hour or so they brought the results with them, upon sheets of Academy paper, held high for fear of rubbing, and indeed the drawings were 'loose' enough to have come off very easily, and resembled uniformly the eternal series of beginner's use of charcoal, which I was later to know so well in selecting the candidates for admission at the P.A.F.A. This was my first sight of student's work and it was indeed revolting. I would have had to be dragged to the class in irons if it had been my fate to go. One could discern that casts of various kinds had been the models. Blackened hands and aprons testified to the diligence of the students, who were highly delighted with the performance, and many of the less favored, whose parents could not afford this 'extra/ envied them.

How thankful I was that the opportunity was not mine!

50

Education

Perhaps the only prominence my sister and 1 ever had at Miss Lyman's was owing to our very differing inheritance,

by birth, from at h ast our comrades in the part'n ular groups in which WC moved; she among the older girls, I in the lower series. Our Provencal blood was probably re- sponsible for our being called upon to do most of the verse- making that was produced, of course privately, in the school. Rhymed verse flowed from us almost as easily as speech. Some of our comrades were descended from the best Quaker settlers, or bore names of Philadclphians who had had factories on the Wissahickon for two hundred years. Mingled with these, but of equally practical mind, were the children of the ultra-fashionable; those who were rather proud of having had not too respectable ancestors. Their elders sat at the windows of the Philadelphia Club in the afternoon, and no well-brought-up girl was even to glance across the street towards those fine expanses of shining glass, behind which were mischievous old gentlemen who might have ogled them from over their newspapers.

But this race was not productive of sentimental or indeed any kind of 'poetry'; and there was a real demand for it, be- fore the end of the term, when there were to be partings, and the adventures and sentiments of the winter were to be memorialized. Folding fans, made of slats of white Bristol board, were greatly in favor, as each slat could contain a verse glowing with either sentiment or humor as de- sired.

We wrote most of the lines by request, and they were then copied upon the fan by those who felt more than they could express.

We wrote also — not by request — a set of verses, in- spired, I am ashamed to say, by one of the finest and most able of our teachers. Miss G. L. was a tall Quaker lady of great distinction. She wore the Friends' costume in its most exquisite form. She had the finest of mouse-colored shawls, soundless silks, and spotless, folded mull. Closely fitting

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sleeves on her shapely arms set off, at the wrist's perfection, very white, large, tapering hands. She had a really grand head and countenance, and never descended from her sphere of pure intellectuality. If there were glances or smothered giggles at the far end of the line of her pupils, or even notes passed, she was unaware of it. Miss G. L. brought many large charts which she unrolled and hung before us; geological and zoological classifications of endless complex- ity. These were all of vivid interest to her, and we never got so far as the microscopic creature or prehistoric monster that might have fixed our phlegmatic attention.

There must have been at proper times exchange of cour- tesies between Miss Lyman and Miss L. How I wish that I could have witnessed them!

*

* *

If there was not much storing-up of useful knowledge on my part, during my two winters at Miss Lyman's, it was not the fault of my instructors. The classes were not large, and one always had the personal attention of the teacher, who made her appeal to each pupil as to a well-known individual whose name, character, and possibilities were familiar and interesting.

Mr. Chase and the old French teacher, M. Gardel, were more remote, and the latter, absolutely impersonal. His severity was for one's work, if it was deserved, and there was no compromise, no excuse accepted.

'You must not "think." You must know.9

He generally refused to correct mistakes himself, and 'Go to your Young Student,' was frequently on his lips.

Poor old man; he suffered from some malady which caused him to keep his left arm constantly pressed against his breast. How gallantly he bore this and how precise and soigni was the appearance of his thin, stooping person! A young girl, perhaps his granddaughter, always came with him and accompanied his departure. We were all fond of

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Eduoatio n

him, and I am glad to say no one would have dared or

wished to irritate him.

My two winters at '226' opened up new vistas, and in some ways liberated a budding character, Humanly, I

learned more at Miss Lyman's than I realized until long afterwards.

* *

There is strong evidence at the present moment of a uni- versal disposition toward dramatic art, toward the theatre, especially with young people. There is nothing intrinsically new in this, for no period can be named when some form of play-acting, of the dramatic scene, was not the most popular of the arts, and this, whether it was Art or only its travesty. Much of this lay in the easy distraction of the unfamiliar upon the stage, though the distraction was equally efficient if the scene was a close reproduction of what was familiar to all. The mirror was as interesting as were strange fashions, because the public had not taken the trouble to observe itself.

*

* *

I often wonder why the school I attended for two seasons was to me a drama of unforgettable vividness. It was not so much the clash and magic of feeling. True the 'heart- interest' of the piece was keen, absorbing, and almost pain- ful in its intensity, and not exactly to be called school-girl in- fatuation, but whether hidden, manifested, or in abeyance to the 'code' of a period, such seizures lie too near the roots of humanity to be at the command or denial of any age. They continue; hearts remain the same.

It was far more as a spectacle that the perfectly usual and unaccented association took my eye's mind captive. How far the Miss Lymans were from perceiving that their school for young ladies had, to one of them, at least, all the fascinat- ing appeal of an original and perfectly set play! It has taken

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their obscure pupil many years to realize this, and to guess 'what it was all about.5

Fundamentally it was the falling of seed upon a prepared and virgin soil. The group of elders, some of them not very old, in which I had been born and reared; their culture, oc- cupations, and unspoken ideals, were responsible for this. Before my fourteenth year, I had had very few young friends, and those I had were as members of my family. I had lived on the outer edge of a suburb, close to fields, great trees, slopes where beds of violets grew in May, a spring and a tiny stream. I have already made mention of the silences and the music.

In fact, I was just ready for what life presented without cir- cumstance or announcement, a scene peopled with charac- ters clearly marked and original, in appearance and action. What could be more diverse in effect, as well as in their pro- founder motivity, than the leading performers?

Every phase of Miss Lyman's appearance and presence, in the rich chiaroscuro which the high windows of the rooms happened to provide, was a 'tableau' at which one longed to gaze, yet dared not. M. Gardel, the delicate, strained old man, seated in his class of blooming, careless girls, was an- other 'feature.' No detail of perfectly appropriate costume was omitted from our Professor of Zoology, in her floating, yet how reserved garb, of every tone of a dove's plumage, to dear Miss Charlotte, bending over a little pinafored girl her ebon coiffure, and the deep glowing red of her modest morn- ing dress.

And the girls — The jeune premiere was not the prettiest girl in school. She was a slight, boyish witch, neither noisy nor talkative, who never lifted her long straight eyelashes, or the corners of her proud little mouth, in any gesture of in- gratiation or coquetry. She had a smooth dark head. Her hair was drawn tightly back from a high forehead, and braided as usual. Her dress was brown; she was all brown save for the clear color of her spare little face. Her eyes,

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grey, of great beauty, were, in spite of her mirth and mis- chief) made almost tragic l>y dark eyebrows, mounting in

Sorrow's own upward curve. She was a teasing, honest boy.

How came she to have a nun's face? There was a certain shaft of light from high up, entering the hack school-room

windows, from a narrow cleft between roofs. When this

light happened to fall on the charmer sitting in class, all the

beauty that one might imagine in rapt saint or martyr shone out, and she was indeed transcendent, though she might have just pinched the arm of her neighbor, who would be delighted with the attention. Holiness, all unconscious, clothed her delicate mortal features. In the street she wore a shiny sailor hat and a loose brown raglan overcoat. She would not be bound, and none of those who waited in the hope that she would have a whim to join or to attach a comrade would have dared offer her their company. Yet later she was to resign all her liberty of will and conscience. She became, after years of approach to it, a devout convert to the Church of Rome. Perhaps nothing less universal or ma- jestic could have conquered her. In her youth she was irre- sistible, as a jeune premiere should be, and doled out happi- ness or misery in slight, unconscious acts, or omissions. Is this not the chief prerogative of charmers?

* * *

I give thanks that my childhood and youth were not stuffed, gorged, with a multifarious fodder that deadened all appetite. I am glad that the world I saw immediately around me had the endless variety of appearance that my eyes were so eager to enjoy. Whether my mind 'registered' or not, my eyes were not bored with monotony, and did me the service of storing up in my uncluttered memory frag- ments of scenes, or groups in their own atmosphere, of which nothing seems to remain except what was more than worthy to live as long as I might. Grandmothers, aunts, teachers, 'y°ung ladies/ girls, and children, each wore the

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'costume,' one might say, and coiffure of her age. Sounds could be heard far off on account of near-by stillness, and had a greater charm on a rainy morning. Is it hard to be- lieve that there was charm in such homely sounds as the rumble of cart wheels in a distant street, a horse's hoofs on wet cobble-stones, the crowing of a cock at the little farm that lay beyond us, the click of the latch of the garden gate, when some one was expected and one was not at the win- dow, and even the scream of a locomotive passing with its train, perhaps miles away, through the fields and hills?

Oh, educators and child analysists, see that you do not handle the delicate fibres of young consciousness and per- ception until the antennae are limp and powerless to feel. Do not maul them, or, gorging them with your experi- mental diet, deprive them of all appetite — appetite, their supreme prerogative and birthright as developing creatures. Do not rob the maturity or age of these children. Give them a chance. They have a right (thirty or forty years later) to turn over the jewels of memory, to taste, feel, see, hear, again, what for such simple reason was so sweet and so dear, and which, but for a clear page, would have been an illegible blur. How many hearts have warmed over that line of Thomas Hood's,

'The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn.'

Recollections of childhood have all the super-grace, the quality, the patine of the best antiques; their mystic beauty, their value as the furniture of the soul.

The spring term at Miss Lyman's ended in June, and it was thought that I had shown enough inclination and apti- tude, in my home drawing-lessons, to warrant my having regular instruction.

I had not the slightest idea of being an artist. The gulf be- tween me and such an ambition was too great. I could not

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CHILD WITH NURSE 'Erncsta'

Education

across it. When I thought of the Gibson Gallery, and tin- lew other paintings I had seen, they were as remote from

me, personally, as the Ark of the Covenant, and as much

revered. The almost holy ecstasy I had felt at the light of"

that head by Couture did not stir either ego or ambition. It

was rather a winged flight outside of these and had nothing

to do with any sort of performance of my own. I had never seen painting materials, canvas, colors, palette, etc. I had, I think fortunately, never seen first attempts in the use of these. In fact, my feeling for what lay about and around Nature and the life of my environment was really an uncon- scious perception of Art; my eyes eager for the enjoyment they were able to feel in every variety of perception made of me an absorbed spectator, rather than a performer.

