ment to create large decorative work has been more or less engaged in designing for or making stained glass. In addition to Mr. La Farge and Mr. Tiffany, we have had Mr. F. D. Millet, Mr. Francis Lathrop, Mr. E. H. Blashfield, Mr. Elihu Vedder, Mr. G. W. Maynard, Mr. Robert Blum, and Mr. Kenyon Cox, -to name a few of our foremost figurepainters. Given the extreme variety and richness of our glass, it has been possible to attempt subjects of such complexity of effect that we have gone beyond the limit by which the European glass-maker is restricted. Herein lies the ground for a reproach which is often aimed at our glass, generally by men of strict adherence to ecclesiastical formulæ. The reproach, which affects only glass for church purposes, is, in sum, that it is too vivid, too realistic, and has too great similarity to mere decoration, irrespective of the sacred character of the place for which it is destined. While the same reproach could be applied with equal justice to the whole Venetian school of painting-to which our glass is somewhat allied-there is a foundation for it in the fact that, from the limitations which restriction in the manufacture of glass imposed upon the old makers of church windows, a more conventional treatment and greater austerity of effect was usual with them. But as Viollet le Duc has pointed out, in the thirteenth century glass, where perspective is often grossly violated, this was not done in order to keep the window within the limits of mural decoration, but through sheer ignorance of the laws of perspective. In a similar vein, we may remark that in coming from the glowing windows of Santa Croce, in Florence, it is hard to believe that a thirteenth century glassstainer would have willingly resigned the opportunities which come with the curious and beautifully variegated glass which we have at our command, and which enable us to approach somewhat nearer to the glories of sun and shadow, of tinted cloud or far-reaching horizon. The sad-colored harmonies of our English cousins seem too arbitrarily restrained, as does their deliberate archaism in making a lead-line-which VOL. IV.-72 is purposely kept as heavy as those in the old glass, although a lead-line always makes itself evident enough, and we have to-day much lighter lead at our service-cut across an arm or a fold of drapery where no actual need of construction calls for it. To take an instance near at hand: in the city of Boston, in Trinity Church, we have some of the best English windows that have come to this country, designed by Mr. Burne Jones, and made in a nearly avowed competition with the glass by Mr. La Farge, in the same church. In the English work we have, undoubtedly, elements of beauty, such as go with the design of Mr. Burne Jones, but little else. Considered as colors, they hardly exist, while by their side the work of the American artist has a depth and richness which adds to the dignity and beauty of the design. That these English windows are more in the character of old work, as regards superficial features, such as the archaism referred to above, is true enough; but as old work has, as its most essential characteristic, great beauty of color, which is almost always absent in English work, there seems but little ground for a marked preference which certain of the clergy have for English glass. There is in this a question of design made in obedience to conventional law, which, with the freedom of men who feel called to do individual work, we upon this side of the water have neglected; but latterly attempts have been made, with success, to combine, in a design which is cognizant of ecclesiastical requirements, the elements of color inherent to American glass, and the skill which we have acquired in its use. An example of such a design is given herewith, that of a window made by the Tiffany Glass Company for the Church of the Heavenly Rest of New York. It is of the familiar Gothic description, the design of which, while studiously conventional, is rendered interesting by a certain personality in the character of the figures, which were designed by Mr. Lyell Carr. This is as it should be, the windows by Mr. Burne Jones, for instance, being full of the characteristics of their designer while fulfilling the re quirements of the church. But although adherence to convention is common to the German and French glass-stainers, there has not, to my knowledge, come to this country any window by them which is above the level of good mediocrity; nor, indeed, are there men in these countries of the same relative artistic importance as the Americans who are engaged in designing and making stained glass. But it is as a means