Puslapio vaizdai
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As for Kartoffel, it seemed as though the very gray of her fur turned white with anger. Consider her situation. For months, now, this thing had been going on, outrage upon outrage. Here now was the culmination, the final straw-the tin dish empty beside her, her maternal fountains likewise dry, and yonder in the haymow, posterity, helpless posterity, mewling for nutriment! Would it not have put backbone of fire in a very worm to rise and smite?

But what could she do? She was helpless. Jim was as strong as she was, even on her own ground, and he held at command a whole wide empire besides, -the empire of the air,-over which she was powerless, but into which he could spring for harbor and refuge at an instant's warning. What could she do?

Helpless, she turned away, and started across the garden toward the clover meadow. Perhaps you think it was to hunt field-mice. Perhaps it was, but I do not think so. Field-mice were there, certainly, and Kartoffel knew it; but I do not think it was field-mice now. No, no. She had far other matters on her mind. Why, I myself, watching from the top of the stack, from that distance even, felt that I could have clubbed the scoundrel insensible. What then must Kartoffel have felt? No; what Kartoffel wanted, in my belief, was space to express herself in. The dooryard ample ordinarily, was at this supreme moment totally insufficient, a mere hen-coop. So she started for the clover meadow.

Then Jim, with an air as if the whole thing rather bored him, but perhaps there might be a little more fun in it, and, on the whole, he guessed he would, lifted himself into the air and made over toward the garden in the direction she was taking. This brought them within two or three rods of the oat-stack.

By this time everybody had perceived that something out of the ordinary was on. Even "Mud Turtle" Perkins, who had been falling asleep for old man Jones at fifteen dollars a month "and found" ever since I could remember, woke up to it.

And when Jim dropped to the ground a yard or two in front of Kartoffel, and with that nonchalant swagger of his stepped along toward her, work on stack

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and wagon stopped altogether. Uncle Caleb forgot for a moment that oats were the most urgent fact in nature, and, leaning upon his fork, held his breath for the outcome.

Kartoffel never swerved an inch, but even at our distance we could see the green fire leap in her eyes. She kept straight on, silent, ominous, a vortex of wrath, but as still as oil. Her tail, which had been a perfect clothes-line on windy Monday, fell as calm as a mill-pond; but its tip was terrible, snapping, crackling, and coruscating as if she were a very keg of gunpowder on legs, her tail the lighted fuse. She had almost passed when Jim, reckless loon that he was, gone clean drunken with it, "fairly yellin' for the fool-killer to come quick, and be sure not to ferget his ax!" as Uncle Caleb put it, just as the tip of her tail whipped the air in front of his beak, seized it and gave a sharp bite. It was the spark of ignition, set off by mistake in the gasolene-tank. There was a single preliminary flash of gray, then cat and crow exploded together into an indistinguishable chaos of feathers and fur.

There is n't much to tell about the battle. tle. When lightning strikes, there is seldom much left for the historian but the ruins. There is no strategy about a stroke of lightning. It just hits; and you wake up, if you do wake up, to wonder what it could have been that struck you.

It was so with Jim. He had made the old fatal error of underrating his foe. Perhaps you think he did something with his chevaux-de-frise. Not the first thing. He did n't have time. He did n't have time even to think chevaux-de-frise. Kartoffel blew up so quickly that his ideas flew fifty ways, and it took them until the next day to get together again, which was a little late. Anyway, it could n't have been five seconds after the first explosion (I rolled off the oat-stack, they told me, like a falling bundle) before I was myself on the ground,—and none too soon,--had gotten fox-terrier action on the scruff of Kartoffel's neck, and had pitched her, a red-hot ball of infuriated fur, half-way to the barnyard gate. My hands bore the marks of her claws for weeks afterward, the vixen! But who could blame her?