Of course, I never had heard of 'self-expression.' Life to me was something to be relished. If I had dreams, they were of poetry, or of houses; not fairy palaces, but very real abodes; such, indeed, as would have been exactly right for our family if we, that is, our means, had permitted. They were not town houses, such as I had seen, but stood in gar- dens, with tall trees and slopes, where lay the trees' shadows on perfect lawns. They had no porches, at least in front. There were high ceilings with windows to the floor of large rooms. My mind rocked with the possibilities of furniture, carpets, curtains, gleaming silver. The beauty of the latter I knew well, and in these appropriate surroundings the ladies of my family moved or sat, in soft, rich, silk dresses and lace. There was, indeed, a gold thimble for even me. I had al- ways seen my grandmother and aunts using these, but mine had been only silver. These fancies, however, had no tangi- ble form and could be enjoyed as an accompaniment to nearly any occupation. I was delighted with the plan pro- posed for me.

My uncle, who from this time forward became the direct- ing power at every point in my development, had a relative, Miss Katharine Drinker, who soon after this became the

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wife of Thomas A. Janvier, the writer. Miss Drinker was an artist who devoted herself to the painting of historical and Biblical pictures. She gave endless research to her work, which was irreproachable on its historic and archaeological side. I think that, secretly, my uncle shrank from launching me away from the close circle of home, and thought that if I must go out, I could not be in a safer place. He knew his cousin well, and admired her intellectual powers, which were great. I would be near a highly cultivated mind, and a lady of his own souche.

Cousin Kate Drinker's studio was at the top of an old house at Fifth and Walnut Streets, on Independence Square, so that that exquisite monument, standing in its grove of trees, was always near and visible to me as I came and went.

I am glad that the studio was typical, traditional, and not to be confused with any ordinary or domestic scene, for it was the first studio I ever entered. On its threshold, everyday existence dropped completely out of sight and memory. What windows there were, were covered with hangings, nondescript, as they were under the shadow of the skylight, which was upright, like a broad high window, and without glare. There was a vast sweeping curtain which partly shut off one side of the room, and this, with other dark corners, contributed to its mystery and suggestiveness. The place had long been a studio, and bore the signs of this in big, partly obliterated figures, outlines, drawn in chalk, upon its dusky wall, opposite the light. Miss Drinker had spent her early life in China, whence her family had brought many examples of Chinese art and furniture. The faded gold of a large seated Buddha gleamed from a dark corner. There was a lay figure, which was draped for a while in the rich robes that Miss Drinker had used for her 'Daniel.' But the manifestation of what proved to be a life- long first cause and study, that of the miracles of light and what they could develop and hide, were here first revealed to me in all their full volume and simplicity. There were

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E I) r CAT I<> N

no cross-currents. Objects and people took the light, <>r

were hidden by it, as they are in Rembrandt's paintings.

Large spaces of obscurity swept upward from gleaming fore- head, or fold of silk. This was all an everyday matter- in the studio, and it was never mentioned to me, but I ignorantly revelled in its deep enchantment, in no way understood, and asked no questions. It was a place that might have been called gloomy or shabby. It was not so to me. I sat nearly all day at an easel with my back to the room and the light. Visitors, some of them keenly interesting, came and went. Sometimes I was introduced. Human interest was present. One young gentleman, as handsome as a trouba- dour, with a gay romantic head, came often. Miss Drinker was some twenty years older than I, and, in my ignorance of life, I thought that only youth had a right to love. I never suspected that her young friend was the fiance of my instructress. There are powers more potent than the fresh- ness of youth.

* *

But about my work; I had to suffer the same 'deception' with which the Harding drawings had mocked me. I was set to copy with Conte crayon, on a yellowish paper, very glaring in the light, a series of lithographic drawings.

The subjects were beautiful, and I knew it and adored them. It was my introduction to Greek sculpture, as in- terpreted by 'Julien,' * and the prints were very well known as school studies, but not to me.

The lithographs were in outline. The heads were life-size, and printed on a greyish paper of a quiet tone. I have al- ways been glad that in my novitiate the gods permitted me to touch with fresh, reverent fingers the bowed profile of the Hermes. The lines of the drawing were broad, pale and un- broken. No accent marred their suavity. Their movement was slow, pure and resolved. The soft, oily chalk must have

* Now, of course, the manager of the Paris 'Cours.'

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been used as the Chinese use a brush and pale ink, once for all and from the shoulder. But the line ended always calmly, as perfection should. I knew later the grand solidity of the lithographic stone, the deep support of its gravity, its tender, receptive surface.

The broad spaces of the drawings, their evolved finality, that permitted not the slightest deviation in scale, measure, or direction, put them much farther beyond my powers than I knew. But by my sheer ignorance of the difficulty, and a vaulting desire for victory, I overcame these chimeras with- out remembered struggle. But the quality of the line baffled me completely. The gritty blackness of the Conte crayon, the harsh glare and impervious texture of the yellow paper, were untamable. Even the caress of a soft finger-tip to unify the line would not avail. My copy was correct and ugly, a hateful travesty to my eyes. Yet my teacher leaned over me to say that I was doing very well. She did not seem to under- stand my stammered, almost tearful, complaints.

* *

The studio does not reveal later impressions, or, if there were any, they did not 'take' or last. My teacher became more and more friendly, and I was often invited to her, or rather their house, for there was a grandmother at home, many years older than mine, and a great little person, a sprite, in full Quaker dress. I loved her at once, and she as quickly adopted me, calling me 'Bo,5 the first to do so. What happy evenings I spent in the tiny house on Pine Street! I always passed the night, and after supper, Mrs. Shober retired with her kinsman and friend, 'Cousin Harry Biddle,' to the parlor sofa and gossip. The old gentleman was very deaf, as was also Mrs. S., but they always seemed to understand each other. He wore a brown wig, had a long white nose, and a quavering voice. It was he who discovered the diary of Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, kept meticulously during the War of the Revolution. It was contained in

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many small notebooks, and 'Deaf Harry/ as my uncle, whose cousin he also was, called him, thought best to IcaVC

out many appetizing passages in the volume In- published.

The young troubadour was always present on these evenings, and when the elders were settled, the lovers (how well they concealed the fact!) bore me with them to a room, a sort of study, in tin* third story. Another precious retreat. Softly lighted, warm, full of books, and all the contribution of studious years. Here our little party sat till late, reading, talking, laughing. I was introduced to 'Alice' both in Won- derland and behind the Looking-Glass; to the 'Bab Ballads,' to the 'Nonsense Verses' of Edward Lear. All of this, I was ready to saturate, and relish. 'Tom' was then on the Press, and could produce verses of fun by the yard, but had not yet made manifest his great talent as a writer. Before he left, we always descended to the dining-room and had beer, which I did not much care for except the first bitter sip, but did not see the fairy grandmother again until next morning.

As I was then not much past sixteen, the uncle at home did not always approve of the rich pabulum dealt out to me by his very sophisticated kinswoman, and when one day I brought home 'Clarissa Harlowe,' which she had pressed upon me as great literature, he was thoroughly indignant. If any explanation was asked for, I never knew of it. I was not ripe for the book, nor much interested, and I think returned it pretty soon. A few years ago I picked up a contemporary set, eight volumes with engravings, and, to my astonishment, read every word of it. I shall always be grateful to Lovelace for one of his expressions, 'a riveted hatred'; but as the author, no doubt, intended, it was diffi- cult to succeed in disliking the wicked creature as much as he deserved.

* * *

Among the interesting contacts that my new-found guide and monitress offered me, the most prized and most keenly

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remembered were our visits to her devoted friend, Mr. John Phillips. This fine old gentleman, who looked like Father Time in black broadcloth, lived alone in a charming old house at Tenth and Clinton Streets. 'Tom5 was never with us on these occasions, not being of a temper eager to admire even magnificent proofs of steel engravings. Our visit was always in the evening and arranged beforehand.

The rooms below, which I would have loved to explore, were not much lighted, and I could catch only a dark glimpse of old portraits and furniture on our way up to Mr. Phil- lips's workroom, which was at the top of the house at the back, and where he was awaiting us.

Certain of the great portfolios had been chosen and were laid out on the broad work-table. The collector made all his own cases and portfolios and mounted and catalogued his treasures, unaided.

The light was concentrated, of course, on the table, but all about and in remoter corners, always in perfect order, were the signs of the dual mystery of the artisan and his tools, methods and materials. My desire for these visits was not all due to the privilege of turning over (oh, in a very special manner of handling!) rare proofs and historic plates. The tall, spare figure of our host bending his majestic head, be- neath the single light; the gleam of the collector's zest in his fine dark eyes, as well as their kindness and courtesy, the lonely halls and rooms below; all the concentration and purpose toward perfection, in the house's living heart, were 'meat convenient for me,' that for which my appetite was strong and joyful. But also did the engravings reveal to me a whole field of art that I knew nothing of. I longed to hear something of the a b c of the processes; there was a language of the craft, too, of which I was ignorant, but I would not for the world have broken in on our host's soliloquy, and took what I could get, by way of feeling, without much mental satisfaction.

At ten o'clock a little maid entered softly with a silver tray.

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There were Qpeen's takes, a specialty of the house, and a decanter with, of course, historic Madeira. I was as igno- rant of dates and vintages as of the masters of steel engrav- ing, but was not indifferent to perfume and flavor. Our

old friend's hand trembled a little as he filled the deli* ate glasses; not from age, but from the emotion of the preced- ing hour, and my constrained young heart knew and was shaken also.

The evening was over. He accompanied us downstairs; it was our last visit. He put an arm around each of us, bend- ing to look into our faces. 'My fine friend, my fair friend,' he said.

I never saw him again.

IV

CLASS AND STUDIO

AT seventeen, life begins to open up very perceptibly. ii Horizons broaden, consciousness appears, and more of this than desired. Even without brusque changes of circumstance or important events, one might say that the day was altered.

One development, however, was clearly marked. I began going to Art School. It was not one that became permanent in Philadelphia, though it promised well and was the only one of its kind. A Dutch artist, Van der Whelen, being obliged, just as his career was opening, to give up painting on account of eye trouble that threatened blindness, had come to America and, under responsible patronage, opened a school. My uncle, who decided, and with great generosity gave me, everything that related to my art education, one day escorted me thither. There were many steps to climb, but we, that is I (for my uncle had already investigated it) found two large rooms, flooded with light; freshly painted walls, many casts, easels, a blackboard, and a few pupils. These were girls like myself, with one or two exceptions of somewhat older women.

