Evening Star Newspaper, January 22, 1898, Page 18

LETT RUDUDIE este IRCA q DUIS PHONONS NE wes Ase). 22 Ase. x WPM ° ic “Well, whst are you gaping at? Why don’t you say something?" And all the impatience of the rapt artist at being in- terrupted by anything but praise was in the outburst. “Holy Moses!” I gasped. “Give a man a chance to get his breath. I fall through a dark antechamber, over a bicycle, stumble round a screen, and smack! a glare of orfental sunlight from a gigantic canvas, the vibraticn ard glow of a group of joy- ous figures reeking with life and sweat . you the idealist, the seeker after nature’ beautiful moods and art's beautiful pat- terns!” “Beautiful moods!” he echoed agrily. “And why Isn't this a beautiful mood? And what more beautiful pattern than this— jook! this line, this sweep, this group here, this clinging of the children round this mas3—all in a glow—balanced by this mass of cool shadow. The meaning doesn’t in- terfere with the pattern, you chump!" “Oh, so there is a meaning! You've be- come an anecdotal painter!” “Adjectives be hanged! T can’t talk the in the precious daylight. If you can’t (Copsright, 1897, by 5. 8. MeClure Co.) THE JOYOUS COMRADE: pee Se WRITTEN FOR THE EVENING STAR BY I. ZANGWILL Author of “Children of the Ghetto,” “an Odd Life,” ete. : mighty glad when I limped across the bridge over the rushing river and dropped on the hotel sofa. Next morning I was stiff as a poker, but I struggled up the four rickety flights to the local physician, and, being assured I only wanted rest, I resolved to take it with book and pipe and mug in a shady beer garden on the river. I had been reading for about an hour, when five or six Tyrolese, old men and young, in their gray and green costumes and their little hats, trooped in and occu- pied the large table near the inn- door. Presently I waa startled by the sound of the zither; they began to sing songs; the Pretty daughter of the house came and joined in the sirging. I put down my book. “The old lady who had served me with my Maass of beer, seeing my interest, came over and chatted about her guests. Oh, no, they were rot villagers; they came from four hours away. The slim one was @ school teacher, and the dicker was a tenor and sang in the chorus of the Passion- Spiel; the good-looking young man was to be the St. John. Passion Play! I pricked up my ears. When? Where? In their wn village—three days hence—only given once every ten years—for hundreds and hundreds of years. Could strangers see it? What should strangers want to see it for? But could they see it? Gewiss. I can see that you are painting some-! This was indeed a stroke of luck. I had THE DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE JOINED IN THE SINGING. thing you haven't seen. You haven't been i cast, have you?” I haven't got time to jaw about me and have an absinthe at the in memory of old Paris days— y of the boys will tell you, ight till stx—half-past six. Au ‘voir, au ‘voir!” As I went aown the steep, ame old Dan,” I thought. “Who would ima I was a stranger in New York looking up on old fellow struggler on his native heath? If I didn’t know better, t might fancy bis tremendous success had given him the same opinion of himself that America has of him. But no, nothing will change him; the same furious devotion to s canvas once he Fas quietly planned his picture, the same obstinate conviction that he is seeing something in the only right way! And yet something has changed him. Why has his brush suddenly gone east? Why this new kind of composition crowded with figures—ancient Jews, too? Has he been taken with piety, and is he going herceforward oste:tatiously to proclatm his race? And who is the cheerful cen- tral figure with the fine open face? I don’t recollect any such scene in Jewish history— or anything so joyous. Perhaps it's a study of modern Jerusalem Jews, to show their life 1s not all Wailing Wall and Jeremiah. Or perhaps it's only decorative. America is great on decoration just now. No, he said the picture had a meaning. Well, I shal! know all about it tonight. Anyhow, it's a beautiful thing.” “Same old Dan,” I thought even more @ectsively as, when I opened the door of the litue cafe, a burly, black-bearded fig- ure with audacious eyes came at me with a grip and a slap and a roar of welcome, and dragged me to the quiet corner be- hind the billiard tables. “I've just been opalizing your absinthe for you,” he laughtd as we sat down. “But what's the matter? You look kind ©” scared.” 's your Inferno of a city. As I turned the corner of 6th avenue an elevated train came shrieking and rumbling, and a swirl of wind swept screeching round and round, enveloping me In @& whirlpool of smoke and steam, until, dazed and choked in what seemed the scalding effervescence of a collision, I had given up all hope of ever learning what your confounded picture rk stairs, He took a complacent sip. stayed with you, did it?’ And the of triumph, flushing for an instant “It light his rugged features, showed when it waned how pale and drawn they were by the feverish tension of his long day's work. “Yes, it did, old fellow,” I said affec- tionately. “The joy and the glow of it, and yet also some strange antique sim- plicity and restfulness you have got into it, I know not how, have been with me all day, comforting me in the midst of the tearing. grinding life of this closing nine- teenth century after Christ.” A curious smile flitted across Dan's face. He tilted his chair back, and rested his head against the wall ‘There's nothing that takes me so much out of the nineteenth century after Christ,” he said, dreamily, “as this little French cafe. It wafts me back to my early student days, that He somewhere amid the enchanted mists of the youth of the world; to the zestful toil of the stu- to the careless trips in quaint, gray Holland or flaming, devil-may-care Spain. Ah. what scenes shift