of expression of artistic qualities which could hardly find their vent in any other direction, that our stained glass rises to the height of a definite achievement. The windows by Mr. La Farge in Trinity, that in the Ames Memorial at North Easton, and the sumptuous windows adorning the hall and stairway in the residence of the late William H. Vanderbilt, could only have been done by the fortuitous possession by a gifted artist of a material of surprising richness. In like manner the design by Mr. Tiffany which graces these pages was carried out much as a painter working with color made by pulverizing gems might have done it. This exceeding wealth of color, aided by the network of the lead-lines, carries with it, moreover, a certain solidity of impression that keeps our most audacious experiments thoroughly within the realm of mural decoration; so that, despite the lamentations of our pseudoarchaic critics that we occasionally represent too much distance, our glass seems more on the plane of the wall into which it is set than most of the thinner and clearer glass of foreign manufacture. But this plea for greater public rec ognition of our most truly national achievement in the arts of design must draw to a close. While it is not intended to call attention to individual works in general, brief mention may be made of Mr. Francis Lathrop's dignified figure of Christ in the window in Bethesda Church, Saratoga, of Mr. Maitland Armstrong's window in Grace Church, Providence, characterized, as is all Mr. Armstrong's work, by good taste and a somewhat more strict adherence to approved methods than some of his brother artists, though the designs reproduced here tell their own story. Excellent work has also been done by Mr. Frederic Crowninshield, Mr. John Johnston, Mr. Prentice Treadwell, Mr. Frank Hill Smith, and others, mere registration of this fact must suffice. But in conclusion I may say, as I commenced, that here is to-day an art practised with much of that originality which our foreign critics call for as a manifestation of the American spirit. That this should be fostered and encouraged would appear to go without saying; that it is properly so encouraged is not as yet the case; but if anyone of those interested in the actual erection of a stainedglass window will dispassionately study the subject, and learn what is being done here and elsewhere, the conclusion will be forced upon him that here is an art that is native, and that has taken root from a small beginning; that even now the vigorous young trunk spreads forth its blossoming branches to delight and make proud the land where the arid waste has become the fair garden. AT THE STATION By Rebecca Harding Davis. N WOTHING could well be more commonplace or ignoble than the corner of the world in which Miss Dilly now spent her life. A wayside inn, near a station on the railway which runs from Salisbury, in North Carolina, up into the great Appalachian range of mountains; two or three unpainted boxes of houses scattered along the track by the inn; not a tree or blade of grass in the "clarin'; a few gaunt, longlegged pigs and chickens grunting and cackling in the muddy clay yards; beyond, swampy tobacco fields stretching to the encircling pine woods. For Sevier Station lay on the lowland; the mountains rose far to the west, like a blue haze on the horizon. The railway ran like a black line across the plain, and stopped at their foot at a hamlet called Henry's; thence an occasional enterprising traveller took "the team " up the precipitous mountain road to Asheville, then a sleepy village unknown to tourists. Nothing, too, could have been more commonplace or ignoble than Miss Dilly herself: a pudgy old woman of sixty, her shapeless body covered with a scant, blue homespun gown, with a big white apron tied about where the waist should have been; a face like that of an exaggerated baby, and round, innocent blue eyes, which, when they met yours, you were sure were the friendliest in the world. Miss Dilly always wore a coarse white handkerchief (snowy white, and freshly ironed) pinned about her neck, and another tied over her ears, for she had occasionally a mysterious pain, commonly known to us as neuralgia, but which the Carolinian mountaineers declare is only caused by being "overlooked" by someone who has an evil eye. "They tell me it must be so," Miss Dilly would say. "But, of course, my dear, it was done by accident. Nobody would hurt a person thataway, meanin' it. An' it's a mighty tarrible thing to have that kind of an eye! I hope the good Lord don't let any poor soul know that he has it." Miss Dilly had had this pain only since she had lived in the lowland. It