There was nothing romantic or glamorous about the place. The director was a solemn, good-looking, youngish man, with the historic Dutch complexion and abundance of auburn hair and beard. After a preliminary conversation with my uncle, he turned to me and asked me if I had ever 'enlairrchet' anything. This had to be translated and turned out to be the Dutch pronunciation of 'enlarged.5 I did not then know what he meant, but thought it safe to say I had not.

A small-sized lithograph of a bearded old man was then

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produced, and I was told thai I was to begin by makta life-size copy of it in crayon.

I fell quite lost when my guardian and protector lefl me and had small confidence in my ability to succeed with what was required. I dare say this was only a 'preliminary can- ter,' a test. I was rather tired of copying lithographs, but the difficulties to be met in the change of scale and the effort of mastering the loose hair and beard gave a zest to the task, which turned out to be not so dull alter all, and I got quite a 'thrill' from the tufts of hair around the ears and the shadow of an eyelid upon the pupil. Then, too, the crayon and paper exactly suited the style of the drawing. (How could a Dutch artist think of arranging it otherwise?) In a day or two the study was finished. Mr. Van der Whclen gave me a sharp look, and said that I need do no more 'en- lairrching,' and, like Alice, I passed into the next square.

* * *

Some of my fellow pupils were drawing from the casts; that is, busts and fragments from the antique. These were not very well chosen, but I longed to undertake them, espe- cially as this was my first view of student work of this kind, and I felt I might surpass it. But other epreuves were to be met first. On a shelf there were rows of geometrical forms, also, in plaster, cubes circular and pyramidal, blocks and a sphere.

Plaster is sometimes beautiful when fresh, its substance milky and almost luminous. But when it has been handled and exposed for years, unlike worthier materials, it deterio- rates. A leaden grey surface obscures the modelling; its shadows are monotonous and its lights spotted.

Above all, the mechanical forms were abhorrent to me, and I think that my immediate revulsion from cubism, years afterwards, was due in part at least to the recollection of the machine-made angles and ruled edges that I had shrunk from in my student days. A group of these was arranged for

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me on a table by the director. At all events, there was no cant in the presentment. The purpose was simple. Per- spective and light and shade; values, in fact.

The group was placed under the light, and there was no mistaking the absolute, in every phase of it. There was very little explanation. Probably there would have been more of this if my master had had a better command of English. But when one was once in front of the group and had for- gotten dimension on one's right, left, and all about, the ab- stract forms, entirely unrelated to life and less part of it than the moon's bleak crevasses, began to act upon a girl's imagi- nation, or was it only the stimulation of a new venture? There were cast shadows; one block nearly hidden in half tone. Across a prostrate cone's round slope fell a curved shadow, fading as it turned. Into the central cave slanted a beam from above. I remembered the landscape, the mountains, dark valleys and plains, in the rumpled blanket that covered me, in bed, a convalescent from some child's disorder, and my group of blocks became, though very and only 'mental' in their forms, something cosmic and almost legendary.

Then, too, the soft Conte crayon, used with stump, and the paper, had a far better tone and color than the plaster. The possible depths of velvety black (oh, only an accent, perhaps) pleased me greatly, but I did not find in my per- formance, when I regarded it with that critical 'other eye5 which had already developed in me, any reflection of gi- gantic spaces and lonely cliffs. The director seemed satisfied; at least he never made up another group for me.

I doubt whether I really understood what I had been at, but I had been shown and had myself executed a complete series, illustrating the whole principle of light and shadow, uncomplicated by color, local values, and natural forms. I had been taught by this exercise, if I chose to apply it, every

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ruli* oflinear and aerial perspective. I did qo1 wonder then, but often have since, whether Van der Whelen's method was

accidental, and the easiest way, or part of the evolution, traditional in Flemish art for beginners, perhaps a way of finding out what an apprentice could do, besides color- grinding. It was far from being wasted time lor me, hut I soon found myself before a large piece of white paper and one of the plaster busts. It was not the head of the Medici Venus, which I had never seen, of course, but something like it, and even less interesting, and it was placed in a broad hard light and had no silhouette, or mystery of light- ing, no motivity. It was an object which took me no- where and brought me nothing, as I now see, because it represented a series of contradictions. I suspect that it was a Roman bust, and without original impulse. Of course, it had the highly sophisticated syntheticism of the Greek ideal for its origin, but, refined away to negative import and diluted artificialdom, it had only in the plaster pretended substance, which the marble would have made existent and absolute, even in abstraction.

The surface of plaster of Paris gives no clue to its sub- stance, though the forms it is the mould of were decisive, though abstract. So firm, in fact, that thinking back to the original that must have been, the idea of youthful body, tender cheek, lip and throat, seem to have been qualities to be rejected. Marble, bronze, and even wood, give their as- sent to this elimination, promising their own intrinsic, rich value, of which their surface gives proof, instead of contra- diction.

Any cool statement of beauty, intently, purposely, cool, must be supported by constructive, intrinsic, substance, gravity, the long evolution of a cohesive operation. Marble seems sometimes to have a more than earthly origin. Per- haps it is the gods' legacy to eternalize their glory. Gilding the marble was not the Greek sculptor's idea. Architect, politician, and priest settled that, and Nature claimed it

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back as her own by laying the magic of her age-long al- chemy upon it.

Yet this cast that I was to copy, at once hard and fragile, to which light brought no radiance, whose weight scarcely held it upright, might have been forced, by an applied understanding, into an even inspirational presentment.

A few years ago, I was escorted through the ateliers of one of our most important museums by one of the trustees, a gentleman who had spent his early years in the study of art. In the 'Antique' we found his son, languidly at work. 'How long are they going to keep you at this?5 the father asked.

The youth groaned, and I did not blame him. His was the mood of the whole group, among the casts. Everything was being missed. It looked as if the preceptor himself was an unbeliever. Why, then, did he not revolt, reform, or in- vestigate?

The bust I have described occupied me for a long time, but I suppose I must have made other cast drawings, under as impoverished an opportunity, for I have no recollection of them. I doubt very much whether anything of value sur- vives, in contacts where insufficient warmth has failed of reaching the imagination.

Our director made a very strong point of linear perspec- tive, although its principles could have been very clearly perceived in the groups of blocks we drew from. There was, in fact, a class in perspective where the blackboard was used, and Mr. Van der Whelen appeared as a lecturer. He drew for us long, diminishing lines of lamp-posts; showed us the vanishing point where all lines converged; and to which every object is obedient. We made large drawings at home, with ruled lines to illustrate the theory, and I rather liked to create a street, or even a procession of people (very scant in detail), and see it developed so reasonably. Also, it was

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amusing when Mr. Van dcr Whrlcn held up a block and, turning it slowly, said, 'How more you see on this side, how less you sec on that?*

* *

What criticism wc had always took place in the morning. We might stay all day if we liked. Our director never ap- peared again, and my pleasantest recollection of the school is that of quiet afternoons, when my special friend among the students and I sat together at the big, comfortable table, under the light, and drew from a set of models she provided. H. T. was twenty-four, seven years my senior, and far ahead of me in attainments.

I have clear memories of water-colors done by her at their summer place by the sea, in New England. The bringing- up she was born to was the same as mine, only more luxuri- ous, and her gaiety and earnestness were combined in a truly endearing ensemble. During that winter she had be- come engaged to a young physician, and although she beamed with the happiness of an alliance as perfect as may be, her work at the school was uninterrupted. Glowing with satisfaction, she one day brought her latest gift from her fiance. When unwrapped, a cigar box was revealed which contained, daintily done up in cotton and tissue paper, a complete set of the bones of the skull. They were exquisitely separated, not an edge or a suture imperfect. How marvel- lous was the sphenoid, the core and centre of human osteo- graphy! Double-winged it was, almost glittering in its translucence, and seeming to be the armor of some creature whose destiny it should be to float like the nautilus in a tropical ocean.

The external members were more opaque. They had the firmness and color of ivory, only without polish, and also without stain or discoloration, anywhere. They did not have the appearance, precisely, of natural objects. They seemed to have been formed by the hand of a master-

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artist. Having no polish or surface which could reflect or glisten, their quality of line was supremely in evidence. Forms supplied new lines at every turning. Effort at comparison with known masterpieces showed only Greek sculpture of 400 B.C. to be their worthy rival, and so closely resemblant were they to these in style and feeling that they seemed to be resumes of the Greek ideal.

It will be understood that these were not my then reflec- tions, but when memory preserves an impression which is of basic significance, its clarity is indisputable, though analy- sis may appear much later. I learned the names of the parts from H. T. We spread a white paper on the table, and each chose a member as a model, placing it before us on the paper to please ourselves as to curves, modelling, and lighting. The despised lead pencil was found to be a perfect tool for this work, which called for the firmest type of deli- cacy in treatment. We did them all, becoming, led by our burning interest, more and more expert, and I dare say my experiences with the endured group of blocks and the un- loved bust put me far forward in ability to render fine bony contours and vanishing curves.

More than all, the knowledge to which I had been so ac- cidentally admitted (or was it a momentary access of gener- osity from the stars?) accompanied all the years (and ac- counted for much) of my predilection for portraiture, and the manifestations of human individuality. I always saw the structure under the surface, and its capacities and propor- tions.

When my second winter at the class opened, its principal had turned elsewhere. One of the maturer students, a lady with something of the pleasant physiognomy of Miss Char- lotte Lyman and having the same jetty curls and high color, succumbed to the manly charms of our director. He be- came Mr. Van der Whelen-Brown, and her ample fortune floated them away, far from the ennui of class exercises in drawing.

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The following winter, Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier took the

directorship of the Van der Whelen School, as it was still

called, and she was so much occupied with her duties there that she was obliged to give up some of her classes in private

schools. She proposed me for Miss Sanfbrd's, where she had for years been in charge of the drawing. 'Miss Sanfbrd's,'

from its high eminence as a thoroughgoing institution, had no rivals. It had not the social tone, if that was valuable, of

Miss Lyman's, but her personality was even more marked if less picturesque. Every girl in the school was to her a moral and intellectual problem, and she was, through her consum- mate skill in handling, able to touch and twine budding soul-tendrils, without bruising them. She expected the young creatures in her care to mount and be at home upon the high plateau from which she looked down on the silver linings which appeared from below to be only narrow fringes around dark clouds. If the strong atavism of later years caused her charges to descend, and even lie down, in the lush valleys below, it is certain that they never forgot the clear blue light of the upper world and the keen bracing wind that sometimes took a frowsy hold of them, but could not disturb the smooth parting of grey locks upon Miss San- ford's high forehead. She wore her hair in side curls, looped back. The stillness of her presence, the clear, low enuncia- tion of careful words, did not chill the warm motion of her brooding solicitude, which every girl's heart felt and loved her for.

