bought for half-price, and many artists were making five-year contracts
with lithographers; while those too old to learn to draw on
lithograph-stones saw nothing left for them but to work designs with
worsted in perforated cardboard.

To the influence of William Morris does the civilized world owe its
salvation from the mad rage and rush for the tawdry and cheap in home
decoration. It will not do to say that if William Morris had not called a
halt some one else would, nor to cavil by declaring that the inanities of
the Plush-Covered Age followed the Era of the Hair-Cloth Sofa. These
things are frankly admitted, but the refreshing fact remains that fully
one-half the homes of England and America have been influenced by the good
taste and vivid personality of one strong, earnest man.

William Morris was the strongest all-round man the century has produced.
He was an Artist and a Poet in the broadest and best sense of these
much-bandied terms. William Morris could do more things, and do them well,
than any other man of either ancient or modern times whom we can name.
William Morris was master of six distinct trades. He was a weaver, a
blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer and a printer; and he was a
musical composer of no mean ability.

Better than all, he was an enthusiastic lover of his race: his heart
throbbed for humanity, and believing that society could be reformed only
from below, he cast his lot with the toilers, dressed as one of them, and
in the companionship of workingmen found a response to his holy zeal which
the society of an entailed aristocracy denied.

The man who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and
give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful