“The true University of these days is a Collection of Books,” and one’s education cannot begin too early.

PICTURES

So many homes combining taste and elegance and refinement in their furnishing, still impress one with the feeling that somewhere within the lute there is a rift which destroys its perfect harmony, and that rift is not far to seek—­it lies in the pictures.  Cheap chromos, lithographs, and woodcuts have small excuse for being in these days of fine reproductions in photographs, photogravures, and engravings, and their presence in a home indicates not only a lopsided development of the artistic sense, but an indifference to that beauty of which art is but one of the expressions.  Happy, indeed, is the homemaker in realizing the necessity and privilege of growing up to the works of artists who have seen beauty where she would have been blind, and felt to a depth which she has not known; for in that realization lies the promise of ability to rise to the point where she will at last be able to feel as the artist felt when he wrought.

ART SENSE

Mrs. Lofty, who never has to stop to count the cost, loses the valuable art education which our housewife all unconsciously acquires in the months which necessarily pass between her picture purchases—­months in which she has time to discover new beauties, fresh interest, deeper meaning, in those she already has.  All these new impressions she carries with her to the selection of her next treasure, and the result will probably be a choice of greater artistic merit than she would have been capable of making before.  So long as there is something in a picture which impresses her, the fact that she does not fully understand its underlying meaning need be no obstacle to its purchase; the light of comprehension will come.

THE INFLUENCE OF PICTURES

The picturing of the home should be undertaken in no light humor, for better no pictures at all than poor ones.  Little, trivial, meaningless nothings are like small talk—­uninspiring and devitalizing—­and therefore unprofitable; battle and other exciting scenes wear on the nerves; the constant presence of many persons is tiring in pictures as well as out; small figures and fine detail which cannot be distinguished across the room cause visual cramp; and the rearing horse which keeps one longing for the rockers cannot be called reposeful.  Any picture in which one seeks in vain the rest and peace and quietude and inspiration which the home harmony demands, is but a travesty of art—­domestically speaking.  There is probably nothing more rest-giving than the marine view, and next come the pretty pastoral and cool woodland scenes, while madonnas and other pictures of religious significance express their own worth—­just a few choice, well-selected photographs, etchings, and engravings of agreeable subjects, with a painting or two; that’s all we want.