***

I cannot remember my first meeting with Miss Sanford's blue-grey eye, but there is a piercing and ineffaceable com- posite of its impression. Her acceptance of me as Mrs. Jan- vier's successor must have come as near to being a compro- mise with her judgment as she ever permitted herself to al- low. I turned my hat into a sort of bonnet, in order to look at least as old as the big girls in the class, and went to be proved,

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having been assured by Mrs. Janvier that I would have no trouble. She had left no footprints into which I could fit my undirected steps. I had to invent my own method. The classes were two; big girls and little girls, one morning in the week on following hours. They sat at desks, their own or others', in one of the school-rooms. Materials were the blank pages of drawing-books, pencils and rubber. I imagine that there was no grading or marking except for behavior. Miss Sanford had made out, no doubt, a theory of the serv- ice of this class as a protoplasmic exercise; perhaps it was merely an interval of release in the cause of subconscious elasticity. As the class was held in the open school-room, it never occurred to me to attempt to make it an exercise in fantasy. I turned instinctively in the direction which would lead naturally to order, as my main anxiety (remembering Miss Lyman's) was that I might not be able to maintain it. But the material I had to deal with was of another kind. The forebears of most of my pupils had not been fed on terrapin, nor had they lingered over the Madeira. Also, the Sanford-bred atmosphere of the school pervaded and re- mained. One or two of the older girls were of the rich type that could have outstripped the keenest of the insubordinates at Miss Lyman's, and I hope they never knew that I realized this, and feared them. At least, they never proved their metal on me, for which I now render thanks. In pursuit, then, I fear, chiefly of order, rather than the liberating paths of imagination, I turned to ideas of construction, using small objects such as a desk would accommodate, and for the older girls exercises in memory and observation, some- times drawing for them on the blackboard.

Other demands for teaching — this time for private pupils — developed, without much idea on the part of parents, it may be supposed, except to keep the children busy and entertained. They were a very proper, well-behaved boy of

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twelve, and a in>l somewhat older, whose golden tawny locks and dimples gave promise of abundant interests she

might have in other directions, and quite soon, so that it seemed almost superfluous to provide her with other occu- pation or diversion. The two children came from different families and had different hours, hence requiring the entire attention of their instructor for two hours twice a week. Direction was very simple; following was another matter. Neither of the two had any perceptible degree of natural aptitude, so docility had to furnish all the ways and means. I soon found that positive inhibition followed constant sur- veillance, and that an occasional word of counsel and en- couragement produced better results. I therefore 'sat by' and concluded that a book would be the best provisional alibi.

But it must not be a too absorbing book, not, of course, a novel. I remembered that I was ignorant of the works of Milton, not extraordinary at seventeen, and sought for a thick volume I had noticed on the shelves. It was a cheap, commonplace edition, but complete — fine print and no notes. Still the pages were full; rich lines caught the eye; one could see a whole passage at once, without interruption of commentator or editor. No encumbrances prevented the reader from being carried away through abysses of space. No scholar's voice halted the majestic periods. In these days it would be said that spring afternoons could have been better spent. This was quite likely for all it ever meant to the boy and girl, though the teacher was rather faithful, and did not forget either to drop from the empyrean, or climb out of the confines of hell, when the moment for supervision came. But she had been greatly mistaken in her choice of reading. She had expected to have to drag a rather heavy load, and instead was carried, borne away by one mighty cre- ation after another. 'Paradise Lost,' 'Paradise Regained,' 'II Penseroso,' 'L'Allegro,5 'Lycidas,' 'Comus,' the Sonnets, in fact, the whole volume. Many years later, I was to know

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more of this, explicitly and finally, from my friend Raymond Dexter Havens (now of the English Department of Johns Hopkins) in his book, 'The Influence of Milton on English Poetry.' Also our friendship was to bring me in touch with a mind deeply bred and absorbed in the very nature of poetry, which has always been to me the brightest vision of the unattainable. Did the pupils get any 'reaction/ as we say now, from the lightning and tempest and the Heavenly Host, by way of their so near, yet so trans- ported, critic?

What if the poet's Daemon could glance through the flame he has kindled, and make it a medium by which light could reach the slumberer one step further down? Speech is too clumsy, the story too long to tell. Will its warmth ever pierce through and into without encumbrance, and as power without word or sign? Was it guilty negligence on the part of one possessed by the poet to make no effort to pass on the magic to a young creature close at hand, who was occupied in collecting absolute pebbles on the shore of another mystery?

Confession is that nothing passed if emanation did not take place. Charity would call it incapacity on the part of the agent in charge, who could only have transmitted the golden ore in broken fragments, a sacramental act too holy for hands still more weak than unconsecrated.

So the feaster partook alone, with one hand guarding the mystic chalice, and with the other guiding a faltering pencil.

The miracle of transmission was of another kind. Fate used it as an aid to ordered destiny. The idea of language as an instrument of the imagination, of language outstripping content even as such, and in its nearer kinship with thought outstripping plastic expression, began to germinate in a mind much inclined toward it.

Fortunately I had enough common-sense and self-under- standing to prevent my even wishing to attempt to write Miltonic verse, and neither did I know of the many who had

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handle and deal with appealed to me to be in another world,

gratifying and alluring, and containing the soul-satisfactions

of a purpose to express special phases of life. I did not know,

I drifted, satisfying my super-life cravings with the poets easily to be found on our shelves.

***

I had found Keats at fifteen, too early, of course, but not too soon to cause me to beg for a volume of my own, and which my father handed me with a smile on my birthday. Shelley, Wordsworth, and especially George Herbert, sped my little shallop as before the morning wind, and this was only the beginning of such voyages. I fed on honey-dew and drank the milk of Paradise in the quiet suburb where to a restless striver, who knew nothing of the beneficent results of repression, life did not contain half enough to satisfy her vo- racious appetite.

Needless to say, however, none of these perplexities troubled the mind of the young drawing-teacher. There were developments for work at home, the Van der Whelen School having dissolved, when Mrs. Janvier resigned from the directorship.

I began to make use of some of the practice I had gained there. I had been using lithographic crayon, on paper, and my uncle thought I might do something on the stone itself. He accordingly took me, one fine spring morning, far down- town to a lithographing establishment, in order that I might see the process of printing, etc. The son and manager of the firm was eager to take us about. I always felt when with my uncle that I was appearing to the greatest advan- tage possible. The place was thoroughly commercial and was, indeed, a factory. There were floors full of printing- presses, in action. The great stones lay in them, sliding back and forth to receive contact with the ink rollers. The pro- cess of color lithography is too well known to be described

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here. I was more impressed by the stones than by any part even of the color process. Many of them were five inches thick, two feet by one and a half in horizontal dimensions. In the surface I now saw the beautiful quality of line I had always wondered at, fully accounted for. I longed to touch it, and it seemed a sacrilege to use such a rare and exquisite object as an instrument for producing the hideous chromos which were being turned out. The great solidity and weight of the stone made the tender grey surface even more allur- ing. Mr. S. asked if I would like to draw a head on the stone, of course, in black-and-white only, and later sent one out to the house on which I drew the head of a young ac- tress from a photograph.

It was printed and used as an advertisement. It met with the approval of the young lady, who wrote to the firm: 'I'm pleased to death with the picture and everybody thinks it's lovely.' Which amused the family and was my first commis- sion.

I loved the feel of the crayon on the stone, and its perfume, which had a sort of woody sweetness, like burnt almonds; but the use of it for any kind of exactness was full of difficulty and anxiety. Nothing could be erased or altered. Approach was by way of a carefully prepared drawing, whose outline must be transferred to the stone by the use of tracing paper. Then, in order to have the print repeat the original drawing in facsimile, the stone drawing must be reversed, which added enormously to the strain and concentration necessary for complete success.

* *

As I did not care to repeat my adventure with the litho- graphed head, the next consignment was a group of small fossils. Carefully arranged, the plate would hold nine of these. They were palasontological specimens, fragments of bone, some of them partially embedded in the rock and cut away enough to display integral parts. Photography would

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do! have been sufficient for a good deal of the work Mr. 5.

gave me to do. It' .successful, the plates were to be in< luded in the Report of a Geological Survey of many volumes. I was expected to define and develop the fossils, making the

forms more clear and accenting special parts. Some of them

had the appearance of lumps of dry mud. I sat by a window

where there was a steady north light, and under this tiny cavities and prominences became what might have been craters and mountains in the moon, and with much more realism than did the blocks at the Van der Whelen School. Sometimes the subject would be a fragment of a jaw with teeth, black and shiny as ebony, and with deep grooves. These had to show, of course, their local texture in contrast to the bone. The reversed drawing had to be made first, perfect in size and proportion, an exact guide, though not modelled. After tracing, it was tentatively massed on the stone, a delicate nebula that could be developed without error. Firm black strokes, if such there were to be, went in last, and one could finally scrape out a tiny light to accent a tooth or salient elevation. Form in halftone was (as always) the greatest difficulty. But all this was what might be called 'natural process,' all the real strain coming with the neces- sity for extreme caution in reversing. This operation being quite new and hors la regie was profoundly resented by the solar plexus, and I was obliged frequently to take it for a run in the garden or other diversion.

My grandmother, though strongly approving as she did of work and discipline, understood perfectly the high degree of concentration the stone required, and with her usual gal- lantry took part in the struggle.

She devoted all her mornings to giving me the greatest as- sistance possible. In her clear, quiet voice, she read aloud untiringly, and never allowed interruption except when I got up to take breath. Mrs. Janvier had made a drawing before I knew her, which she called 'Geoffrey Rudel Dying in his Lady's Arms.' I had found on one of the lower

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shelves of our library three grey volumes, Sismondi's 'History of the Literature of Southern Europe.' The author gave sub- stantial prominence to Provence and Languedoc, and, as I turned the pages, I felt that it would be good to have a glimpse of my father's country through the troubadours. There was, indeed, the story of Geoffrey Rudel who loved the lady in Tripoli by report only, and died on his way to visit her, not without seeing her, however, for she went to meet him and received him and his love on their way to a destiny they had not chosen. There, too, was a translation of his poem written when his hope of seeing her was still un- certain:

Angry and sad shall be my way if I behold not her afar;

And yet I know not when that day shall rise, for still she dwells afar.

God who has formed this fair array of worlds and placed my love afar,

Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray, of seeing her I love afar.