had almost disabled her. She was born in the mountains-up on the Old Black-and she fancied if she would go back to them she would be cured. But her younger brother, James, owned this farm and inn, and when their mother died, twenty years ago, he had agreed with Preston Barr that he should have both, rent free, if he would give Dilly a home and the yield of one field of tobacco yearly. James then set off to the West to make his fortune. Letters at first came regularly. But it was ten years now since she had heard from him. Nobody ever heard a groan from Miss Dilly when the attacks of pain came on. "When the good Lord gives you a load to cahry, I reckon 't ar'nt the clean thing to lay it on other folks' shoulders," she would say, laughing. She shut herself up, therefore, in her own chamber, and would let nobody in, though everybody at the inn, from Squire Barr himself to Sam (the black cook, ostler, and chambermaid), besieged the door. A gloom like that of a funeral overhung the whole clarin' when Miss Dilly had one of her spells. After the passing of the two trains a day it was the one topic of interest. "I've knowed wimmen as was younger," old Colonel Royall would say, solemnly wagging his head and winking his bleared eyes; "but Aunt Dilly is the jokingest and most agreeable of her sex in this part of Cahliny, to my thinkin'." "Yes," Squire Barr would answer, nodding gravely. "And how any human fiend can lay the devil's look on her, passes me!" When the attack was over she would come down, pale and pinched about the jaws, but smiling, kissing and shaking hands all round as if she had come back from a long journey. The Squire invariably addressed her with ponderous gravity, after this fashion : "Ef it be so, Aunt Dilly, 's you think goin' back to yer home on th' Old Black 'd give you ease, say the wohd. I can't pay you rent in money, foh Godamity knows, I've got none. But in traffic, tobacco, cohn, an'.millet-it'll be all sent up reg'lar. Though what we'd do without you all, passes me!" At which Mrs. Missouri Barr would look at Miss Dilly with tears on her gaunt cheeks, and the girls would hang about her, patting her, and the Colonel would declare with an oath that "the whole clarin' had been powerful interrupted while you all was gone." These were the happiest moments of Miss Dilly's happy life. She would explain carefully to them, for the thousandth time, her feeling on the matter. ""T seems to me ef I was in the old place, facin' Old Craggy, 'n the Swanannoa a-runnin' past the door, 'n could go set by father 'n mother every mornin', whar they're lyin' among the rowan trees, I'd get young agin 'n lose this torment. But then, what 'd James think of he'd come back hyar ready to cahry me to his home in Colorado or them furrin countries? Me gone, after my promise to wait? 'N it would go hard too to leave you, Preston, 'n Missoury, 'n the girls, 'n Sam, 'n all-very hard! The girls always surprised Miss Dilly with a good supper on these recoveries, and the Colonel and Squire Preston felt it their duty to go to bed drunker than usual, in sign of joy. At other times, life at Sevier Station was stagnant enough. Miss Dilly sewed or knit in her own room, sitting at the window where she could see the six men of the village sitting in a row in the gallery of the inn, smoking. She called them her boys, and when one chanced to have the rheumatism or tooth-ache or a snake-bite, clucked about him like an old hen over an ailing chick. All the children in the hamlet were free of her room there was always one at least with her, listening to her old Bible stories. Neither they nor Miss Dilly were at all sure how far exactly Palestine was from Carolina; indeed, Dilly had a dim conviction that the mountains on which her Lord walked and suffered and died as man were part of the mountains yonder, which were all the world that she knew. There was no church near the station; there were not even the monthly "pra'ars" which keep up the religious and social life of the mountains. Miss Dilly with her Bible and her incessant innocent talk of "the good Lord" was all the pope or preacher known to these people, the only messenger sent to show them how to live or to die. In the morning the train passed the station, going up to Henry's; in the afternoon it came down; it halted for five or ten minutes each time. These brief pauses were the end of life for the population of Sevier Station; the whole twenty-four hours merely led up to them. When the train came in sight, the six men, the women, children, pigs, and chickens dropped the work they had in hand and waited, breathless. It came up out of the great busy world and swept down into it again-a