for water. I know of nothing uglier than the ordinary jug or
pitcher. A museum could be filled with the different kinds of
water vessels which are used in hot countries. Yet we continue to
submit to the depressing jug with the handle all on one side. I do
not see the wisdom of decorating dinner-plates with sunsets and
soup-plates with moonlight scenes. I do not think it adds anything
to the pleasure of the canvas-back duck to take it out of such
glories. Besides, we do not want a soup-plate whose bottom seems
to vanish in the distance. One feels neither safe nor comfortable
under such conditions. In fact, I did not find in the art schools
of the country that the difference was explained between decorative
and imaginative art.

The conditions of art should be simple. A great deal more depends
upon the heart than upon the head. Appreciation of art is not
secured by any elaborate scheme of learning. Art requires a good
healthy atmosphere. The motives for art are still around about us
as they were round about the ancients. And the subjects are also
easily found by the earnest sculptor and the painter. Nothing is
more picturesque and graceful than a man at work. The artist who
goes to the children's playground, watches them at their sport and
sees the boy stoop to tie his shoe, will find the same themes that
engaged the attention of the ancient Greeks, and such observation
and the illustrations which follow will do much to correct that
foolish impression that mental and physical beauty are always
divorced.

To you, more than perhaps to any other country, has Nature been
generous in furnishing material for art workers to work in. You
have marble quarries where the stone is more beautiful in colour