paintings at the Carnegie Art Galleries in Pittsburg in the late summer of 1896 she received one of the three medals awarded -and this list probably awaits only the lapse of time to be duly lengthened.

Her portraits, very nearly all guarded on the walls of private houses, have yet been exhibited in public sufficiently to make many of the more important generally known. To Paris, in 1896, she sent "A New England Woman," "Sita and Sarita," "Cynthia," "Ernesta," "The Dreamer" and the portrait of Doctor Grier.

The first-named is owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and was seen in the exhibition of the Society of American Artists in New York in the spring of 1897; "Sita and Sarita " is the mystical study of a young girl with a black cat on her shoulder-the one supplementing the other. "Cynthia" is a portrait of the little daughter of Mrs. Rosina Emmet Sherwood, a study in crimson, lilac, and white. "Reverie," now " The Dreamer," was seen in New York at the Academy exhibition in 1894, and also in

1897 at that of the Ohio Society; the little girl, Ernesta, and her section of a big nurse, at the Society of American Artists in 1894, and it was this canvas which was awarded the Pittsburg medal. The portrait of Doctor Grier, one of the comparatively few studies of masculine individuality which Miss Beaux has executed, was painted in 1892, and won her the medal of the Philadelphia Art Club.

In this canvas the portrait painter's breadth of vision and of comprehension is combined with an admirable detail, the modelling of the head being carried out with the utmost care and accuracy, and everywhere with a surprising truthfulness of local color. In some of her later heads the painter-possibly surer of herself and more courageous-has put in the shadows of the flesh occasionally in much more hardy complementary colors that give greater vibration. At times also no considerations of conventional grace have been allowed to hamper the frank rendering of character when the sought-for individuality was best expressed by breaking these timid bonds. But the color is always suave, harmonious, beautiful, rich and deep through all the changing rendering of texture and local values. Miss Beaux has the true painter's affection for white, which, as she says, contains all the colors, and most of the fairer younger women and the small children with whom she so sympathizes are appropriately presented in subtle variations of this most difficult and brilliant combination of nature's changing light. It is even toned down into soft grays, "veils of thinnest lawn," in one or two of those studies of the quietness that comes with advancing

years which the painter thinks are among her best works-softening, as nothing else can, the lines around the gentle face and the folded hands of peaceful living.

The lack of necessary connection between technical artistic skill and the portrait painter's sixth sense, the perception of the inner character, is abundantly demonstrated by the usual work seen in galleries. Even when the two, after wandering aimlessly about in the ether, as it were, come together in the endowment of some lucky painter or sculptor, his fortune as an artist is not yet made. Unless the truthful rendering of the thing that is be supplemented by a certain way of perceiving even the fact, a gift of seeing it as it was intended to be, without accidental flaws, a little fuller and more beautiful, illumined in the atmosphere of sympathy and right feeling, this rendering may be defined as merely scientific. The detective work of the true realist is only extremely good photography. But when the right way of knowing things takes the place of the narrow way of knowing them, when the artist's light for his camera renderings is that beautiful one which we call spiritual, then is his work glorified. That to a woman's hand should be given this power to portray sympathetically the souls of her neighbors, their strength, their intelligence, their charm, is most fit and admirable, and fortunate even are the bystanders who see it done. It would even seem as though the painter herself had been truly fortunate in one or two of the sitters thus rendered by her brush, and that nothing smaller than her talent would have sufficed to have shown us the beauty of these thoughtful human visions which are realities.

VOL. XXII.-52

E

I

RNESTA tells me much of what I know about women's clubs. Ernesta is my intellectual other half, who, as to her own sex, hopeth all things, believeth all things, and as to myself certainly rounds out the Scripture by bearing all things, and enduring all things. She and I never really agree on any subject whatever of intellectual import, but each seems always about to convince the other. This lends continual enchantment to an otherwise hopeless situation. Ernesta is particularly fond of women's clubs, and belongs to many. One club meets to read papers, on Tuesdays at noon, and another meets on Fridays at four. She is a member of a woman's political league, a college association, a health club, is chairman of two philanthropic societies, is raising money for a hotel for working-women, and holds a class for the study of Bach's fugues every Saturday, in her own drawing-room. I belong to no clubs whatever; from which it is readily to be seen that her opinions on the subject are much more valuable than my own. I asked Ernesta the other day to define a woman's club, to give the club idea feminine, in as few words as possible. She thought profoundly for some minutes, then said, "A woman's club is an association for the purposes of mutual helpfulness and selfimprovement."

"But you have luncheon, don't you? I asked.

"Not always," she answered, and her voice had a deprecating note. 66 But then, you know, we should have to eat anyway; if we eat then, there is just so much time saved, and we can keep on with the discussion."

Then she went on to tell me about a certain club called the Luncheon Club,"

whose inspiring purpose it is to combine the pleasures of the intellect with the duties of the palate by meeting once a fortnight at luncheon for the discussion of questions of the day-political, scientific, sociological, religious, revolutionary

-whatever is exciting the alert public mind at the hour-nay, at the moment. The purpose of the Luncheon Club is entirely ambitious; the luncheon merely a concession to human weakness, ingeniously contrived so as to yield a maximum of return in knowledge—and dyspepsia. Ernesta regretted that she was unable to join this club, by reason of a non-lunching club which met on the same day-through no mean desire of the luncheon, mind you, but merely because the scheme recommended itself to her as converting a lowering but necessary function into a higher intellectual forcelunch-power into thought - power, as it

I? sir. I am

66

said I. "Oh, no, I don't, dear a woman, if you please. I should be fined if I stayed away." "From a woman's club, do you mean?" he asked. 'Well, that's very queer. Fancy a man's being fined for not coming to his club! And this seemed both to amuse and instruct him so deeply that he forgot all about me, and smoked two pipefuls before he got around to saying again, "Fancy a man's being fined for not coming to his club !”

II

ERNESTA tells me that one million women in this country are members of clubs, and that these million women are joined in one gigantic association called the General Federation, composed of nearly

Indeed, there are not wanting those who say that it has been greater, and that all the social, and nearly all the religious, fabrics of the world are built around women.

66

Well, unrepressed mental activity with a purpose is better than unrepressed activity without any purpose at all, and certainly here is a high aim and a generous intent with which it seems ungracious enough to quarrel. But it would appear to be the part of ordinary prudence that, before undertaking so large a mission as is outlined here, the one million women who are pledged to it should sit down to gether and talk it over, with some idea of finding out what it is going to cost them to" serve this highly developed and complex civilization," and where they are likely to be landed when the work is done.

I am taking for granted here certain premises which I think might fairly be disputed. There seems to be a unanimous opinion among women to-day that the influence of their sex has never before been so potent and so needed. This much is certainly true, that never before has so much been said about woman's place and mission in the universe, but then, it has recently been declared that the present century has "discovered Woman," which probably accounts for

it. Yet there are some of us who believe that modern research-historical, scientific, and sociological-has set forth no one set of facts with more seriousness and emphasis than that the contribution of the women of all past time to the culture and civilization of the race has been equal in importance and dignity to that

Mr. Robert Grant has recently said that women "fancy themselves very much at present," and "spend considerable time in studying the set of their minds in the glass." And, to be honest, I fear we are in no position to resent the charge. I fear we are in great danger, just at present, of taking ourselves and our achievements with more seriousness than their value warrants. No doubt we are doing well as a sex, if ambition and ambulation and heroism and hurry count for anything, and there is certainly no doubt that we are doing too much. But there are still a few conservatives left among us, who are by no means sure that the aspirations of the leaders among women, to-day, coincide with the highest interests of the sex and the greatest general good.

III

ALL this, I have said, is fair ground for dispute; but let us assume that women are really exerting a wider and a higher influence just now than ever before, and that the world still needs and calls for more. Then the reason for this tremendous organizing impulse appears at once. Given a Work to do, or only the Idea of a Work to do, and organization of some kind is inevitable. This is the hour of the convention, the congress, the massmeeting. We think in by-laws and act in resolutions. Man or woman, there is no way but that of unanimity, even to the accomplishment of the most personal and private virtues. That women should resolve themselves into clubs and declare themselves in constitutions upon the slightest provocation is only to be expected. And if women were intended ultimately to play the title-rôles in the big drama of civilization I suppose the grave, earnest, strenuous note of the woman's club is the necessary prelude. But this seems to me very sad, because it clearly indicates that women are likely to have a no easier time of it in the future than they claim to have had in the past. One of the indictments oftenest brought up by