If but one blessing should repay the thousand griefs I feel afar,

A brighter one where'er I stray, I shall not see or near or far.,

In the Provencal the repetition of the final syllable was doubtless more spontaneous and musical. Alas, I never learned that language, and have often wished since then that my first instructor in drawing had taught me what she knew so well. She became later an intimate friend of both Mistral and Roumanille and a member of the Society of the Telibrige.' Sismondi was rather dry reading as I remember it. It was strong in the matter of research and minute histori- cal detail, and after the chapters relating to Provence and the Midi, I am not sure that we persevered. I do not, in- deed, remember by what means or literary instrument my grandmother deepened the channel through which my frail skiff could pass with easier buoyancy.

* * *

As my rendering of minor fossils gave satisfaction to the watchful palaeontologist behind the scenes, who was in fact

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no less a personage than the famous Edward I). Cope, r was next given the opportunity to draw the portrait ofhu first- born among fossils, and the heir to all his hopes.

This was rather a complete specimen, the head of an ex- tinct ass that had roamed the plains of the Far West when they were covered with sugar-cane. Its supreme dis- tinction as a relic lay in its having canine teeth. There they were, almost tusks, superb in size and ebon polish, and had been used in breaking the great sugar-canes for food before the period of grass.

It purported to be the only one known, up to that date. I was to do three views, one-third life-size. The fossil was by no means clear of the rock, so, besides the difficulty of re- versing and the new one of reducing in size, I had to make sure of bringing out all important indications.

Before the drawing was finished, Mr. S. drove the great man out to see how it was going — a fearful ordeal for me. Dr. Cope was a tall dark man, something like Matthew Arnold, and a Quaker of few words. The strong lightning of the moment has blurred memory and deprived me of all de- tail, but when he had left, my lifted heart told me that all was well. He had given me a few minor directions and was satisfied with what I had developed from the long, rough fragment of brown rock. I did not myself like the idea of reduction, which was, of course, necessary. It seemed to de- tract from the majesty and awful forms of the original. I had never seen a Holbein drawing, but felt the lack of elimination and choice in my production, in which also the effect of the masses, in light and shade, must be ignored, and which was a description, rather than a presentment.

Next came the skull of a small camel. It was beautifully white and clean, nearly cleared of the rock, and as it took the light boldly, it was not very difficult; at least, I had now ob- tained relative control of the medium and had learned to prove the indications on one side of the specimen by what could be seen 'coming through' on the other.

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Dr. Cope came out to see it as before, when there were still possibilities of change or accent. He sat down before the stone, and, after a short examination, pointed to a bony for- mation I had 'found' or thought I saw evidence of.

'What's this?' he asked, and when I explained it, he laughed and said, 'Well, Miss Beaux, if you can invent them, what need is there of our going way out West to find these specimens?'

Fortunately, it was not too late to obliterate the non- existent articulation.

But this work did not bring conviction of a metier found once for all, and it is true that during the 'stone age,' I began to have rebellious moments, and in one of these dashed off a fragment, which if not good poetry contained genuine pas- sion.

Lost hope, lost courage, lost ambition,

What's left but shams of these to hide my true condition?

Feigned peace and joy, feigned happy effort,

False tongue, proclaiming, "Art's my comfort."

Nought's left but bones, and stones and duty that's not pleasure,

But grinding, ceaseless toil, whose end's the measure

Of the short web of life the Fates have spun me.

What's this... I've uttered words of treason.

What's lost? My time, my daylight, and my reason.

* * *

I had achieved considerable mastery of the medium in the special direction of illustration by lithograph of scientific evidence. Intellectually and in the matter of research, it was far too large a field to be approached without the dedi- cation of a lifetime, and interest would soon have been lost in repeating operations of whose meaning the mind had no conscious grasp. It was not possible to realize at the time what an immense educational opportunity the stone, to a beginner in art, and the fossils, had offered, and which luckily I had the sense, or rather the intuition, to take ad- vantage of.

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What was to he [earned in dealing with oba we and re- luctant form, in almost shapeless lossils, and above all the.

revelation of form in natural daylight, the revealer of truth

without emphasis or exaggeration, came home with a fori C and tenacity that only the truth can apply, and being living truth and led by Nature, hand in hand, it never grew stale and was never exhausted. Having naught to do with

fashion, this approach to truth cannot he demode, though it may be abused and vulgarized, when of course it ceases to be the pristine element, which is truth.

Any one of the smaller fossils, even, was capable of setting forth the whole problem of what is now known as Volume,' and in spite of contradictory evidence. Solid they certainly were, and must so appear. If they had been made of chalk, clay, or any single substance, light would have revealed their form with obvious ease; the lowest values would have been where light could not reach and vice versa; but these bits of bone and rock showed as little to accent the form as does the plumage of a wild bird when Nature undertakes to hide the timid creature. Dark teeth caught the highest light. A scrap of white bone was embedded in the deepest obscurity of the main shadow of the mass. So the performer, who might have been set to blunder over obvious truth, had to feel the form in spite of contradiction and develop a vision tuned to the most abstruse values in lighting.

Also, if the fossils had been merely lumps of mud or im- peded potatoes, the necessity for proportion — in fact, measure — would have been less urgent. To this also vision must be sensitive and able to maintain the exact relation of parts to the whole, while developing detail.

It seems as if such a body of suggestion and proof, upon the subject of values in chiaroscuro, could not be contained in a small mass of rock and broken bone. But the universe is in every natural object, and there is rich experience in finding it in unlikely places.

Nothing the fossils taught a neophyte in art ever had to be

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unlearned, for when one dwelt even upon the eternal categories of 'whence and where,' they were not second to the mountains or even the stars.

* *

To each his own generation. It can easily be asserted that such preparation — that is, the presentment of form, by means of values, in lighting — has been superseded and sur- passed, many hope forever. They have forgotten that light, with its concomitant shadow, takes an almost supreme part in our natural existence and cannot long be ignored in Art.

However, the moment for reform became needed, and did arrive. It was needed because of the vulgarization of form and lighting brought in by the misuse of photography, which could rather easily take the place, for the hastily inclined, of a real knowledge and individual perception of truth. Far be it for the recorder of a few salient memories to take up a dis- cussion on 'Modernism.' Modernism is not an arrival or a conclusion. It is a constant state, and has always existed. Every generation finds a way to rediscover some phase of the great and ancient manifestation which Art is. The most stimulating novelty is that which the immediately preceding generation ignored, for the sake of its own pet theory.

If this theory has been developed to vulgarity, the hap- piest moment for reform is offered, and victory is sure to en- dure as long as it continues to stimulate. Are not full skirts enjoyable after a long period of scanty ones? There are many who cannot relish without the stimulation of astonish- ment. There must be a dash of the, to them, unexpected in it.

There is another large group who want only what they have always had. The groove is comfortable and padded, and in a way they are right; for is it not one of the functions of Art to soothe frazzled nerves and allow a weary brain to return and drink again at an ancient spring?

In this group are often classed, and sometimes unfairly,

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active participants who have subit^ as the French concisely

put it, a veritable conversion, in youth, and whose ardor, into which has been poured a constant fuel of understanding

and enthusiasm, has never cooled. Such minds think it not too much to give their little lifetime to the effulgent culte which has become part of themselves. In fact, the youth bound up with it never passed. These are not looking for difference, but to express their unexhausted pursuit. A life- time has not sufficed for this. They are still blunderers at it, but desire has not flagged.

* * *

The girl who tolerated a fossil as subject, and at the same time was entirely unconscious of the reason for her tolera- tion, found out much later that she had borne with her task because it contained a principle she could not then come at in its entirety; that is, the idea of light on an object as well as its effect. She began to be possessed of this principle, and much later witnessed what part it took in the drama of a hu- man presentment, and its effulgence upon the folds of a choice material. A lifetime seemed too short in which to pursue and grasp the beauty that lay around the mystery, as potent as any other, of actuality. Then, at last, idealism and vision were for her indissolubly joined, once for all.

Nevertheless, before coming to the foot of the long upward trail, she was to crawl through a broad morass, where shone only a few silver pools.

At this time and for long afterwards, I did not connect the wrork I was to do with Art, the high mystery, nor did I con- sider myself in any way an artist or even that I was ever to become one.

I remembered the Gibson Gallery. In our living-room — which we called the 'parlor,' no one considering that it stood for the formal dignity of a drawing-room — hung a fine colored print of Turner's 'Fighting Temeraire,' which my uncle had bought in London. In a volume of Rogers's

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'Italy,' there were vignettes, engravings from Turner's water-colors and drawings. We had a few old pictures, which my father had brought with him from France, and which — unsigned, of course — had been part of a collec- tion owned by a Spanish gentleman, and which my father's family had taken for debt; nothing very valuable, but the Old World and tradition were in the dark canvases.

I knew no middle ground nor any contemporary artists. The Williams collection also had brought me no nearer as a participant.

* * *

But life now began to contain in itself much that was completely outside of 'Art,' though that word was not used currently in our house, and I rarely heard it, although it was, in music and matters of living, persistently pursued by the family. Some one told me that a row of brown books on the shelves were Ruskin's 'Modern Painters.' These I read, and of course accepting all, was wafted to glorious heights by the style and enthusiasm of the author. But as far as consciously connecting this with my own life was concerned, I might as well have been busy with gardening or mending.

Although all sorts of intangibilities and uncertainties hov- ered about my existence, there was one rock-bottom reality. I must become independent. My grandmother's house was my home, and in it I was the youngest born, but I wished to earn my living and to be perhaps some day a contributor to the family expenses. To do this I stepped naturally into the opportunities offered, of which, for better or worse, there were many. I took a month's lessons in china painting from a French expert, in the ignoble art of over-glaze painting. How ignorant I was and how quickly mastered what could be got from it! My instructor said nothing to me of the le- gitimate field of this kind of work, and I at once began adapting it to portraiture. A sad confession. The results were, alas, too successful, and were much desired. For,

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somehow, after four Brings at a remote kiln, I managed to get upon a large china plaque a nearly life-size head of a child (background, always different), full modelling, flesh

color ami all, that parents nearly wept over. Of course I used photographs, but was not content with 'making up1 tin- color. I had a solar print made, going for this to a nice old man, high Up main rickety stairs in an old house at Fifth and Arch Streets. The rude copy contained nothing but measurements, but the golden-haired darling was then brought to me and placed as nearly as possible in the light- ing of the photograph. I then wrote all over the solar print notes on the color — 'most color,' 'least color,' greenish, pinkish, warm, cool. This was a real study in summing up and cleavage of tones, and added greatly to the much too great vitality of the head, carrying it far from the purely decorative requisitions of the china plaque.

My reputation spread. Mothers in the Far West sent with the photograph a bit of ribbon, the color of the boy's eyes, as well as a lock of hair. In such cases, of course, I never saw the child.