perpetual miracle-leaving them in silence and solitude. Miss Dilly was always at her post by the window to see it go by. The conductor and engineer had learned to watch for the wondering old baby face, and often threw to her a little package of candy or a newspaper. Her heart thumped with terror and delight as the wonderful thing rushed past her. If she could only ride on the cars once, only for a mile! This was the one secret ambition of her life. Sometimes, but very rarely, the train was belated and stopped long enough for the passengers to take supper. Then excitement rose to fever height. Mrs. Barr, the girls, Preston, even the Colonel were busy in the kitchen, cooking and scolding Sam. Miss Dilly, who could do nothing, hurried to the parlor, in fresh apron and handkerchiefs. It was a stuffy little room with plaited rugs on the floor, a chromo of the death-bed of Washington on the wall, and a red-hot stove in the middle. But the passengers who were waiting for supper, to Miss Dilly's mind, were all dear good folk who had come up from the world to talk to her awhile. She took the keenest interest in them all: nursed the babies, pulled out some candy from her pocket for the children, ran for a drink for the tired, dusty women, or sat listening eagerly to the talk of the men, now and then asking a timid question. "And you really been at New Yohk, sah? Dear me! I doan know what anybody thet has bin at New Yohk wants to come to the mountings foh. No, I never travelled. Much, that is. I was once at Asheville, foh two days. I reckon New Yohk is differint. But Asheville is a vehy large town, sah. You suhtinly ought to visit it." It was singular to see how they all, women, children, and men, seemed to understand Miss Dilly at once, and treated her with a tender kind of respect. She usually felt quite intimate with them all before the evening was over, and when they entered the train and were swept out of sight would stand looking after them, the tears in her eyes. "The dear friends hardly come till they go again," she would say to the girls. One stormy night in winter the train was delayed two hours beyond its time. A child of one of the passengers had been taken sick, near Henry's; the train was stopped, and a man who was said to have considerable skill in physic was sent for, two miles distant. The passengers waited willingly. They were in no hurry; nobody in Carolina was ever in a hurry in those days. Everybody was anxious to help the baby, and proposed his own favorite remedy, brandy being the most popular. There were only two men in the car who did not join the group about the sick child. They sat side by side on a back seat; one of them, a swarthy, VOL. IV.-73 middle-aged man, with eyes like those of a stupid, affectionate dog, stooping forward, listening eagerly to its moans and the advice of the crowd. "Poor little kid!" he said, earnestly. "I reckon it's its head as is wrong. I had a boy once. He only lived to be seven. It was the head as ailed him. The brain, sah. Enormous! Ef that little fellah had lived he'd have made his mark in the world, alongside of Alick Stephens." "Died at seven?" said his companion with an inarticulate murmur of sympathy. "Well, sah. Him thet's above, He knows. It's all foh the best." "Not foh me; not foh me!" with a fierce growl, after which he was silent. Presently he said: "Captain, I used to quiet my boy a-strokin' of his temples. Ef they'd try it on the baby "I'm very sorry, Mr. Judson," said the other man, with sudden gravity, "thet I cahn't let you try it yohself. But duty, sah "I didn't think of doin' it myself!" exclaimed Judson, angrily. "You don't suspect me of a trick? Dy'e think I'm a sneak?" "God forbid ! No, no, Mr. Judson. I know a high-toned gentleman when I see him. When Sheriff Roylston give me this commission he says: Treat Mr. Judson as a high-toned gentleman.' And as such I reco'nized you. And as such I treated you.” Judson made no answer. He had dropped back into his seat and pulled the wide-rimmed hat over his brows. The child by this time was asleep; the passengers crept softly back to their places, and the train was again in mo、 tion. As, an hour later, it rushed along through the gathering twilight, Judson glanced out of the windows from side to side with a terrified apprehension on his face. "Isn't this the old Sevier plantation?" "Yes. Consid'able altered since the railway was laid." After a few minutes Judson again broke the silence. "Thah was a house jest beyond the Branch hyah. T used to belong to a family named-Holmes." "Yes. Station's nigh thah now. Holmes house's took as inn. Squire Barr's the proprietor, sah." 'Any of the Holmeses livin' thah?" |