Puslapio vaizdai
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THE POINT OF VIEW

T

urge A Surprise in Life.

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HE other day I completed my twentyfifth year of living, and I am still considerably impressed with that fact. It is a very important age, this present one of mine, and I have a right to take it seriously. Is it not epochal? Do you realize," I might "that twenty-five years are a quarter of a whole century? And see! of what consequence centuries have been." Is it not a desirable age? Old men say, "when I was twenty-five" and boys say when I am twenty-five." A distinguished and significant age? For we are beginning the second of the three laps, and the most telling one of the race; we have left off seeking education, directly, and are hunting for wealth and other things; a great many of us have fallen in love; an alarming number have married; and the rest of us have bought wedding presents. We are quite in the thick of living. We are grownups. We are the "Olympians" at last. But this is not what I want to prove here, nor is this the way the thing impresses me.

You who have passed the age may forget; those very young persons who have not yet reached it cannot understand; but my contemporaries will agree, that we have been the coming generation so long that we do not realize that we have come. We know that we are here, but we do not feel it. We are twenty-five; it can be proved by records; but we cannot convince ourselves that we are as significantly mature as that sounds even to our seniors, to whom it sounds young. We are as far along as they were at this age. Yes, but in our case it seems like a make-believe. We have settled down to the serious pursuits of life, most of us; but are they so serious? We eat farewell bachelor dinners with boyhood friends, but-well, they are getting married as if they were grown-ups.

The real thing seems still to be in the future. We have not yet caught up with it. We can't believe it. We have taken our places with the Olympians, but-if the children only knew! Now there is more of a reason for all this than the mere mystery of unaccustomedness. That is what I want to speak about.

We have discovered that a great mistake has been made about this age; or else about youth (extreme youth, seniors, if you prefer); or perhaps about both. No, rather, we have made the mistake, but those who have gone ahead of us are to blame for it. All through our long twenty-five years of life (a quarter of a century!) we found poets and preachers, philosophers and writers of fiction, parents and advisers, all, indeed, who have sought, didactically or æsthetically, to interpret life for us, agreeing to harp upon one strain: Youth :hope, illusions. Manhood:-struggle, disillusionment. Youth is happy, but, ah, so short. Youth bounds blindly forward; he little knows what is before him. Alas, poor, poor, happy youth! etc., ad lugubrium—the result being that we began to think there must be some truth in it. And we used to take ourselves in hand, sometimes, and say: "We are absurdly full of hope and pitifully happy now; but in a few years it will be terrible." We grew to hate the thought of "bounding blindly" on to manhood. We were still somewhat curious about it, I admit, but how could we anticipate anything very desirable when a thousand voices, ancient and modern, were shouting in our ears that we should undoubtedly be miserable later on? How could we persuade ourselves that Success-even though it would be hollow-was waiting for us when we looked up and saw all the classic satirists smiling indulgently at us, and the complacent moderns smiling quite as omnisciently?

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A Religious
Duty.

are all careful. I believe it is a religious duty
to get all the money you can; get it fairly,
religiously, honestly, and give away all you
can." The man who spoke had started in
life without any money, and as the result of
the diligent exercise of unusual
business abilities had come to be
one of the richest men in the world.
He had also given much money away. The
precepts that he uttered seemed to be such
as he had followed himself. He seemed to
have made it his religious duty to get all the
money he could. He had been born to busi-
ness ability, and had developed his talent
mightily. He had practised extreme thrift
in his youth; he had been quick to see and
seize opportunity, sagacious, indomitable.
Little by little he and others whom he had
associated with himself had built up one of
the most marvellous money - making ma-
chines ever known, which, crushing out rival-
ry and competition, presently controlled the
production and sale in this country of a com-
modity of almost universal use. Its manage-
ment was superlatively able. It made great
fortunes for all its artificers and still contin-
ues to pay a prodigious annual tribute to its

Indeed, we began to feel as if we were drawing near a great abyss, and, no matter how hard we tried to hold on, were soon to be shoved over; and then away we should drop, out of sunshine and light, down to the bottom of reality. For my part, I remember writing a poem in lugubrious blank verse in a college magazine, expressing my sincere senior-year desire to cling to "that strange sweet, dreaming time, called Youth," which was very beautiful and sad. But listen-the surprise of life-somehow we have glided across from dreaming to living, and-here we are! It is not so bad over here after all. It's a pretty good place. In fact, we are rather happy. To be sure this is a very real world and living is a very real thing. It did not take us long to find that out. And we have to work more than we play now instead of its being the other way, though working is a pretty good game. We are not making so much money as we could spend, and some things have not turned out as we should have liked. But this is only regrettable, not a great sadness. Some of the childish imaginings with which we used to have fun we have lost the trick of building up, and some of our youthful fancies that we used to think would be true joys we know are ignes fatui; but what of that? the poetry is still there, and for every imaginary hoped-for happiness given up there is also an imaginary terror of dumb, humorless childhood gone. What we have to be happy over is very real, very knowable and holdable and likable. That is the finest thing about this second lap; we feel so much more sure of the path. We have been through some very distasteful times with ourselves; perhaps we shall meet worse ones, but so far we have nearly always come out fully decided that human nature, with all its foibles, laughable and lovable, is a pretty good thing to have around, and that there is a good God and a plan of salvation to believe in, almost, if not quite, like that of our parents. And that is the attitude we mean to assume now, willing to take our chances of getting a less pleasant surprise in life later on. And you may smile if you like. We don't money-maker, as, luckily for all communimind.

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owners.

No one has ever questioned that it is good "business" to make such a machine as this, but there is novelty in the idea which is so readily deduced from the report of the address of its chief promoter, that it is religion also. When we Americans talk about religion we usually mean Christianity, and this thought of a great and ruthless commercial engine riding down all opposition, is curiously in conflict with the notion of Christianity which most of us entertain. Our religious duty involves many things which are of high value in moneymaking. It involves self-control, temperance, industry, a reasonable thrift, and a reliance for many of our higher gratifications on things that are not material and which are not to be bought. True religion does not blind; it enlightens; it does not impair one's sagacity, but merely sets it to work on a higher plane. A sincerely religious man may become a great

ties, often happens; but still it seems a good deal safer to regard his money-making as something concurrent with his religious duty, rather than the realization of it. The motives for money-getting are already so powerful and so obvious that they appear rather to need restraint than encouragement, and it seems

the office of religion rather to limit their influence than to commend and indorse it. It is an admirable thing, if we have the gift for money-getting, to use our gains generously and wisely for the benefit of our fellows, but we are faulty and greedy creatures at the best, prone to make our consciences and our moral standards submissive to our material interests; prone to take an ell where duty seems to warrant us in taking an inch. If we make it our religious duty to get all the money that we can (honestly of course), that we may have the more to give, shall we not be more than ever in danger of being careless how our money comes, and whose loss is involved in our profit? and of cajoling our consciences by a liberality made possible by enterprises in the development of which piety and human kindness have had no share?

Man's religious duty is to seek righteousness, to be honest, to be merciful, to be just. It is his privilege to gather all the money he can without sacrificing his higher obligations as a creature with a soul, a citizen, and a member of the human brotherhood. Whether he gains more money or less is of minor consequence. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness," said the Master, “and all these things shall be added unto you.” Money gains appear then as the incident, not the aim; and nothing in modern experience seems to impeach the wisdom of that attitude toward them.

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Dolly.

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UST at the moment when the critics are talking about the undue ascendancy of the novel, and the Jubilee essayists are pointing out that it has been a dominant literary form of the VicFiction as a torian period, Mr. Blackmore, in a published letter, makes the complaint that fiction is undervalued. Nine people out of ten speak with happy contempt of a novel as a trumpery concoction. For generations yet to come fiction will be looked upon as a dolly for an infant." This is certainly an extraordinary utterance for the author of one of the best novels of his time, and one of the most seriously accepted; and suggests a moment of mere petulance, or that the ten people with whom Mr. Blackmore comes most in contact have been carefully chosen for his discipline.

"A dolly for an infant!" The danger would be that the novel would become a tyrant over strong men if there were not signs

that its limitations are coming to be recognized. Genius, as heretofore, can do anything with it, and enrich literature in the process; the man who has a story to tell can do well with it even if not a genius; but it looks as though the condition with which we have been recently threatened, that sociology, pathology, penology, not to speak of psychology and theology, could be only discussed through its medium, would be healthily averted. The successors and imitators of the "Heavenly Twins" had brief and unfruitful lives; the world listened very languidly indeed to the report that Nordau intended a novel; critics have been found already to intimate that Mr. Bellamy's "Equality" is dull. Even Robert Elsmere" could not communicate its vitality to its successors. Mr. Hardy is said to contemplate abandoning the note of "Tess" and "Jude." It begins to appear that while the public will welcome now and then a novel of Zeit- und Streitfragen, it will not permit the turning of the novel into the chief vehicle of discussion. For awhile it seemed otherwise; and the judicious, foreseeing a time when fiction would be something to be" kept up with," grieved accordingly.

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The whole tendency of things just now is, not to rate the novel too highly as a form, which would be impossible, but to give to too many really" trumpery concoctions "the benefit of the traditions of good fiction. There is very little discriminating criticism of any sort left even in the old journals by the new journalism; but even with the lack of it it is amazing to see with what seriousness the endless succession of minor novels is handled. No wonder the possessor of a "fad reputation" is bewildered by the rapidity alike of its rise and fall; lucky if he can efface himself with the good-humor of Mr. Beerbohm, "already outmoded," to make room for younger men" with months of activity still before them." It makes one long for Mr. Bludyer; it makes one long for the "happy contempt" of Mr. Blackmore's nine people out of ten. There is good local color in Jones's little book-so good that his friend Brown, who has been asked to write a "biographical essay" on him, says it is sometimes "really Robinsonian " (referring to a third friend's already vanishing fame)—but why talk of it in terms which even Mr. Blackmore would

deprecate? This is what does injury to Jones, more than any amount of that lack of hospitality to young talent which is the favor

ite accusation against critics who remember that art and English literature are long; and in America at least it is far less often amiable personal log-rolling than a real exaggerated reverence for anything in the form of fiction.

We do not talk about verse and essay in quite this disproportionate fashion, it seems to me; but a Novel-of whatever infantile qualityis more likely to be treated as an object of distinguished consideration than as a “dolly."

THE FIELD OF ART

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By the will of William H. Rinehart, the sculptor, a fund was established for the encouragement of Art which has increased to $100,000 under the skilful care of the late W. T. Walters of Baltimore and of the Peabody Institute, to which it was entrusted by his son. This now provides for two scholarships for sculptors, the beneficiaries to receive each $1,000 a year for four years, a passage to and from Rome, and a studio and lodging in the Villa dell'Aurora, where they must live and work. "The candidates are selected from among those only who, by a preliminary examination, show themselves to be of marked proficiency. In the final competitive examinations, they are required to submit a bas-relief or a subject in the round, as indicated by the judges, to be executed in twelve weeks from the day on which the work is begun. A preliminary sketch one foot square and made in two days must be presented to the judges, one copy to be retained by the trustees of the fund, the other by the competitor. The composition as shown in the sketch must be adhered to in

the final work. Any radical deviation from the composition as indicated in the sketch, any alteration from the dimensions of the large work, or any assistance on the work, will exclude it from the competition." The winners, during their stay in Rome, must execute a bas-relief containing two life-size figures, a life-size figure in the round, and a life-size group of two or more figures. They must also devote a year of their time to travel in France, Italy, and Greece. The young sculptor now in Rome under these terms, is H. A. McNeal; A. Phinister Proctor, in Paris at this writing, was also given the benefits of the endowment. The four artists constituting the Advisory Committee of the Trustees of the Peabody Institute were Messrs. J. Q. A. Ward, Edwin H. Blashfield, Augustus St. Gaudens, and Daniel Chester French.

It is from the spring of 1894 that the American School of Architecture in Rome dates its history. On June 12th of that year, at a meeting held at the Century Club in New York, "it was definitely decided to found an institution which in course of time should equal in endowment and advantages the foreign academies in Rome, although at first somewhat different in its scope. It was also decided to invite the co-operation of certain gentlemen who should constitute a permanent managing committee." This school is founded for the benefit of advanced students only, and "is designed to further the more disciplinary work of other institutions by opening to young

men, already well trained by them in drawing and design, certain special lines of study, which at present can be pursued only under great disadvantages." The work of the holders of the various travelling scholarships having previously shown "no common purpose and little consistent prosecution along carefully chosen lines," it was hoped by bringing them together under the discipline of the school to direct their foreign travel and study to more definite and specific courses." This institution, in the absence of a permanent fund, is at present supported by the contributions of a few American architects. It was formally opened under the charge of Mr. Austin W. Lord, a former holder of the Rotch travel ling scholarship, on November 1, 1894, in temporary quarters in the Palazzo Torlonia, and the first term of the school lasted about four months. There were present for the whole or part of the time four students, three of whom were holders of travelling scholarships or fellowships. In the following July it removed to its present home in the Villa dell' Aurora; and the beginning of its scholastic year, in the following October, may be considered the formal opening of the new Academy of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Music in Rome.

Of the four architectural travelling scholarships-one more than in England - the longest established was founded by the children of Benjamin S. Rotch, a wealthy merchant of Boston, in 1883. A fund of sufficient magnitude to assure an annual income of $2,000 was placed in the hands of three trustees, who have given the general direction of the affairs of the scholarship to the care of the Boston Society of Architects, under certain conditions. The successful candidate in each yearly examination receives $1,000 annually for two years; all competitors presenting themselves must be under thirty years of age, and have worked during two years under an architect resident in Massachusetts. They are required to pass a preliminary written examination in the history of architecture, construction, theory and practice, an elementary knowledge of the French language, and in free-hand drawing from the cast, and a final examination of a problem of an extended nature in design. The preliminary examinations are held on the first Monday and Tuesday of each year; the designs are judged by a jury of experts, usually not residents of Boston, invited by the committee. The three other travelling schol

arships, the Columbia and McKim Fellowships and that of the University of Pennsylvania, being each connected with a school of architecture, omit the preliminary examinations, the two of Columbia College completely

the fellowships being open only to graduates of the Department of Architecture of the College-and that of the Pennsylvania University omits it for students who have completed these courses, in the University of Architecture. The latter competition being open also to candidates under thirty years of age, matriculates of a full college year's standing in an architectural school in Pennsylvania, or draftsmen of at least one year's service (probably soon to be made two) in the office of a resident architect, the preliminary examination is obligatory for these aspirants. This scholarship gives the beneficiary $1,000 for a year's travel and study in Rome under the direction of the School of Architecture of the Institute, and the methods and conditions of the examinations resemble closely those of the Rotch Scholarship, the awards being made by a jury composed of New York and Boston architects. The winner is expected to submit his itinerary of travel and study for the approval of Professor Warren P. Laird ; and the arrangements for the general line of action and responsibility of the student while abroad, his rendering of regular or quarterly reports and envois of his work, bear a general resemblance in all these travelling scholarships.

The School of Architecture in the Pennsylvania University was founded in October, 1890, and was the outcome of a movement in the city of Philadelphia among the more conservative members of the profession, which was not very cordially seconded by the followers of the enterprising leader in that remarkable and original architectural development of styles which so excites the surprise of the stranger in that usually placid metropolis. The travelling scholarship was established two years later, and has sent four men abroad, all residents of Philadelphia. Two of these spent ten months each in the American Academy at Rome; the latest takes with him a somewhat original course of study on the social aspects of municipal architecture.

The Schermerhorn Scholarship of Columbia University was founded in 1889 by the trustees of the College, who set apart $13,000 for this purpose in recognition of donations amounting to a similar sum by Mr. F. A. Schermerhorn. This awards $1,300 every second year,

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