Jim's "Waterloo?" Well, yes, and "then some." He was in hospital a full week with it, the entire surgical staff

(Aunt Malvina being surgeon-in-chief and head-nurse in one) devoting all their time and skill to him, his legs dressed, his right wing in splints, his neck swathed and swaddled up like diphtheritic sore throat. For two or three days it looked serious.

But Uncle Caleb laughed. "Never you worry about Jim," he said; "he 'll come through without a dent on him. Why, Malviny, you could feed that bird through a thrashin'-machine and never hurt him a mite. He'd blow out through the strawcarrier chirp as a chickadee, declarin' it was the loveliest little glade he 'd been in yet, just the spot he 'd been lookin' for."

It was true. Jim was very much surprised (after he 'd had time to get acquainted with himself again) at our queer notions about that battle. Injured? Pshaw! A scratch or two, a feather here and there. But why this foolish fuss? You'd 'a' thought he was killed; you expect that of women, but he supposed Billy and I had some sense. He had more feathers than he wanted anyway, dog-days coming on.

And what did I want to interfere for,idiot!-spoiling his guard? Did I not see what a terrific right wing swing he had handed Kartoffel at the climax? Knocked her half-way to the barn-yard gate.

Kartoffel? Oh, yes, Kartoffel was all right in her way; rather interesting, pep

pery old girl; considerable force; quite a pile-driver way with her, in fact, at times; but no insight; no brains. There was the rub. How few were gifted that way! But of course Jim had n't repeated the performWhy go over the same ground twice? Only geniuses of the second order repeat; Jim, and Shakspere, never!

ance.

But what pleased Jim most was that he had now solved the old problem which had so troubled him as to the raison d'être of such inharmonious matters as watertanks, rip-saws, and gunpowder-kegs going about with lighted fuses. The truth washe had it thought out now-that at times Providence had a little too much to think about, and at such times needed help. That was the truth of it; needed help and advice; and Jim would give it to him. Perched upon the axle-end of creation, which visibly stuck up through our dooryard, high above the roof-tree, he would watch the world go round, so intensely interesting it was, and from time to time, as he looked, and found Providence puzzling over some difficulty, wondering what on earth was to be done about it, Jim, perceiving the root of the matter plainly, would kindly furnish a solution.

Thus the way of wisdom led on, winding and beautiful, over hill and dale, to the very prime-ministership of heaven. Gifted bird! Well might he be pleased!

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F

THE ROMAN ART EXPOSITION

OF 1911

BY HARRISON S. MORRIS

Commissioner-General of the United States of America to the Roman Art Exposition of 1911

come from every border. As one of the impassioned Romans said at a luncheon in the "Castle of the Cæsars," "Rome is the cradle of art, and is jealous of her praise," and the cradle that has rocked us through our infancy holds us in its spell forever.

you can conceive of a valley running races; but Rome is the mother of the of the hills beyond the Borghesi Gardens, edged with Claude-like stone-pines and bordered by yellow villas; and in the depth of this valley the pleasure-houses which twenty or thirty nations have dedicated to the glory of art and of Rome, shining white under the azure sky of Italy, with the Sabine Hills as a remote rampart-then you have an impression of the art exposition made to celebrate fifty years of Italian independence.

In the midst of the group is the Palazzo delle Belle Arti, contributed by Rome and to remain a permanent memorial. On the slopes are England, Japan, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Servia, France; and on an eminence looking up and down the entire valley and across to the blue crests of the mountains the United States has built herself a house such as we in America call a home. It is an adaptation of a house designed by Carrère & Hastings, and while it necessarily loses some native traits in submitting to the introduction of galleries, it is essentially a "tapistry-brick" country house, dear to American sentiment and to American landscape.

Hardly ever, I suppose, in the history of the fine arts has a more general pilgrimage of the nations been made to any Mecca of art. Paris and Chicago and St. Louis have had their devotees of many

PERHAPS it is thus that through the benign agencies of art the races of men are in the way to become better acquainted. You would suppose that the globe-trotting American had made himself pretty well known to Europe; but no greater fallacy ever existed. They know the outside of us, our independence, our liberal purses, our dress, and our traveling needs; but the reality of us is as far away from them as our shores.

An intelligent-enough Italian lady said she had been three months in America. "Where?" we inquired. "The Philippine Islands."

And that we were usually spoken of as "North Americans" leads to a quite mercantile inference that some of our hustling business men might well draw. The volume of trade from South America to Europe makes the distinction very necessary to a Dutchman or an Italian, though, as I frequently explained, it left us in the category of the redman.

But even the English, our racial cousins, are slow enough to grasp us. Said

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one very polite Lady (with a capital L) the German pavilion at the inauguration, in her inquiries about America:

"I wonder if any of our other colonies will become independent."

I have thrown in these specimens of "imperfect sympathies" as a prelude to the statement that the knowledge of our native art in Europe is as limited as that of our native life; and if I were to assert that, outside the narrow boundaries of France, our own acquaintance with the contemporary art of Europe and Asia is as restricted as theirs of us, I suppose I should be severely corrected. But it is the very purpose and value of such an exposition as this at Rome to enlighten mankind about his fellow-man, and those who see the exposition, and see it thoroughly, will find as much profit from its neighborly uses as from its art.

As an impression is all that can be attempted, I can only say how that art affected me at first, and how it appeared to me afterward on a more careful analysis. As a whole, and without reference to separate works or individual artists, I should briefly summarize it as disappointing-not the exposition, nor the life and color and the babel of languages under the unifying Roman walls, but the total tendency, the spirit which the various groups unite in forming, the composite photograph of the art of the world as it exists to-day. This is disappointing because it shows no lofty ideals, and, if one may prophesy on such slippery ground, no school in the making.

My revered old friend Halsey C. Ives, Dean of International Expositions, visited. me in Rome, and after a day at the exposition I asked how it struck him.

"Misguided energy," he said; "with the exception of America and England I see no promise. If that is all it comes to after forty years of effort, I wonder if my time has been misspent."

And that is the feeling with which I came away from my first tour through the pavilions. America easily leads; England comes next, and Germany; then France far behind, and then all the rest as you choose. The spirit of the European work is unprogressive, and its Zeitgeist is saddening.

Yet every nationality thinks its own geese are swans. As I walked through

one of the French officials hailed me with good cheer in English:

'How goes it?"

I supposed he referred to the crowd and the long waits for the king and queen to be conducted from room to room; so I said:

"Badly. How is it with you?"

"Same thing by me," he said in broken accents; and then I knew that he referred to the pictures.

On the other hand, a high German official confided to me his opinion of the English art in the laconic words, "Too sweet."

But allowing for national prejudice, there is, underneath all this and much other kindred criticism, the real cause for objection which I have put forward: the art of Europe does not seem to be advancing. It strikes me that it has a past, but no visible future, and this leads to the reflection that cannot fail to arise in every thinking mind which observes existing conditions: why is it that artists who are living in daily touch with the great masterpieces of the world fail to be influenced by their simplicity, their technical beauty, and their imaginative perfection?

One answer is, that the contemporary mind gives up in despair the attempt to originate beauty and truth equal to that which the past has produced, and that its only resource is the vulgarization of what was once pure and good.

Another answer is, that the race has advanced beyond ideals of beauty to ideals of political liberty, and that the two tendencies are incompatible.

But neither of these theories is the last word, and when one contemplates the healthy, sane, and temperate, as well as beautiful, art of the United States, the intelligent and advancing ideals of Great Britain, and the clean and wholesome aims of Germany, neither of whom possesses in common contact the great master-works of antique beauty as do the artists in Italy and France and Spain, one must search elsewhere for an explanation of the degenerate art of continental Europe.

BUT I do not mean to tie all European art by the neck and cut off its head collectively. I have been speaking generally, not specifically; of tendencies, not of individuals. To come to individuals, I should

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