and shuffle in the twinkle of the gas jet in this opalescent liquid—the hot shimmer of the arena at Seville bull fight, with its swirl of ml movement; the torchlight pro- of pilgrims round the church at . with the one black nun praying rself in a shadowy corner; the love- valley of the Tauba, where the tinkle he sheep bells mingles with the Lu- theran hymn blown to the four winds from the old ch tower: wines that were red: sunshir at was warm: mandolins.” Hi® Voice died away as in exquisite reverie. “And the east?” I said, slyly. A good-natured smile dissipated his de- cious drea: Ah, yes,” he said. “My east was the Tyrol! How do you mean?” see you won't let me out of that story, is there?” haps not what dca story. m.aking in it, you know. i it can wait. Tell me about your you liter- No love- that's mixed up with the story.” you had become an anec- no laughing matter.” he said, gravely u remember when we parted at Muni 1 & year ago last spring, you to go on to Vienna and I to go back to America? Weill, I had a sudden fancy to take one last European trip all by myself, and started south through the Tyrol with @ pack on my back. The third day out I fell and bruised my thigh severely, and could not make my little mountain town ull moonlight. And I tell you I was always rather wanted to see the Passion Play, but the thought of the fashionable Oberammergau made me sick. Would like to be vorgestelt? Rather. it was not ‘en minutes after this introduction be- fore I had settled to stay with St. John, and clouds of good American tobacco vere rising from six Tyrolese pipes and many an ‘auf Ihr Wohl’ was busying the pretty Kelinerinn. They trotted out all thelr reportory of quaint local songs for my benefit—it sounded bully, I tell you, out there with the sunlight and the green leaves and the rush of the river—and in this aroma of beer and brotherhood I blessed my damaged thigh. Three days hence! Just time for it to heal. A provi- dential world, after all. “And it was indeed with a buoyant step and a gay heart that I set out over the hills at sunrise on that memorable’morn- ing. The play was to begin at 10, and I should just be on time. What a walk! Imagine it! Clear coolness of dawn, fresh green sparkling de he road winding up and down, round hil up cliffs, along val- leys, through woods where the green branckes swayed in the morning wind and dappled the grass fantastically with danc- ing sunlight. And as fresh as the morning was, I felt, the artistic sensation awaiting me. I swung round the last hill-shoulder, saw the quaint gables of the first house peeping through the trees, the church spire rising beyond; then groups of Tyro- lese, converging from all the roads dipped down the valley, past the quiet lake, up the hills beyond, found myself caught in a stream of peasants, and, presto! was sucked from the radiant day into the deep gloom of the barn-like theater. “I don’t know how it is done in Ober- ammergau, but this Tyrolese thing was a strange jumble of art and naivete, of tal- ent and stupidity. There was a full-fledged Stage and footlights, and the scenery, some one said, was painted by a man from Munich. But the players were badly made up; the costumes, if correct, were ill-fit- ting; the stage badly lighted, and the flats didn't ‘jine.” Some of the actors had gleams of artistic perception. St. Mark was beautiful to look on, Caiaphas had a sense of elocution, the Virgin was tender and sweet, and Judas rose powerfully to his great twenty minutes’ soliloquy. But the bulk of the palyers, though ali were earnest and fervent, were clumsy or self- conscious. The crowds were stiff and awkward, painfully symmetrical, like school children at drill. A chorus of ten cr twelve ushered in each episode with song, and a man further explained it in bald narrative. The acts of the play prop- €r were interrupted by tablaux vivants of Old Testament scenes from Adam and Eve onward. There was much, you see, that was puerile, even ridiculous; and every now and then some one would open the door of the dusky auditorium and a shaft of sunshine would fly in from the outside world to remind me further how unreal was all this gloomy make-believe. Nay, during the entr’acte I went out like every- — else and lunched off sausages and eer. “And yet, beneath all this critical con- sciousness, beneath even the artistic con- ciousness that could not even resist jotting down a face or a scene in my sketch book, something curious was happening in the depths of my beirg. The play exercised from the very first a strange magnetic effect on me; despite all the primitive humors of the players, the simple, sublime tragedy that disengaged itself from their uncouth but earnest goings-on began to move and even oppress my soul. Christ had been to me merely a theme for artists; my studies and travels had familiarized me with every possible conception of the Man of Sorrows. I had seen myriads of Ma- donnas ‘nursing him, miles of Magdalens bewailing him. Yet the sorrows I had never felt. Perhaps it was my Jewish training; perhaps it was that none of the Christians I lived with had ever believed in Him. At any rate, her for the first time the Christ-story came home to me as a real, living fact; something that had ac- tuaily happered. I saw this simple son of the people—made more simple by my knowledge that this representative was a baker—moving ainong the ancient peasant and fisher life of Galilee; I saw Him draw men and women, saints and sinners, by the magic-of His love, the simple sweet- ness of His inner sunshine; I saw the sun- shine change to lightning as He drove the money-changers from the temple; I watch- ed the clouds deepen as the tragedy drew on. | saw Him bid farewell to His mother; I heard suppressed sobs all around me. ‘Then the heavens were overcast, and it scemed as If earth held its breath, waiting for the supreme moment. They dragged Him before Pilate; they