THE HESPERIAN
glasses now, is it bocnusosho has such a nico
nose for thorn?"
"No, it is from over study, I bo
licvo. You see, she has had rather a trying
your of it. I took her through tho Borghcso
last week and learned all the particulars.
This very confidentially, of course. In tho
lirst place, being a young woman of intellect,
she wished to amply prepare herself for her
tour. So last winter in Chicago she devo
ted herself to a courso of reading. She in
formed me that she read an ontiro set of Ras
kin, a large number of historical novels,
many works on tho Horn and fauna of Europe,
Abbot's 'Life of Napoleon Gibbon's 'Do
eline and Fall,' and somebody on the forma
tion of the Alps."
She, sympathetically "Poor thing."
Ik "Nor is that the worst of it! She
commits to memory the name of the painter
of every picture she sees, and the date of
his birth and death. She wont about among
those bronze brethren in the Borghcso mut
tering like a prophetess of Apollo. .More
than all this, she has a diary which takes a
great deal of hor time. I gleaned that it
was a sort of running comment on art,
poetry, history, religion, politics, philoso
phy and science, both ancient and modern.
She has already completed live, duo decimo
volumes, which she has sen', to her
friends in Chicago. She hopes to be able
to complete tho entire series, unless, as her
physicians fear, she breaks down from over
work." ' ,
,s7,tOh, dear! Aren't that kind horrid?
The kind that go about with note books and
sketch books, and gather violets from Shel
ley's grave !"
Jh i. They are hard to endure, and yet
they are amusing."
Xhc"0, yes! I knew a party of young
ladies from a college in Kansas who went
abroad with their instructcr in ornamental
penmanship to study art. At tho end of
three months, one member of the party was
near-sighted from her close application to
her guide book, and another, tho most prom
ising student of the college, was ill with
brain fever. During her delirium she re
peated wholo pages of Baedeker, and sho
died in Florence, gasping snatches of Roger's
'Italy' with hor last breath."
I'fio servants enter and 2lco tho next
courso.
T11LRD COURSE.
dean Dindon Sauce do Oranlaios.
'famines J'arisiennes Jtyfts Pais.
J bidet fa do Jrintemps au Oresson.
He "Y
ou are
iestin
j c.
now, but you
spoke spoke earnestly awhile ago."
,." Yes."
Vb "Speak so again.'"
She, reluctantly "I could speak more
freely to you if you had not been in Italy
for eight years. We have been laughing at
tho would-be intellectual American tourists.
But there is a worse class still. J mean the
class who really have talents and possibili
ties, who come abroad not to study, but,
ostensibly to kill time, really to kill their
nationality. They drift from Paris to Rome
and from Rome to Baden, and spend their
time in forgetting their Americanisms. 1
think the few gifted and brilliant men who
leave America every roar do it more harm
than all the thousands ol ignorant and de
based Europeans who Hock into Castle Gar
den. This living on tho continent is becom
ing a dissipation among young Americans.
It makes me heart-sick to sec American artists
trving to become 'citizens of the world,'
when evcy great work of art must be in
tensely national. There never was a cosmo
politan school of art, and never will be.
This life of voluntary skill is especially weak
ening to Americans. Tho German artist
may live in Paris, and the Parisian in Na
ples and yet not sutler much, for these con
tinental nations arc all bound together by
ties of blood and by their common weakness.
But wo are away from all this convention
ality, and cynicism, and aged'oss, and
dwarfedness, and Ruins-of-Empire, or ought
to be, separated from it by three thousand
miles of blue sea. Our world was fresh
from God's fingers when this Europo was
rotten to its core. We have the world's
youngest born over there, and woe to us if
wo poison its youth."
JIc "But we must come in contact with
the worst types of these nations in America,
even."
She "I do not think that the foreigners
who come in at our ports can ever hurt us.
It is only when we go abroad and take tho
I
41
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