It is by the eye principally that taste is educated. "We speak with admiration of the eighth sense common among Parisians, and envy them their magic power of combining simple materials into an artistic whole. The reason is that for generations the eyes of those people have been unconsciously educated by the harmonious lines of well-proportioned buildings, finely finished detail of stately colonnade, and shady perspective of quay and boulevard. After years of this subtle training the eye instinctively revolts from the vulgar and the crude. There is little in the poorer quarters of our city to rejoice or refine the senses; squalor and all-pervading ugliness are not least among the curses that poverty entails.

If you have a subject of interest in your mind, it often happens that every book you open, every person you speak with, refers to that topic. I never remember having seen an explanation offered of this phenomenon.

The other morning, while this article was lying half finished on my desk, I opened the last number of a Paris paper and began reading an account of the drama, Les Mauvais Bergers (treating of that perilous subject, the "strikes"), which Sarah Bernhardt had just had the courage to produce before the Paris public. In the third act, when the owner of the factory receives the disaffected hands, and listens to their complaints, the leader of the strike (an intelligent young workman), besides shorter hours and increased pay, demands that recreation rooms be built where the toilers, their wives, and their children may pass unoccupied hours in the enjoyment of attractive surroundings, and cries in conclusion: "We, the poor, need some poetry and some art in our lives, man does not live by bread alone. He has a right, like the rich, to things of beauty!"

In commending the use of decoration as a means of bringing pleasure into dull, cramped lives, one is too often met by the curious argument that taste is innate. "Either people have it or they haven't," like a long nose or a short one, and it is useless to waste good money in trying to improve either. "It would be much more to the point to spend your money in giving the poor children a good roast-beef dinner at Christmas than in placing the bust of Clytie before them." That argument has crushed more attempts to elevate the poor than any other ever advanced. If it were listened to, there would never be any progress made, because there are always thousands of people who are hungry.

When we reflect how painfully ill-arranged rooms or ugly colors affect our senses, and remember that less fortunate neighbors suffer as much as we do from hideous environments, it seems like keeping sunlight from a plant, or fresh air out of a sick-room, to refuse glimpses of the beautiful to the poor when it is in our power to give them this satisfaction with a slight effort. Nothing can be more encouraging to those who occasionally despair of human nature than the good results already obtained by this small attempt in the schools.

We fall into the error of imagining that because the Apollo Belvedere and the Square of St. Mark's have become stale to us by reproduction they are necessarily so to others. The great and the wealthy of the world form no idea of the longing the poor feel for a little variety in their lives. They do not know what they want. They have no standards to guide them, but the desire is there. Let us offer ourselves the satisfaction, as we start off for pleasure trips abroad or to the mountains, of knowing that at home the routine of study is lightened for thousands of children by the counterfeit presentment of the scenes we are enjoying; that, as we float up the Golden Horn or sit in the moonlight by the Parthenon, far away at home some child is dreaming of those fair scenes as she raises her eyes from her task, and is unconsciously imbibing a love of the beautiful, which will add a charm to her humble life, and make the present labors lighter. If the child never lives to see the origina
ls, she will be happier for knowing that somewhere in the world domed mosques mirror themselves in still waters, and marble gods, the handiwork of long-dead nations, stand in the golden sunlight and silently preach the gospel of the beautiful.



CHAPTER 21--Seven Small Duchesses



Since those "precious" days when the habitues of the Hotel Rambouillet first raised social intercourse to the level of a fine art, the morals and manners, the amusements and intrigues of great French ladies have interested the world and influenced the ways of civilized nations. Thanks to Memoirs and Maxims, we are able to reconstruct the life of a seventeenth or eighteenth century noblewoman as completely as German archeologists have rebuilt the temple of the Wingless Victory on the Acropolis from surrounding debris.

Interest in French society has, however, diminished during this century, ceasing almost entirely with the Second Empire, when foreign women gave the tone to a parvenu court from which the older aristocracy held aloof in disgust behind the closed gates of their "hotels" and historic chateaux.

With the exception of Balzac, few writers have drawn authentic pictures of nineteenth-century noblewomen in France; and his vivid portrayals are more the creations of genius than correct descriptions of a caste.

During the last fifty years French aristocrats have ceased to be factors even in matters social, the sceptre they once held having passed into alien hands, the daughters of Albion to a great extent replacing their French rivals in influencing the ways of the "world,"--a change, be it remarked in passing, that has not improved the tone of society or contributed to the spread of good manners.

People like the French nobles, engaged in sulking and attempting to overthrow or boycott each succeeding regime, must naturally lose their influence. They have held aloof so long--fearing to compromise themselves by any advances to the powers that be, and restrained by countless traditions from taking an active part in either the social or political strife--that little by little they have been passed by and ignored; which is a pity, for amid the ruin of many hopes and ambitions they have remained true to their caste and handed down from generation to generation the secret of that gracious urbanity and tact which distinguished the Gallic noblewoman in the last century from the rest of her kind and made her so deft in the difficult art of pleasing--and being pleased.