clothed Him in scarlet robe and platted His crown of thorns and spat on Him; they gave Him vinegar to drink, mixed with gall, and He so divinely sweet and forgiving through all. A horrible oppression hung over the world; I felt choking; my ribs pressed in- ward; my heart seemed contracted. He was dying for the sins of the world, He summed tp the whole world’s woe and pitifulness; the two ideas hindkatwmalite lie ee an oe le Eee ed in my troubled soul. And I, a Jew, had hitherto = Him. What would they say, these simple peasants all around, if they knew that I was of that hated race? Then something broke in me and I sobbed, too—sobbed with bitter tears that soon turned sweet in strange relief and glad sympathy with my rough brothers and sisters.” He paused a moment and sipped silently at his al absinthe. I = not break the silence. I was moved terested, though aes all this had to do with his Picture I could only dimly surmise. ”Sie went on: “When it was all over and I went out into the open air I did not see the sunlight. I carried the dusk of the theater with me, and the gloom of Golgotha brooded over the sunny afternoon. I heard the nails driven in, I saw the blood spurting from the wounds; there was realism in the thing, I tell you. The peasants, accustomed to the painful story, had quickly recovered thelr gayety, and were pouring boister- ously down the hilistde like a glad, turbu- lent mountain stream rnloosed from the dead hand of frost. But I was still ice- bound and fog-wrapped. Outside the Gas- thaus where I went to dine gay groups assembled, an organ played, some strolling Italian girls danced gracefully, and my artistic self was aware of a warmth and a rush. But the inmost me was Lettre | in gloom, with which the terrtbly pound steak they gave me, fraudulently overlaid with two showy fried eggs, seemed only in ——— St. John came in, the Christ and the schoolmaster—who had conducted tho ckoir—and the thick tenor, and some sup- ers; and I congratulated them-one and all vith @ gloomy sense of dishonesty. When, evening fell, I walked home with St. Sohn, 1 was gioomily glad to find the val- ley shrouded tn mist and a starless heaven sagging over a blank earth. It seemed an endless up-hill drag to my lodging, and tkough my bed room was unexpectedly dainty and a dear old woman—St. John's mother—metaphorically tucked me in, I slept ill that night. Formless dreams tor- tured me with impalpable tragedies and apprehensions of horror. In the morning, after a cold sponging, the oppression lifted a little from my spirit, though the weather still seemed rather gray. St. John had al- ready gone off to his field work, his mother told me. She was so lovely, and the room in which I ate breakfast so neat and de- mure with its whitewashed walls, pure and stainless like country snow, that I managed to swalluw everything but the coffee. Oh, that coffee! I had to nibble at @ bit of chocolate I carried to get the taste of it out of my mouth. I tried hard not to let the blues get the upper hand again. I filled my pipe and pulled out my sketch book. My notes of yesterday seemed 0 faint and the morning growing so dark, that I could scarcely see them. I thought I would go and sit on the little bench out- side. As I was sauntering through the doorway, my head bending broodingly over the sketch book, like this, I caught sight out of the corner of my eye of a little white match stand fixed upon the wall. Mechanically 1 put out my left hand to take a light for my pipe. A queer cold wetness in my fingers and a little splash woke me to the zense of some odd mistake, and in another instant I realized with hor- ror that I had dipped my fingers into holy water and splashed it over that neat, de- mure, spotless, whitewashed wall.” I could not help smiling. “Ah, I know, one of those porcelain things with a cruci- filed Savior over a little font. Fancy taking heaven for brimstone!” “It didn’t seem the least bit funny at the time. I just felt awful. What wou!d the dear old woman say to this profanation? Why did people bave whitewashed walls on which sacrilegious stains were luridly visible? I looked up and down the hall, like Moses when he slew that Egyptian, trembling lest the old woman should come in. How could I make her understand 1 was so ignorant of Christian custom as to mistake a font for a match box? And if I said I was a Jew—good heavens! she might think I had done it of fell design. What a wound to the gentle old creature who had been so sweet to me! I could not stay in sight of that accusing streak: I must walk off my uneasiness. I threw open the outer door, then I stood still, paralyzed. Mon- Strous, evil-looking gray mists were clumped at the very threshold; sinister, formless vapors blotted out the mountain; everywhere vague, drifting hulks of ma- larious mist. I sought to pierce them, to find the landscape, the cheerful village, the warm human life nestling under God's heaven, but saw only, way below, as through a tunnel cut betwixt mist and mountain, a dead inverted world of houses and trees in a chill gray lake. I shuddered. An indefinable apprehension possessed me, something like the vague discomfort of my dreams; then almost instantly it crystallized into the blood-curdling suggestion: What if this were divine chastisement? What it all the outer and inner dreariness that had 80 Steadily enveloped me since I witnessed the tragedy were punishment for my dis- belief? What if this water were really holy and my sacrilege had brought some grizzly Nemesis?” “You believed that?” Not really, of course. But you, as an artist, must understand how one dallies with an idea, plays with a mood, works oneself up imaginatively into a dramatic situation. I let it grow upon me till, like @ man alone in the dark, afraid of the ghosts he doesn’t believe in, I grew nervous.” “I dare say you hadn't wholly recovered from your fall, and your nerves were