this because her countenance, her whole being, radiates one of the great
passions and faiths of our common humanity--the look of reverent
motherhood. You recognize that look, that mood; you believe in it; you
honor it; you have worked over its living eloquence. Observe, then, the
result. Turn to your canvases and see how, though proceeding
differently, you have all dipped your brushes as in a common medium;
how you have all drawn an identical line around that old-time human
landmark. You have in truth copied from her one of the great
beacon-lights of expression that has been burning and signaling through
ages upon ages of human history--the look of the mother, the angel of
self-sacrifice to the earth.

"While we wait, we might go a little way into this general matter, since
you, in the study of portraiture, will always have to deal with it. This
look of hers, which you have caught on your canvases, and all the other
great beacon-lights of human expression, stand of course for the inner
energies of our lives, the leading forces of our characters. But, as
ages pass, human life changes; its chief elements shift their relative
places, some forcing their way to the front, others being pushed to the
rear; and the prominent beacon-lights change correspondingly. Ancient
ones go out, new ones appear; and the art of portraiture, which is the
undying historian of the human countenance, is subject to this shifting
law of the birth and death of its material.

"Perhaps more ancient lights have died out of human faces than modern
lights have been kindled to replace them. Do you understand why? The
reason is this: throughout an immeasurable time the aim of nature was to
make the human countenance as complete an instrument of expression as it
could possibly be. Man, except for his gestures and wordless sounds, for
ages had nothing else with which to speak; he must speak with his face.