early years was that eminent Buffalonian, President Millard Fillmore. In a book Mr. Sellsted published not long since containing reminiscences of bygone days the artist-author told some interesting anecdotes throwing sidelights on the character of this occupant of the Presidential chair. Thomas Ball, said to be the oldest of American sculptors, was born in the same year as Sellsted-1819and earned repute as painter and musician as well as sculptor. A neighbor of the artist in Montclair, N. J., wrote of him not long since as "a benediction to all who have the pleasure of his genial and delightful acquaintance, his talents summed up in a few droll lines by a neighbor: 'He writes and paints and sculps, The fiddle plays and sings, Life is too short to do all things well "In his charming autobiography, under the title of 'My Threescore Years and Ten', published in 1891, the story of his life is told in a manner so joyous and homelike that you at once become one of the family. A painter of miniatures, then of canvases of importance; one of the earliest to make statuettes, the first to sing the title role of 'Elijah' in this country, and, finally, his colossal statues of Webster, Washington and others, place him in a unique position in his varied accomplishments as an artist." He Montclair has quite a colony of artists and literary folk and among them is that delightful veteran of the studios, J. Scott Hartley. has long been one of the leading lights of the Salmagundi Club, which clings to the Bohemian neighborhood of Washington Square, New York, and is prominent also in the National Academy of Design, National Sculpture Society, and Architectural League of New York. Among his works are the statue of Alfred the Great on the Appellate Court Building, Madison Square, New York: the figure of Pierre Laclede. founder of St. Louis, done for the St. Louis cial study of the expression in clay not only of the form and features but of the soul of a child. Speaking of the ideal child-not from the Sunday School point of view, but from that of the artist-the sculptor says: "Art is the magic power that transforms the crude and rugged imperfections of nature into a recognizable ideal. To be able to humanize the beauties and imperfections of a figure of life into an ideal figure of marble or bronze is the duty of art, and the result of a vivid, accurate memory. Especially does this apply to the modeling of children. They are constantly moving. The fleeting, momentary seconds of repose must be instantly memorized and stored in the mind for future reference in the slower process of sculpturing the life portrait of the child. I have often thought that if parents could be made to understand the artistic value of these active impressions, these swift changes of natural graces, that young children are constantly giving us in the course of their first five years of life, they would recognize the value of a sculptor's portrait because never again will the child be such a conglomerate expression of beauty in life. I mean beauty that is unconscious of grace, teeming with the principles that are the foundation of beauty in after life." Jacob A. Riis is again mourning the loss of a dog. This time the friend and biographer of Roosevelt and author of "How the Other Half Lives" must charge up his affliction to the carelessness of truck drivers rather than to malice and general cussedness. Bruno, who had been a JACOB A. RIIS neighbor who saw the accident considerately conveyed the body of the animal to the Riis residence in a cart. It was buried in the yard and Mr. Riis ordered a granite marker for the grave inscribed "Friend Bruno'. The author has always had a soft spot in his heart for dogs and one of the most agonizing moments in his life was when he witnessed the death -the murder, he calls it-of the first pet of the kind he had in this country. He tells about it in "The Making of an American". It was soon after Mr. Riis, then hardly more than a boy, landed in this country and he was going through such vicissitudes that it is a wonder that he lived to tell the tale. One night he was almost freezing to death and the warm body of a little black and tan which had shared the shelter of a doorway with him helped to keep his blood from congealing. Driven at last to seek refuge from the bitter night in a police station he was forced to leave his canine companion on the doorsteps-there was no welcome within for a dog whose owner was himself a wanderer. The shivering little creature curled up on the cold step to wait for his friendless master. "Poor little friend;" writes Mr. Riis, "it was its last watch." Awaking suddenly in the night young Riis found that some one sleeping on the slab next to him had robbed him of a memento, a locket containing a lock of some loved one's hair. When he complained to the doorman the latter kicked him out and down the steps. The dog in waiting sprang on the officer, in defense of his master, and the doorman in his rage seized the unhappy animal by the legs and beat his brains out against the stone steps. It so maddened Riis, already driven to desperation by his troubles, that he shook the dust of New York from his feet, vowing never to return. Fortunately for the downtrodden of the Metropolis he did not keep his vow. Twenty-five years A later, when Roosevelt was a police member of the Riis family for twelve years, was trotting along in the street near the author's home at Richmond Hill, L. I., when he was struck by the wheels of a heavy commercial vehicle and killed. A commissioner, the murder of the little black and tan was avenged. They visited the police station where the incident occurred together and when the author related the story to his distinguished companion the latter exclaimed: "Did they do that to you?" and striking his clenched fists together he declared: "I will smash them to-morrow.' He was as good as his word, and the action of the police board did away with the abuses that had so long existed in connection with the police lodging house. Mr. Riis is in much demand nowadays as a speaker or lecturer before societies whose object is social betterment. At the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in June, held in Boston, he hit hard at the killing greed of many tenement owners in large cities whom he charged with responsibility for the high mortality rate, the bad housing conditions, attended by low standards of living and lack of privacy in the home, all increasing the trend toward criminality. Such conditions, he said, perpetuate slum politics, retard movements for social uplift, and in New York City alone result each year in 10,000 deaths from tuberculosis. One of the most talked about plays of the past season was "As a Man Thinks", by Augustus Thomas. It has been issued in printed form and is worth reading not simply as a play but as a thoughtful study of social conditions in this country. It is not quite ten years since the death of Cecil Rhodes but at least four biographies or appreciations of the South African empire builder have now appeared. One of the latest is by his private secretary, Philip Jourdan, and for that reason possesses special interest for the author of course had a peculiar opportunity for intimate knowledge of a great man. Mr. Jourdan was greatly attached to Rhodes and says that one of his objects in writing his life was to refute the charges that have sometimes been made reflecting on the character of the man he so much admired. One reads in a circular issued by the National Society of Craftsmen some suggestions that indicate how closely art in some of its branches is being applied to everyday affairs. A paragraph or two may be quoted: 'At this time of year the textile arts are properly matters of special interest. With the suggestion of summer things which the early warm breezes carry there is an impulse to throw by the 'winter garments of repentance' and seize the light, cool draperies which can be so pleasing to the sight upon warm days. The textile crafts have not received, as yet, the attention of some of the other art-crafts but are coming to the front, both as regards interest on the part of the public and in regard to the quality and interest of the things themselves, in the beauty of technique and especially in the new and enlarged methods of decoration. Even the art of stencilling, for the time under a cloud because of a somewhat cheap popularity, is capable of very great beauty hardly touched upon in the art-crafts and quite unfamiliar outside. But a new craft presents itself full of interest. New it is, not because of basic principles, which must always be old, but because of the adaptation of old methods to new ways of working out, and especially to an entirely new pattern for this kind of work, pattern that is very free, very modern." The writer then goes on to describe examples of the art of batik making, one a corner of a table cover with a border of swans designed by Charlotte Busck, and another example of much delicacy of design, the work of Mira Burr Edson. These and some attractive pieces of work combining wood-block printing on fabrics with bits of embroidery upon the highlights, by Mabel Lane, were shown at a recent exhibition of the National Society of Craftsmen. The exam Had you but come, a careless knight of Arden, To crush the crimson roses in my garden, And pass, a fleeting swallow on the wing; Of merry music or of golden hue When now the passing birds of autumn sing, Had you but come, as any kindly neighbor, Or braided trooper, whistling to my door, Into mine ears-a shadow gone before, Had you but come, a moonbeam on the roses, A gust of leaves across the paths of spring, The bud you crushed, no more remembering, But O, you came as blood into my being, The rose you might have crushed by your decreeing And now, with every gift of sun and rain, Entangled in the choking thorn and weed, The roses, ah, the roses once again! -Aloysius Coll. LABOR AND LEISURE Labor's Holiday By Portia Brent HE Act of Congress of 1894, making the first Monday in September a legal holiday, referred to it as "the day celebrated and known as Labor's Holiday". Though this term is a proper one, the framers of that bill were mistaken in stating that it was so known for it was commonly known as Labor Day, and such is the term generally applied to it; though it has been criticised by many for conveying the idea that it is a "day of labor", even though we are aware of the fact that it is not, 66 and that it is really the holiday of the laboring classes. The idle rich" have accepted it, too; probably on the grounds that if they do not labor they at least contribute to the cause of labor by giving the working class plenty to do; and, moreover, the majority of this class like an excuse for making extra holidays, on the same principle that generous persons like the Christmas season because it furnishes a legitimate cause for giving, though they have found giving a joy during any day of the year when their purses permitted and their hearts prompted. |