un- strung by the blood and the nails, and that steak nad disagreed with you, and you had had a bad night, and you were morbidly uneasy about annoying the old woman, and all those chunks of mist got into | your spirits. You are a child of the sun.” f course I knew all that, down in the cellars of my being; but upstairs, all the same, I had this sense of guilt and ex- piation, this anxious doubt that perhaps all that great, gloomy, mediaeval business of saints and nuns, and bones and relics, and miracles, and icons, and calvaries and I Walked Home With “St. John. cells, and celibacy and horsehair shirts, and blood and dirt and tears was true after all! What if the world of beauty I had been content to live in was a satanic show, and the real thing was that dead, topsy-turvy world down there in the cold gray lake un- der the reeking mists? I sneaked back into the house to see if the streak hadn't ; but no, it loomed in tell-tale , a sort of writing on the wall, announcing the wrath and visitation of heaven. I went outside again, and smoked miserably on the little bench. Gradually I began to feel warmer; the mists seemed clearing; I rose and stretched myself with ache of luxurious languor. Encour- ed, I stole within again to peen at the streak. It was dry—a virgin wali inno- cently white met my delighted gaze. 1 opened the window; the draggling vapors were still rising, rising; the bleakuess was merging in a mild warmth. I refilled my pipe and plunged down the yet gray hill. I strode past the old saw mill, skirted the swampy border of the lake, came out on the firm green, when, bing! zim! br-r-r! a heavenly bolt of sunshine smashed tltrough the raw mists, scattering them like a bomb to the horizon’s rim; then with sov- ereign calm the sun came out full, flooding hill and dale with luminous joy; the lake jimmered and flashed into radiant life and gave back a great white cloud island on a stretch of glorious blue; and all that golden warmth stole into my veins like wine. A little goat came skipping along with tinkling bell, a horse at grass threw up his heels in ecstasy, an ox lowed, r4 barked. Tears of exquisite emotion came into my eyes; the beautiful, soft warm light that lay over all the jooced seemed to get into them and thing. How unlike those tears ot yester- Cay, NTUSE Oat Gt ino as by some called round may ripe! Now my ribs seem = — expanding—tb hol eart—an: the aivine Sos of iatonce thrilled me to a | Di religious rapt the mists all t! astly mediaeval nig! mare was lift co soul; In rtnat sacred moment gil th crucified Christ ‘vai becom iia te ple fellowship with man and beast and ghture, the love of life, the love of love, See f God. And in that sees — is came to me— rist—not the tor- tena “Bod, be “the comrade, the friend of all simple is—the joyous com- ae with Aloe cS inging to him and a iietening to his cost ne not the ES, barren of genius protest ing against all and dogmas that would replace t vision and the living ecst je Man of Sorrows, tasy; pot loving the Dlankness Qf underground cells, and scourged backs, and sexless skeletons, but the lover of warm life and warm sun- light and all that is fresh and simple and pure and beautiful.” i Dette Barer! gered his God in ae mage,” to it, too touched to im by saying it a “And 80, ever since, off and on, I have worked at this human picture of Him—The Joyous Comrade—to restore the true Christ to the world” “Which you hope to convert?” “My business is with work, not with re- sults. ‘W! ver thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ What can any single hand, even the mightiest, do in this great weltering world? Yet, without the hope and the dream, who would work at all? And so, not without hope, yet with no ex- pectation of a miracle, I give the Jews a Christ they can now accept, the Christians a Christ they have forgotten. I rebuild for my beloved America a type of simple manhood, unfretted by the feverish lust for wealth or power; a simple lover of the quiet moment; a sweet human soul never dis- Possessed of itself, always at one with the essence ‘of existence. Who knows but I may suggest the great question: What shall it profit a nation to gain the whole world and lose its own soul?” His voice died away solemnly, and I heard only the click of the billiard balls and the rumble and roar of New York. ART AND ARTISTS. “At the enjcyable reception which Mr. J. Edward Barclay held at his studio in the Corcoran building lest Saturday afternoon the many visitors had an opportunity of secing some of the portraits he has painted since he established himself in the city. The most striking of these canvases is the likeness of Dr. Elliot Coues, a half length portrait, showing the man at his desk. The artist has seized upon a characteristic at- titude, and so life-like and full of expres- ston is the face that Dr. Coues seems to sit before one in reality. In another can- vas that attracted much attention at the reception Mr. Barclay’s daughter, dressed in street costume, ‘fs portrayed. The face, which smiles out from under the large plumed hat, is delicately modeled and subtle in expression. Miss Alice Archer Sewall is spending the winter in hard study, and expects to giye very little time to the production of finish- ed pictures. In her studio in Georgetown she is comparatively free from interrup- tion, and she has opportunity to devote herself earnestly to, serious work. Occa- sionally she throws aside her regular study in order to execute one of those fanciful decorative subjects by; which she 1s so well known, and she has recently sent a pastel in this vein to Boston, for exhibition, In another pastel pagel she has worked out a musical theme, som-thing similar to that in a previous decoration. Miss Sewall has in her studio two unfinished oil portraits, one of which is an ekcellently started likeness of her father. Portraits of her two sisters appear in the other canyas, which is a well- arranged composition, snowing that origin- ality which stamps any’ the artist’s work. * “a Among the many new canvases on exhi- bition at Fischer's gallery, the large paint- ing by A. de Neuville ts especially striking. It represents a sésne in the Franco-Prus- sian wer, and thé figures are painted in e broad, synthetic way which. differs radical- ly from the analytic: Melssonier-like style which he often employed-in small canvases. Another striking’ work'ts.a carivas by Troy- on, in which he has painted a white cow under the play of sunshine. The move- ment of th: animai is superb, and the strong modeling of every bone aad muscle is accented by the bright sunlight. Horses in action have been the inspiration for many a canvas by Schreyer, and in the one exhibited at Fiscner’s he ras shown a surging mass of frigntened animals trying to get through a break in the fence. There is one new fortrait that deserves special attention, and that is Sir Thomas Law- rence’s splendid head of George IV as the Prince of Wales. Among the other new pictures are the field scene, by Ridgeway Knight; a glowing landscape, by Dup1 a Gerome with most impossible coloring, and canvases by Ruysdael, Cagin, Gaiser and Alvarez. * * ok Prince Pierre Trobetzkoy, who is the hus- band of the novelist, Amelia Rives, is now in the city and is fitting uf a studio in the Corcoran building. He is primarily a por- trait painter, and in thts branch of art he has gained considerable distinction, but he is also known as a painter of street scenes. A number of these little impressions of busy thoroughfares, both in sunlight and in shadow, may be ene at Fischer's. Mr. Ferdinand C. Sens has about fin- ished the bust of Secretary Porter, which he has been modeling in a studio fitted up in the basement of the White House. It needs but a few little touches here and there to complete the likeness, for it is ready strong in verisimilitude. The face is full of life and expression, and in the mod- eling of the features the sculptor has seized upon the subtle lines which give character to the face. At his studio in the Corcoran building Mr. Leimer is busying himself with the completion of the bust of the late Commissioner Butterworth, a portrait which he started ae ago. + a A number of pictures by local artists are now on exhibition at Tyler’s gallery. Max Weyl is represented by several of his best canvases; in fact, the scene in the beech woods is as fine as any wood interior that has come from his brush. The ground is covered with a thick carpet of dull red leaves, and the coloring of the pictur though not as rich as in some of the art- ist’s canvases, has a dellcacy and truth in full harmony with the poetic sentiment of this scene in late autumn. Another o. Mr. Weyl's pictures shows an avenue of trees glowing with the hues.of autumn, and still another of his before the eye a oaks bearing on full foliage of In several of the that Mr. R. Le Grand fect of his sum- early visible. The outdoor quality int, and while the subjects are more #han usually sunny, there is a greater se! hy tmosphere than is common =e his w ‘i. ‘Sir. Walter Paris is seen to arehttectteal sab) ae @ number of Mr. Jules Diet ing a poster for colors are black one corner, whi Jost been mak- #ch exhibition. Its , and the griffin in ey chit feature, has been adapted to x ction of a very good decorative =~Among the things in his studio Mr. Dieu@inne has a nice bit of landscape, showing two old scows on the Potomac, one of them sending up a slender column of blue curling smoke which indi- cates the presence of life on board. This is especially good in the handling of the water with its shimmering reflections, and makes one of the truest and most pleasing of his out-of-door scenes. * * Although he now claims the west as his home, Mr. A. G. Heaton is at present mak- ing a short visit in the city. The west has furnished him with material for many typical scenes, some of modern, and some of pioneer fe. A stage held up on the prairie by a highwayman forms the. subject of one of these paintings, ‘and a coming cyclone is another. ths shows a family making haste to get into the protection of the cyclone cellar, while the clouds that mark the center of the storm afe rapidly approaching over the prairie. Still another picture Mr. Heaton calls “The ae old-fashioned “prairie schooner,” Hporting a whole family, with all their worldly goods, to the new country. One horse has fallen down, and the driver of the team has gotten down to examine him, all the occupants of the wagon on meanwhile in great consternation at the pons loss of their animal. This scene of especial interest, as it has been chosen -ormmemerative issigsipp! and inter national exposition. ie will be remembered that Mr. Heaton was similarly represented at the time of the world’s fatr, as one of Lis pictures was used in the Columbian series of stamps. * a * The decorative tapestry on which Miss Lilllan.Cook has been engaged for a long time is at last finished, and shows good re- sults for all the labor that has been re- quired to complete it. The painting repre- sents Christ blessing little children, and is to be sent to a convent in Wilmington, Del. Ove of its chief characteristics is its le and a certain flatness of ect which makes it especially appropriate as a mural decoration. a In Mr. E. L. Morse’s studio in the Cor- coran building there are a number of can- vases which give an edequate idea of his werk in portraiture. In the water color ex- hibition he was most satisfactorily repre- sented in pastel, but a visit to his studio is all that is needed to convince,one that he is equally at home in the use of oils. It is the medium that he has employed in the large three-quarter-length portrait of Pres- ident Dwight of Yale. The venerable gen- tleman makes a fine subject as he sits in his black silk gown in a comfortable arm chair, and