Without knowing why, I am glad to say that I greatly despised these productions, and would have been glad to hear that, though they would never 'wash off,' some of them had worn out their suspending wires and been dashed to pieces.

This was the lowest depth I ever reached in commercial art, and, although it was a period when youth and romance were in their first attendance on me, I remember it with gloom and record it with shame.

There were some crayon portraits, also, but these were of old friends of Mr. Edward Biddle, my uncle's father, and were from fine, old-fashioned photographs of splendid old gentlemen. The touch of chivalry and romance in these heads, as well as their actual beauty and the simplicity of the lighting, raised them far from the world of the china children, and I took pleasure in them, in spite of their being from the flat and from 'deceased' subjects.

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So, also, as I stumbled through the rough country of these years, there were dark mystifying nights, too bright dawns, and puzzled searchings for the path. As was natural, I was not much alone. It was the time for love, and the little god was pretty constantly about. I got my work done, but there was not much time for meditation on the status or real value of it. Other things had to be decided. It was a thorny path, for in these matters it, unfortunately, frequently happens that youth is temperamentally indisposed toward the excep- tionally eligible (who may be also categorically attractive) and drawn toward those whom it would never be finally conquered by. There was plenty of agony and some clear- cut drama, in a setting of November days, fresh and clearing skies, and the odor of violets the sad heart offered. There was always the terrible standard of what love should be that held back the romantic heart, and there were hours when if a stern voice had said, "You are to marry this man. It is not yours to refuse. Come" — the doubter would have been thankful and would have obeyed. Needless to say, the family opinion in these matters was always obvious, but was never forced upon the reserved young premiere in the cast.

In the mean time, I watched my sister float away on the happiest of marriage destinies, without a ripple to mar its certainty or one backward glance. (My sister, Aimee Ernesta Beaux, married Henry S. Drinker, the brother of Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier.) Happy is she, I thought. Shall I ever come to it? I was by no means set against marriage and had no glimmering vision of another sort of future I might have.

Let escape this period, without further comment. The time came when the next allowed opening was ready for me, and I for it.

* * *

Long before this, I would have turned toward the class- rooms of the P.A.F.A., but my uncle, to whom I owed every-

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thing thai my grandmother had not done for me, was stead- fastly opposed tO this. There w as no reason tO suppose tli.tt my trend was to he serious or lasting. ( lertainly I had done well and was a good copyist. I was a seemly girl and would probably marry. Why should I be thrown into a rabble of untidy and indiscriminate art students and noone knew what influence? So reasoned his chivalrous and also Quaker soul, which revolted against the life-class and everything pertain- ing to it. He put a strong and quiet arm between me and what he judged to be a more than doubtful adventure, and before long an opportunity came of which he entirely ap- proved.

I had one acquaintance — a schoolmate, indeed, at Miss Lyman's — who, after a year or two of social gaiety as a de- butante, began seriously to turn toward painting. She or- ganized a class and took a studio. She had none of my limi- tations in the way of £ways and means.' She asked me to join the class. We were to work from a model three morn- ings in the week, and Mr. Sartain had consented to come over from New York once every fortnight to criticise us. My uncle entered at once into this arrangement, and with his usual generosity paid my share in the cost.

Across all the intervening years it now seems that the record of this adventure, for so it now appears to me, should be written with a pen of fire. Time and experience have given it a poignancy, a significance, only dimly felt at the moment.

There were a few, only, in the class, all young, but all re- spectful toward what we were undertaking. It was my first conscious contact with the high and ancient demands of Art. No kind of Art, music or other, had ever been shown to me as a toy or plaything to be taken up, trifled with, and perhaps abandoned. I already possessed the materials for oil painting, and had used them quite a little, but without advice.

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But the unbroken morning hours, the companionship, and, of course above all, the model, static, silent, separated, so that the lighting and values could be seen and compared in their beautiful sequence and order, all this was the farther side of a very sharp corner I had turned, into a new world which was to be continuously mine.

*

When William Sartain appeared in the class as our teacher and critic, he was undoubtedly the first artist most of us had ever seen — and how far he was from the type generally described by story- writers! We had probably all read of a long limp figure with uncut hair, broad-brimmed hat, and loose tie. William Sartain was a middle-sized man, firmly built, with a strong intellectual head. He was slightly bald and wore a short dark beard. His prominent bony nose was almost divided above the bridge by a deep vertical cleft, which would have given his expression an almost fearsome intensity but for the suave influence of the long horizontal sweep of eyebrow and eyelid. His eyes were not too deep-set to show their color. It was not strange that at that time I had never seen their like, but among the many eyes noticed and studied since then, they still remain unique. They seemed drawn with a firm dark pencil, and without a vestige of sentimentality. The large iris was of a strong olive grey, much like a dark-green seal my uncle wore in a ring; not changeful as are most grey eyes, they had the tone of an old Chinese bronze, and the subtle strength of such a work of art.

At the time I had never seen his work. It was never pro- fuse. A few quiet sea-landscapes, dune and valley; some strong heads, and small shadowy Oriental interiors. What he gave us was simple and universal, for his culture bore away all limitations of school or fashion. What I most re- member was the revelation his vision gave me of the model. What he saw was there, but I had not observed it. His voice warmed with the perception of tones of color in the model-

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Class and STUDIO ling of check and jaw in the subject, and he always insisted

upon the proportions of the head, in view of its power ( on-

tent, the summing up, as it were, of the measure of the individual.

This ideal, the most difficult to attain in portraiture, is hidden in the large illusive forms; the stronger the head, the

less obvious arc these, and calling for perception and under- standing in their farthest capacity.

When our critic rose from my place and passed on, he left me full of Strength to spend on the search, and joy in the beauty revealed; what I had felt before in the works of the great unknown and remote now could pass, by my own heart and hands, into the beginning of conquest, the bending of the material to my desire.

* *

Fatality is generally another name for misfortune, but Fate is an impartial agent, and may sometimes be caught in an act of beneficence. It was a strange coincidence that gave me for first master, and without any knowledge or in- tervention on my part, one who had long preceded me in feeling the attraction of a certain trend in Art. When I heard him mention casually, one day, the name of Couture, and found that he knew well the head in the Gibson collection, and held it in special sympathy and admiration, I felt a satisfaction far out of proportion to the incident.

William Sartain had been in Munich, with Duveneck, as a student, and had then passed to long sojourns in Paris. The Romantic School had left its charming memory upon him, as it had upon Duveneck, an exquisite aura lying about the vision of what might have been their not too fine virility; and what had been the very restrained life of a young pupil responded eagerly to what was but a reflection of an approaching sensation, the zest to be felt in the quality of painting, accompanying with delicate sensuousness the stern requirements of manifested form.

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Even if it were worth while to do so, it would be hard to draw a line between the unsophisticated mental movements of early years, as any one's early years were then, and the developments of later and wider views. Whether for better or worse, the early beliefs remained. Planted in a soil fertil- ized, and not to be exhausted by use, growths bore their own novelties and extensions. They could be pruned and grafted, toiled over, and developed. Perhaps if the vines had rotted or been devoured by disease through neglect, they would have been dug up and thrown away, to make room for some advertised quick grower, but the husbandman was patient, and in hopeful love was always searching for fresh qualities in production, adding knowledge to knowledge.

* *

The seasons of the class were short, the criticisms infre- quent, though to one view, at least, sufficient. For two years they continued, and it then became inconvenient for Mr. Sartain to come to us regularly from New York. By that time, as I had been doing some portraits on the side, I was able to take a studio and the class painted there, with a model on certain days, without instruction. At this time I did a study of a friend which resulted in my making my first entrance into the doubtful field of the Exhibitions. It was well hung at the Pennsylvania Academy and was con- siderably noticed.

Finding myself in a large barren studio, for I soon wished to have the whole place to myself, I began to think of a picture. The room was high-studded, and in addition the top light was remote, but full. The walls were grey, a tone not bad, as it was uneven and age had treated it well.

The furniture consisted in half a dozen kitchen chairs which had been used by the class, and as many easels. My uncle had bought me an etching press at an auction which had served mainly as a hat-rack.

The picture I saw to do was a large picture, and I saw it

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complete In composition, the figures, lighting, and ai lories. I took an old piece of sketching-board and did the

composition small, but containing all the important ma

lines, and color. The subject was to be my sister, seated, full-length, with her first-born son in her lap. The picture was to be landscape' in form, and the figures W( re to be seen as if one stood over them. The mother in black sat in a low chair, the brown-eyed boy of three almost reclining in her arms. He was to wear a short blue-and-white cotton garment, his bare legs trailing over his mother's knees. Her head was bent over him, and his hands lay upon her very white ones, which were clasped around him.

The whole picture wras to be warm in tone and in an in- terior which did not exist, except in the mind of the designer.

Strangely enough, the presiding dcemon spoke French in whispering the name of the proposed work. 'Les derniers jours d'enfance.' And this title never seemed translatable or to be spoken in English.

* * *

In this scheme, the first and greatest difficulty was to gain the family's cooperation, for nothing could be accomplished wdthout this. My sister did not live with us. She was engaged in her own first housekeeping. She had two young children, one a baby, and very limited means and assistance. With them lived her husband's grandmother, an aged lady and great friend of mine (before mentioned). She was ex- tremely deaf, was very slight and delicate, but full of com- manding energy and to be watched with tact and constancy. The family would be sure to find my demands exorbitant. I already heard their very just protest.

'Could she not do the picture in Irving Street? Would no one else do as a model? The big empty studio had turned Leilie's head. How large was the picture to be? Two figures, full-length, in an interior? But she had never done anything but the head. Poor Etta would have to take the

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boy to town, an hour's trip in the horse-cars, climb eighty- four steps, and probably do this many times, with a rather uncertain result.'

But I have no memory of any very determined opposition from the family. A mother will do anything to have her child's portrait, and the same energy and confidence burned in my sister's veins as in mine. It is a sad and halting matter, to have one's project overlooked, discussed by others, before it has taken shape, and only the most determined faith can withstand. I was either too absorbed to listen, or the elders, being artists themselves, had no mind to do more than make a few enquiries and supported my sister in her share in the undertaking.

I had pretty well arranged matters before my sitters came for the first time. None of the kitchen chairs I had would do; there would be no possibility of reaching the desired pose in any of them. There was an old steamer chair in our store- room which, of course, could be regulated, though entirely wrong in accessory and design; in fact, like all steamer chairs these qualities were entirely absent except in action, but with the aid of two flat cushions, my models could take in it exactly the desired position. Harry possessed already the garment I wished him to wear, but my sister had nothing like my design for her; but this gave little trouble. Her frock was to be entirely black with slight variation in textures. An old black jersey of mine did very well for this, and, as the picture was to show only one arm fully, I made one black satin sleeve, fitting closely, with a little rich lace at the wrist. Around my sister's knees and lap, and exactly taking the lines of a skirt, we draped a canton crepe shawl of my grand- mother's. It had been dyed black, and had a rich, hanging texture, though delicate, and taking the form.

The family allowed me to have one of the best of our rugs for the floor, and my sister lent me one of the Drinker heir-

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looms, a small .ind charming table, which was to stand near her with a few objects to be chosen later. It took some time to place the figures in precisely the right position on the canvas and to find precisely the right size and proportion for it.

The less than life1 conception of the figures, as they sat, back in the picture, with no absolute foreground to 'place1 them, would have usually required more experience than I possessed. But I had never heard of discouragement. Even after the picture was started, I changed the canvas and stretcher twice, and of course leaned heavily upon the original sketch, which contained every essential mass.

In the background, I followed the tones the sketch sug- gested. I felt the need of a strong horizontal mass across the canvas behind the group, and lower in value than the sec- tion above it, against which my sister's head and a little of the chair were to show.

I found a piece of panelling in a carpenter's shop — only a small piece, but I dyed it to look like mahogany, and it posed, by moving on, for a low wainscotting, uniting floor and wall. The labor, the difficulties, I remember perhaps as little as a mother does her hours of travail. My sister bore her part with her usual gallantry. The boy was extremely amused by the novelty of the scene in which he found him- self. His mother's lap was comfortable, his head leaned upon her breast and her voice was close to his ear, and in the rests he enjoyed running out into the hall with me to get a distant view of the canvas through the open door.

To me, nearly the highest point of interest lay in the group of four hands which occupied the very centre of the composition, the boy's fingers showing a little dark upon the back of the mother's white hand. The arm and back of the steamer chair I had to ignore and forget, as nothing was to be found that in the main would cfit,' and I was obliged to invent a chair 'to taste.'

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The top floor rear of 1334 Chestnut Street accommodated two large studios. My next-door neighbor, when I first oc- cupied one of these, was Stephen Parrish, the etcher and landscape painter and the father of Maxfield Parrish. Mr. Parrish was a charming man, and his talent was the expres- sion of his exquisite perception of quality in things seen. He was by heredity a Friend (in Philadelphia 'Quakers' are the 'Society of Friends'), and all their long exercised repression of beauty, as seen by the artist in Nature, had struggled for expression in him and triumphed. 'Friends' have always been Nature-lovers. No one could better appreciate than they a sunset, waterfall, wing of butterfly, or curve and color in a shell. But Stephen Parrish's freed aesthetic soul desired something more, and was a participant in every touch of his pencil, every rich line of his etched plates, and in the slightest indicative sketch in oil, or water-color.

He had to pass my door to reach his own, and, although my studio was large, my door was always open for a longer line of vision as I was pushing forward into the unknown, with plenty of courage to act on my purposes, but little confidence in what they might really amount to. It is im- possible to estimate the value to me of Mr. Parrish's presence as a neighbor. Except William Sartain, he was the only art- ist I had known. He had little time for visiting, and re- spected, as a real friend, my open door, but when he passed it, he waved approval with lifted arms, and sometimes a shout. No captain leading his troop with upstretched sword could have more gallantly beckoned to the field. Forward! ...En avant! . . . No talk, no question, no negation. Bigger my heart . . . firmer my step up and down . . . Onward! . . .

* * *

But when the work was pretty far under way, my invalu- able neighbor went abroad and rented his studio to two young women. They were not workers, and I then had my

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first view of art as an accompaniment to life, and was for re- tiring into a closed arena. But, after all, all was for the best. One of the girls, pitying

my sister's heavy role, volunteered as a model, posed l"i the draped knees, and put her pretty feet into the plain black slippers. Then I tasted the joy to be found in the drawing of a woman's foot, although the long dress allowed to be seen less than I would have chosen to do.

* * *

Miss B. was extremely anxious that Anschutz, of the Academy of Fine Arts, should see the picture. Anschutz had been a pupil of Thomas Eakins, and I had heard of him as an instructor at the Academy. I thought his coming would be too great a favor, as I had not been a pupil of the P.A.F.A. But Miss B. was unafraid and persuaded him to come. Both of us were shy. I was frightened, and he was by nature inarticulate, but extremely impressive in his some- how conveyed force of feeling. For what seemed an inter- minable time to me, he walked up and down in front of the canvas, examined it from far and near, rubbed his chin and forehead, and seemed to struggle for speech.

Finally, almost writhing with the effort, he said, pointing to the child: 'What did you think about when you were do- ing those legs?' I, entirely unaware of known methods in the search for truth, could think of nothing to say but, 'Why, I thought of them.'

This was baffling and, alas, Anschutz's next query, if he offered one, is not recorded. I did not know how to ques- tion him and dared not press for an opinion. He remained for some time looking and rubbing his chin. I suppose I must have tried to fill the space with some kind of utterance. Alas, I cannot recall any further words of his. It seemed afterwards as if he had felt a sort of puzzled interest, which later, when I came to know more of Eakins's work and in- fluence, I understood. As a master, Thomas Eakins, in the

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life-class, was supreme, and his teaching was profoundly valuable. From his pupils I heard of 'points of support,' 'weight,' and 'balance.' The integral harmony of parts, whether in action or static, I believed in, even when getting only at third hand his general reasoning.

Thomas Eakins's formidable personality held unrivalled sway over the students of the P.A.F.A. during his long di- rectorship there. No one who studied under him ever forgot his precepts, or could be interested in any principles of Art that did not include his. They were rock-bottom, funda- mental, but somehow reached regions, by research, that others could not gain by flight.

Eakins's father was a writing-master. He is said to have hesitated in his youth in the choice of a profession. Should he be a surgeon or an artist? He decided on the latter. But it was years after, and I believe only once, that the strong tendency that had almost won him showed in actual choice of subject. His portrait of Dr. Gross at the operating clinic horrified Philadelphia Exhibition-goers as a gory spectacle. It is now held to be one of the greatest works ever produced in this country.

Eakins found so much in bony structure, articulations, and balanced weight that could be expressed by Art, and Art only, that his finding and expressing these truths be- came a unique and precious revelation. He relished with high zest what he found, and in his hands it became Art, al- though he closed his eyes to all other pleasures of vision and other equally veritable truths.

In 191 7, some time after his death, a retrospective exhibi- tion of his work was held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was opportune in those troubled times, for Eakins was an American of deep steadfastness and sanity. The value of his work was seen to be permanent. It had nothing to do with evanescent art moods. It was outside of fad or fashion, the hectic desires of degeneracy, and the ebul- litions of artistic anarchy.

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Class and STUDIO Force was never squandered or lacking, and emanated

from his canvases with an almost physical .stimulation,

which, coming from nearly colorless and dusky painting, seemed Strange to those* whose idea just at that moment;

was that color-vitality must be served up straight from the

tube (that is, from the factory). As color is the child oflight,

Eakins's deep scrutiny took light first and with it, of com <\ shadow. He never undertook to reveal form without these elements, even out-of-doors. The essential and broad mean- ings which he sought were clothed with light, not brilliantly, but hall hidden in the moted atmosphere of the quiet work- room. His appetite was so natural and strong that the dusky daylight of the studio was glamour enough for him, and in his outdoor studies he is seeking action and energy rather than the color values which are known as 'joyous.'

Color, however, in Eakins's work is far from being absent. In one of the choicest numbers in the exhibition, 'No. i, Pair-Oared Shell,' a picture of modest size, a strong puller in the sliding seat looms out of the ember mists of a hot evening on the Schuylkill. Vital human action and the fascination of an August sun's last effort in vaporous twilight meet without friction, and the full sweep of Eakins's silent emotion reaches us.

Eakins was not much concerned with pattern, and was far from Oriental influence. His talent stood solidly upon the foundation of his inheritance from Western Art and civiliza- tion. His sense of mass and balance, however, were instinc- tive, and corresponded with the rugged surety of his insight.

In and from his retired home in Philadelphia, Eakins saw what he wished to render intimately. He did not go far afield. The inhabited body was his chief concern, and his pursuit of this theme never lost its zest.

He had an unerring eye for the ultimate instant in action, and in the drama of a head. Eakins never troubled himself as to originality. He was in a way a chief of cave-men, and was as unconscious of having historic significance. He need

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never have signed his pictures, for the slightest of them can never be mistaken for the work of any other man. Which is, of course, the surest mark of an original mind, in Art.

* * *

It was well, perhaps, for the isolated wrestler with just dis- covered opportunities that personal contact with the giant did not take place. I got strong food from my gleanings from his vividly impressed students, and was out of reach of the obsession of his personality, which I would have been sure to succumb to, and this might have resulted in my be- ing a poor imitation of what was in some ways deeply alien to my nature. A curious instinct of self-preservation kept me outside the magic circle. I watched him from behind staircases, and corners, at the Academy, and my visit from his apostle Anschutz did not give me as much as did the morsels loosely dropped by his pupils.

There are curious airholes in memory, which I will not attempt to fill. Such are those which occurred in regard to the circumstances and opinions which must have accom- panied the last work upon the picture. Who saw it, what they said, what the family verdict was — all is a blank; even what I thought myself. It has lasted well, and its virtues, such as they were, remain; as do its crass youthfulness, and the naivete of its composition.

It was first seen at the Pennsylvania Academy, where it had the luck to capture one of the corner panels in the big room, the North Gallery. I do not remember its going else- where at that time, but oddly enough it got to France before its author did.

After some time had elapsed, it was seen by one of my girl friends, Margaret Lesley, who had been a student in France. She was bent on returning, and was filled with determina- tion to take the picture back with her to Paris. She would take it herself, generous soul, and send it to the Salon.

'The Salon!' I screamed. What insanity it was! But she

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Class and Studio persisted. After all, the issue was not serious. She would

take it by hand, rolled up, in her stateroom. I gave in, of course, but without hope.

Her letter brought me the news of her streti bing it and Carrying it oil topofa cab to the studioof Jean Paul Laurens,

to get his criticism and advice as to entering it for the Spring

Salon. Alas, I have no record of the words of the actual interview, but the great man strongly favored her sending it, so she got an impromptu frame and offered it to Fate.