Mr. Morse has handled the face and figure with great skill. On the walls of his studio are many vigorous studies which he made during the years he spent in Germany, one head in particular being noticeable for the amount of study put upon it. It is worked up with attention to the sirallest details and yet the breadth of the study as & whole has been well preserved. * x A club has been formed among the art students with the purpose of promoting the study of art and encouraging a spirit of fel- lowship among the students in the city. ‘The members have been recruited largely from the Art Students’ League and the Cor- cecran School, but there are a number not working in either of these institutions, A studio has been secured at the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and 19th street, and at a meeting held there on Monday evening the organization of the club was effected, Mr. Carl Heber being elected president. Meetings will be held twice a week, and the members feel sure that they will derive much benefit from the interchange of ideas over their work. The proposition to call the organization the Charcoal Club met with general favor. * ok Spencer Nichols is working cn a small pic- ture geuache which he intends to take with him to New York. In it he has pictured two boys who are off on a tramp and who are enjoying the warmth of a fire that they have built in the woods. The two figures reclining on either side of the blaze are well placed and skillfully painted, but the chief charm of the subject is in the setting, as Mr. Nichols has never painted a more pleasing gray day effect. The misty gray sky showing in patches through the leaf- less branches is well rendered, and there is a beautiful color harmony in the gray rocks and the reddish-brown leaves nestling around them. * * The sketch exhibition at the gallery of the S. W. A., 1020 Connecticut avenue, at- tracted a large number of visitors this week, and those who have not yet inspect- ed the collection ‘should not fatl to do so next week. The exhibit is entirely free and is open daily from ¥ to 6. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays it is open in the evening from 8 to 10:30. SS TWO STRINGS TO hE INS Bow, Kivery Man Should Have a Vocation and an Avocation. Fawanl Everett Hale in Christian Resister. An accomplished correspondent of wide experience suggests to me the formation of the Knickerbocker Coal and Ice Com- pany as a method of j-roviding for the diffl- culties of labor unemployed because sum- mer changes into winter. My friend means this, 1 believe, as a joke. But, in truth, such arrangements as he suggests are now made very largely. Without them the difti- culty of providing for unemployed labor in cities would be much greater than it is. ‘The difficulty arises in this way. So soon as summer ends, and the processes of agri- culture end with the autumn, unemployed laborers fiow into the large towns by a law as certain as that which bids the waters flow at Niagara. Say what you please, a large city for the three hard months of winter offers a more entertaining life to the average man than the edge of a foresf. does. If, however, this average man has what Andrew Peabody used to call an avo- cation which he can make a regular winter occupation distinct from his summer voca- tion, why, he is not in tne hordes of the unemployed. One of the charming combinations of old time appeared in the admirable social ar- Tapgement of the Essex fishermen half a century ago. They caught fish in the sum- they made shoes tn the winter. It is the asis of the old schooi life of New Eng- lan Your Websters and Amescs worked thirty weeks in spring, summer and it autumn, and then studied their books for the twenty-two weeks which were left them. Some of us think that the results of that system were as good as we got from ours, The special winter industries now are, first, the cutting of ice. When the senti- mentalists talk of mild weather as being good for the poor, there is many a wor! man skilled in the ice business who is pray- ing for cold weather. Lumbering in the northern forests is the next resource in importance of Mr. Peterson and the other persons who have to solve these problems. After New Year, Carolina and Georgia be- gin to send north for men to work in the rice swamps. The well-trained waiters of @ northern hote) often go south in a body, to a southern hotel; and the fisherman at Punta Rassa takes his soup at dinner from the same*nice girl who gave it to him at the Intervale in September. Of iate years, alas! it has been discovered that fresh fish can be brought in in winter, perhaps from a thousand miles away; and I am afraia that the people who eat it forget that such luxuries may cost scores of lives of brave men, as they have cost in some winters. Best of all, as we see these problems in Boston, is the arrival of winter students, who make Boston a university city from Thanksgiving day to what ought to be fast day. ‘The people who devise methods by which workingmen and workingwomen may thus have two strings to their bow are working on much more sensible lines than those who tell us that Christianity is disgraced whenever people do not stand at the same loom of the same mil) 310 days of every year. Every man should have a vocation and an avocation. oe Treatment of Insomnja. From the New York Tribune. At the lust convention of*the Americaa Medical Association, in Philadelphia, Dr. J. B. Learned of Northampton, Mass., de- scribed to the fraternity his simple method for the cure of insomnia or sleeplessness, the whole thing being accomplished without the usual resort to drugs. Briefly, muscu- lar and mental exertion in a systematic way is the course involved; that is, a series of positions of the body, lying upon the back and side in the horizontal line, with the brain occupied in controlling and mak- ing changes, is the substance of the treat- ment proposed, the brain ene occupied in respirations—this calis ergy away from the center of matter that keeps up the automatic motion and pre- yents sleep, The doctor terms this “turn- ing off the belts.” The muscular motion consists in fixing a certain group of mus- pias, ps -aceeen te Jonata Fak, ek ee another and another change; comes to muscle and brain thus ‘controlled, Jn sere In inertsite: SS eS oP ae ere Pier eeeeeereener CHEM ieteistiiiesh 88 ART OF. CHEAP LIVING BOARD AT EIGHTEEN CENTS A DAY Wise Economy That Can Be Prac- ticed in Purchasing Food. LESSONS FOR HOUSEWIVES ‘Written for The Evening Star. cents per day for food. His wife satisfy all the Gemands of her ap- for food by an expenditure cf no than 14% cents per day. These in- teresting facts have just been eetablish- ducted under the auspices of the Depart- ment of Agriculture by Dr. W. E. Stone. The subjects consisted of a professor of mathematics, between fifty and sixty years old; an instructor in chemistry, twenty- five years old; a woman teacher, thirty years old; a housewife between ferty and fifty and two male students, each about twenty-two. The study lasted exactly two weeks, during which time the subjects reg- warly ate as much as they wished three timee a day. They were all healthy, active Persons, witn good appetites, using no med- icines or narcotics of any kind. Measuring the Food. At the beginning of the experiment a careful inventory by weight was taken of all the food and food materiais in the house. All the food purchased afterward during the two weeks was likewise weigh- ed and likewise recorded. All table and kitchen waste was are weighed, col- lected, dried and analyzed. Each Portion was placed in a drying oven, poe xan toa temperature of 80 degrees C., deprived of all moisture, ground into a powder and pre- served for analysis. Samples. of all the kinds of food eaten were prepared for an- alysis in the same manner. Thus was es- timated exactly what proportions of nutri- ticus Ingredients the subjects actually ate. Analysis was, of course, necessary, that the proportions of protein, carbohydrates and fat might be accurately determined. These are the essential constituents of food and their proportions mean everything to dietarians, though ttle to the popular mind. Protein is the principal life-giver contained in food. It includes all the nitro- enous products. Although the most val- uable ingredient, it alone will not suffice to sustain Hfe. Carbohydrates and fats must be added. In the two weeks of the investi- gation the six subjects consumed 181.3 pcunds of animal and 106.4 pounds of veg- etable food. The animal food cost $9.77 and the vegetable food $4.60, making a total expenditure of $14.37, at the rate of 18 cents per man per day and 14% cents per woman per day. he food was as tvxurious as the average man of the prefessional class might care to eat. The animal food included porter- house and sirloin steak, round and shoul- der of beef, round ef veal and pork, smoked dried beef, eggs, butter, mincemeat and milk. The vegetable food included honey, maple syrup, oranges, bananas, cranber- ries, dried peaches, prunes, raisins, nuts, Ivttuce, parsnips, heminy, canned corn, cornmeal, ficur, sugar, beans, potatoes, radishes and apples. The food when pur- chased contained about nineteen pounds of protein, nineteen pounds of fat and six- ty pounds of carbohydrates. Sixty-three per cent of the total substance eaten was animal food. The total table and kitchen waste amounted in the two weeks to about four pounds only. Housekeepers should draw a line under that! The investigation resulted in showing that each man in the family required 1.87 pounds of vegetable and 2.32 yourds ‘of animal food. Each tan was found to require per day a quar- ter of a pound of protein, about the same amount of fat and .77 pound of carbohy- Grates. According to a formula, carefully prepared, the women were found to re- quire about eight-tenths as much as the men. This would bring the price of the food eaten by each woman per day down te fourteen and a half cents. An Economical Family. The meats eaten during the two weeks were usually lean. This the expert re- garded as a desirable characteristic. The lean meats contained a high percentage of protein per pound, not contained in fat. Recent investigations indicate that Americans, as a rule, eat their meat too fat. This rule, of course, cannot be ap- plied to every one, since some palates re- quire fat. Housewives may profit by many other economical practices of this fam- lly. For instance, they ate home-made bread and cakes, thereby saving several hunéred per cent of what would ordinarily be spent at the baker's. An investigation lately made by the Department of Agri- culture resulted in showing that the aver- age baker in the United States sells for $216.50 each $100 worth of materials used in bread making. This economical family also consumed an unusual amount of milk, which is a cheap and very nutritive form ef food. The motto of the family was that the most costly food is not the most attractive nor the most nutritious, in the long run. Efforts were made to purchase food conteining the maximum of nourish- ment and the minimum of waste and to give each person as much as he desired. As a result, over ninety-six pet cent of all the food purchased was eaten. Economy could not be brought down to a much finer point. Studies already made supply available but hitherto untouched data which might well be woven into a severe lecture for the Yankee housewife. Uncle Sam ap- propriated money for the investigation, and this money has resulted in exposing the lady in question rather surprisingly. It would apear that in most instances she 1s not doing her duty, by a long shot. It has been said that there is but one great darkness, and that is ignorance. ‘This cloud of darkness seems to have enveloped every man and woman, as far