It had no allies; I was no one's pupil, or protegee; it was the work of an unheard-of American. It was accepted, and well hung on a centre wall. No flattering press notices were sent me, and I have no recorded news of it. After months it came back to me, bearing the French labels and number, in the French manner, so fraught with emotion to many hearts. I sat endlessly before it, longing for some revelation of the scenes through which it had passed; the drive under the sky of Paris, the studio of the great French artist, where his eye had actually rested on it, and observed it. The handling by employes; their French voices and speech; the propos of those who decided its placing; the Gallery, the French crowd, which later I was to know so well; but there were not many Americans in France then, and we were not setting the idol of our wealth before them, for worship.

But there was no voice, no imprint. The prodigal would never reveal the fiercely longed-for mysteries. Perhaps it was better so, and it is probable that before the canvas, dumb as a granite door, was formed the purpose to go my- self as soon as possible.

V

EUROPE

I DID not have to wait long. I had accumulated some earn- ings, and planned to be very economical. My uncle was now convinced that I must not be advised against what I saw clearly should be my next step. The next for him, as usual, was to aid me in every way possible. I needed no other help. Besides the matter of necessary revenue, he saw to every- thing in the way of settling up my studio affairs and the de- tails of the journey — steamer passage, passport, letter of credit, etc., and, most important, a companion for the trip. A cousin temporarily visiting in the West was persuaded to change her plans and come from Montana to sail with me on the Red Star steamer, the Nordland, to Antwerp. It would be a winter voyage and not short.

My accoutrements were warm clothes — some of them my sister's cast-offs — and the 'Ancient Masters of Belgium and Holland,5 Fromentin's incomparable work. An artist friend, Henry Thouron, well acquainted with Munich, Paris, and the Galleries, made monochrome drawings on oil sketch-boards, of convenient size, to be used in making color studies in the Louvre and elsewhere, thus avoiding the delay of setting up the composition and lighting. I had an eight by ten of Titian's 'Entombment' and the same of the 'Ma- donna with the Rabbit'; also an Infanta Marguerite, of larger size, and a head of Rubens, besides several of the more modern Masters. The value of such prep aratifs, which might flippantly be called 'Springboards for the Galleries,' has not diminished with the years. I had to wait a whole winter for a place before the 'Entombment,' but I made a rather creditable copy of the Infanta, and learned volumes from it, though it was many years before I was to see Velasquez in Madrid.

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Europe

The fifteenth of January is not a propitious day for nn- barking on an Atlantic voyage, particularly i< >r One to whom the sea is unknown. But the unpropitious season furnished mc witli the most interesting and memorable ofall my four- teen crossings. At the fateful hour, no gay, noisy, noonday crowd pushed and clamored. Of the few cabins occupied on the Nordland, none burgeoned with flowers, bonbon boxes, and grocers' baskets of fruit. On a dark, stormy winter night, we found the dock where the two relatives, one for each of us, waited for greetings, messages, and fare- wells. When they left us at nearly midnight, we found our- selves on a wet, not much lighted, deck, where a few almost invisible figures moved about. One silhouette occasionally showed against an uncertain light. It differed from the rest in what outline we could see, a fur collar, and something in the walk. Feminine instinct also showed us that we were from time to time discreetly observed. The Nordland was not a small boat, but we soon found that we had a whole corridor to ourselves. The cheeriest of stewardesses actually awaited us. We could have the adjoining stateroom for our luggage and overflow, if we wished. I thought of the historic 'Mantelpiece,' commanded by the worthy Captain Reece,

in the 'Bab Ballads.' But all was soon explained. Mrs. 1

cannot remember her name, although I can think of many others that I would sooner have forgotten, could tell off the passenger list to us on her comfortable-looking fingers. There was the 'Captain's lady and sister-in-law,' who, of course, occupied remote and special quarters. I may say here that we never saw either of these ladies, and it was re- ported to us later that they came near to dying of seasick- ness. Besides these, there was an old German fraulein, with her maid. Here our friend gently touched her forehead. Melancholy she was, from homesickness, and was returning for good. This concluded the list of lady passengers, besides ourselves. There were eight business gentlemen, whose quarters were near the smoking-room. She said nothing in

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regard to the fur overcoat, and we did not ask if they were much worn on board. We would sit at the Captain's table, an honor I learned, in later voyages, not to covet. In this case there was no other. But it was my fate not to appear at it for a number of the most wretched days of my life.

*

Our course took us at once out into what was probably the worst weather to be found upon the 'Banks,' but we did not get all the way into it until the second night out. In the mean time I suffered all the torments, or thought I did, of which soul and body, and that mysterious agent called 'morale,' were capable. How I hated all those who had aided and abetted my going, especially those who knew all about it. Imagination furnished forth a complete and detailed account of the foundering of our plunging vessel. Die if I must, let me not sink into black cold abysses, in which lay the bones of the drowned among tangled slime; or I might float halfway down, where it was too deep for light to pene- trate, lipped by hideous, grey-white monsters. From the dissolving fabric of the central pivot of my physical being, all hope of support, or endurance, vanished. Oh! yes, I would die easily enough, but how about consciousness? That was supremely active still. Was I not continuously in a state of clammy dissolution? Thus I appealed indignantly, as so many had before, to the grinning fiends who had some- how got me into their power. What a fool I had been to be- lieve that Milton had settled all that! The good stewardess stood by, with all the help she could supply, and her cheer- ful nonchalance was the only point of hope for me.

* *

In the middle of the second night, making unimportant other howlings, plunges, and crashes, the world itself and all its rocks and mountains seemed to fall upon the deck over my head.

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EUROI' I

It was not yet day, by even the least glimmer of the port- hole, which fell into blackness and rose dizzily to where sky

must have been, when Mrs. came in, in her wrapper,

wanting to know how I was. She seemed fixedly cheerful,

but she did not lie to mc; she confessed to me that the Weather was bad. The ship was entirely coated with iee. I ought to sec it. 'What had fallen on the deck?' I persisted, 'Was it coal? Where had it come from?'

'Oh, no. We had been within water. We'd been entirely under, smokestack and all, rolled under, you know, quite unusual, and wouldn't happen again.'

The drama of this episode and our proof of ability to re- cover from it stimulated me sufficiently to disperse all but my bodily misery. At least memory furnishes no more de- tails of the moment, and I suppose I slept.

* *

Our voyage did not promise to be less than twelve days long. We were to sail up the Scheldt to Antwerp, and more than four of these days had to be endured before I could be dragged up to the ladies' saloon. But neither fresh air nor change of scene has much effect while the attack is still on. There was no sun, but as I lay in dark flannel wrapper (let travellers imagine that, now!) on the green velvet divan, my eyes, seeking the perpendicular, were not much stimulated by the huge, short, slanting column of the mast, which filled a large proportion of the cabin. It was covered with matched boards and was painted in ochre, so that the stirring idea that an actual portion of the ship's stem and strength was before me was not granted until after I had made my escape from confinement. Moreover, on the other side of the great obstruction, and always partly in view, sat the German lady and her maid. I believe it is true that the mentally deranged are immune from seasickness. Such seemed to be the case with our fellow-passenger. Not so, however, her sound little attendant, who was an intrepid sufferer, entirely devoted to

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her charge, and her knitting; or was it lace crochet? She never gave out except to rush to the deck at frequent inter- vals, and when huge trays of food were set before the im- passive nostalgic, she managed to persuade her by cries of 'Essen, essen, sie muss essen,' to swallow a few mouthfuls. I thought of the fixed 'thimble-eyes' of the inmates of the asylum in Stockton's story. The same were turned on me, with a constant gaze, from around the slope of the mast. Even less to be believed by an ocean traveller of to-day, the comforting little stewardess brought a large basket of mend- ing — stockings and garments of all sizes, worn but saveable

— for the group of boys and girls at home, whose bread she was earning on the sea. She sat by me, so occupied, for hours, only broken by ministrations in my behalf.

My cousin, who had no more experience of the sea than I

— that is, none at all — proved invulnerable. What were the elements to her, or her solar plexus? I might have hated her for this, but I did not, and accepted the diversion she furnished by her adventures on the heaving and slippery deck, where her passing was in view. She did not walk or slide alone. The ship's doctor accompanied her. He was a Bel- gian of pure Dutch type, short and extremely blond, and had, even from a distance, very thin pale whiskers, and pink eyes.

They appeared to be speaking as they jostled along, but when I enquired of M., in one of her dashes into the cabin, what had been their conversation, she told me that she had said, 'J'ai peur de parler Franc^ais,' to which he had replied, 'J'ai peur de parler Anglais.' The rest is silence.

Sometimes our great bearded Chief Officer passed the cabin window, and I was restored by the thought that we were in the hands of such a man. The stewardess told me that he was from Heligoland, a bold islander.

Later, in the sunny days we spent on the spotless deck, we sometimes had a polite word from the giant. Once I ven- tured a foolish question as to what was the best time to go to sea.

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Europe 'When your trunk is packed,1 he replied; so I knew we

had been right

*

* *

But there came a day when the ship's heaving and plung- ing were no more to me than the swing of a bird on a bough. Rested from all the worry and work of departure, I took the slanting deck with a bound, catching at the rail now and then. I did not know that my opportunity was unique. I believed that on all ocean liners, two girls might have, by night and day, the whole deck to themselves. The Nord- land was our Yacht, where we were not even encumbered by guests or servants, though we had a private stewardess, below. True, if we happened to have spread ourselves on the warm, sweet-smelling deck, at the place and hour when the Quartermaster let down his rope and bucket, and drew it up full, sparkling, and dripping, we might watch him at- tach the rope in a very special manner to the rail. We were very kindly admitted to the Bridge, where the Officer of the hour, whose cap was visible as he walked up and down be- hind the canvas screen, in the so innocent sunshine.

Once I asked another foolish question: 'Did the Quarter- master really always tie the rope the same way?5

The answer was ready and decisive.

'There is only one way, and that's the right one.'

So the matter was settled once for all, and I found later that many other queries could be solved by the same formula.

Of course, our chairs were the only ones to be found on the Nordland, and we placed them where we chose, changing with sun and wind. If we went far enough down the long deck, we might look over and down into the steerage. One could see at a distance, now and then, a sailor climbing on or adjusting something. Dark objects were suspended upon the huge yellow smokestacks, which we found to be other sailors cleaning the same with a rag and two fingers. We began a new chapter on the day when we bravely descended

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to the Captain's table. We were the only 'ladies/ and were received with much politeness. The eight business gentlemen were there. They seemed to emerge from the invisible smoking-room for food only, as seals come up to breathe, and there was another whom we recognized, even without his furs, as the differing silhouette of our embarkation.

As his seat was directly opposite our places, he immedi- ately took the opportunity to offer us something from across the table, and this was accomplished with exactly the right manner and smile. Whatever it was, was accepted with, I trust, equal propriety.

We had not been lonely before,