as his knowledge of cooking is concerned, until lotely. The housewife's real prob- lem, ia going to market—though she does 1ot know it—is how to purchase the most and best nutriment for her money. What ces she know about the proportions of protein which are necessary to make blood and muscle, bone and brain? If her hus- band earns an income of about $300 a year, about $300 of it would ordinarily be apent DUS Wasi PowDER ‘What more can be asked? Only this; ask your grocer for it, and insist on trying it, Largest package—greatest economy. THE X. K. FAIRBANK COMPANY, Chicago, 8t Louis, New York, Philadephia. — for food for the average family of that class. Economists-now say that it is ex- travagant to pay more than one-fifth of one’s income for rent. At this rate there would be but $100 left for fuel, light and clothing. Parchasing and Preparing Food. The government dietariars have lately collected an enormous amount of data as to possible economy in purchasing and pre- paring food. This appeals directly to young married people doing light housekeeping. It ts asionishirg how many. of the cheaper fcods are found to be es nutritious and as palatable an the more expensive. To make them palatable, however, requires skill in cocking and a slight idea of the chemistry of foods. The ignorant classes usually hired to do cooking cannot be expected to have such know! e. The cheaper cuts of meat can be made as palatable as the more expensive cuts if proper seasoning is us=d end proper means applied to overcome toughness. Practically al lean parts of the same animal contain the same proportion of nourishment. Experiments were lately made by the Department of Agriculture to ascertain the most advantageous method of ccoking meat and at the same time of pre- venting waste of the nutritious juices. The experiments indicate that roast meat is more completely digested than boiled meat. The smaller the cut to be roasted the hot- ter should be the fire. An intensely hot fire quickly forms a crust on the outeide of @ roast, prevents the escape of the nutri- tious juices and also prevents the drying of the interior portions. The smaller the roast the hotter should be the fire, and vice versa. The same rule seems to hold good for broiling. In most cases the flesh of male animals is found to be more nutritious than that of the opposite sex. It also found that a man eating meat alone cannot digest more than two pounds a day. Vege- tables are found to be less readily and less completely digested than meate. Relative Cost. ‘The governmert dietery experts have lately classified foods according to the cost of the actual nutriment which they con- tain. The “very cheap” foods are found to’ be salt codfish, dried beans, wheat flour, oatmeal, corn meal, sugar, rice and pote- tces. Foods classified as “cheap” are can- ned corn beef, skimmed milk, salt pork and milk crackers. Those classed as “medium” are cheese, chuck and round of beef, fresh codfish, smoked ham, butter, pork, spare rib and milk. “Expensive” foods are mut- ton, pork, rib and sirloin of beef. ery ex- pensive” foods include oysters and fresh codfish. In fact, most meats, fish, poultry and the like are expensive, in proportion to the amount of nutrition which they con- tain. In fact, it is found that the nourish- ment in animal foods comes usually from vegetable products. In the animal state, however, we get the nourishment minus the woody fiber and other indigestible parts. Making meat from grass or grain is a costly process. An acre of land will produce so many bushels of wheat, but when the grass or grain which the same land would produce is converted into meat it makes much less food than the wheat. A great deal of rubbish has been published concerning brain foods. The government dictariang are just beginning to learn some- thing about those nutrients in food which probably go to make brain. The study is still in embryo, but indications, so far, are that brain and nerve contain the elements of nitrogen and phosphorous, occurring in the prctein compounds of food, but not in the true fats, sugars or starches. The la’ ter contain only carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It is inferred, therefore, that pro- tein, lecithin and other substances cot taining nitrogen and phosphorous are especially concerned in building up brain and nerve and keeping them in repair. Folly of Excess. One of the most emphatic rules to be fol- lowed to perfect food economy warns against overeating. The government diet- arians lately made a careful study of the eating habits of Sandow and found that he always eats less than he craves. Sir Hen- ry Thompson says that more mischief is caused in this wcrld by overeating than by overdrinking. Well-to-do people and those whose work is mental rather than physical eat too much. Americans are found to re- quire more nourishment than Europeans. They live and work more intensely than foreigners. Americans take more outdoor exercise. One of the most common and most ex- pensive wastes of the kitchen is the throw- ing out of bone after the trimming of meat. Bone is invaluable for soup. Unless sktil is applied, much of the lean of meat is cut out with the bone and rejected fat. The waste of meat is the most expensive kind of food waste. The protein of beef ts sev- eral times as expensive as that of flour. Even the poorest classes, when studied by the government experts, are found to cus- tcmarily purchase fruits and un vegetable out of season at outrageous prices. For soups, fresh pease and beans are used instead of Gried ones, ort times as cheap. JOHN ELFRETH WATKINS, Jr. shag ee “Did the doctor do anything to help your ————. a uess $0. Anyway, it has gained on me steadily ever since.” Irate Mon-seer ng. Farmer—“Hi! ing over my yaud!”—Phil May in Punch. you there! What the deuce do you mean by rid- Bre, tay ‘What are yer givin’ us? Wheat! Why, it's only bloomin’