THE COURIER.
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In the work of woman's clubs the
study of art occupies a place of honor
and prominence. Yet lees than one
half of the members of these clubs
would be able to give a definition of art,
should the occasion arise. Simply and
primarily, art is the power or ability to
do something not taught by nature. To
walk is not an art, but to dance a two
step is one. The application of knowl
edge or science to effect a desired pur
pose, is art. The science of music i6
aid down in books, and the art of music
is the expression of this science in sing
ing or playing. Were it not for art, the
truths of Bcience would lie in our minds,
cold aid dark, like marble in its moun
H tain prison; but the artist brings them
up to the light of day, breathes upon
them an electric aura, and they go forth
with a new investment, effulgent in
their glorious expression. Art is the
twin sister of civilization, the sure evi
dence of human advancement. The
mechanical or useful arts have a rela
tion in the main to man's physical
wants, while the representative arts ap
peal to his mental needs. The office of
representative art is to embody thoughts
and ideas so that they become cogniz
able to the senses. A man may have an
idea of a horse in his mind; if then with
a pencil he makeB a picture like the one
in his mind, that is representative art.
If instead of a picture he should write a
description of the horse, that would still
be representative art. And if instead of
the written picture he should describe
by spoken words the image of the horse,
or should make an image of him in plas
ter or marble, it would be the same. A
carpenter may have an idea of a house,
and he may represent that idea by
building its material counterpart; but
j ho would not erect a house merely to
represent his ideas; the prevailing mo
tive with the builder is to give his
skilled services to another person and
receive pay. Thus his representation
must be classed in the mechanical art.
The art of talking is more familiar to
people in general than any other repre
sentative art. Eloquence must be con
sidered as a separate art, though a mem
ber of the representative household.
Eloquence is by many persona supposed
to mean more than the simple expres
sion of emotion and ideas; it is thought
equally to include the matter expressed:
but when considered as an art, which it
truly is, its definition can hardly be ex
tended so far. Eloquence is an expres
sion of emotion, of intense feeling, in a
manner that will produce similar feel
ings or emotions in the minds of the
hearers. The eloquence of the forum
and the desk is in part the result of cul-
yTivation, and in part not bo. The dra
matic art is closely allied to pulpit and
forensic eloquence. The art of repre
senting ideas by written characters is
strictly representative, while printing
must be considered a mechanical art,
a way of rapidly multiplying copies of a
written text. At what time in the
world's history letters were invented, is
not known. Whether Moses was ac
quainted with the division of words,
who can tell? He probably wrote the
Hebrew language, but whether hiero
glypbically or in words as they are now
written, we have no convincing evidence
on either side. Fainting is allied to
writing by the fact that the means of
representation are similar. The best
paintings are those which approach the
nearest to a correct representation of
nature. Indeed the artist often makes
imaginary pictures, the original of
which he never has seen, just as the
novel writer sketches scenes of life that
he never has observed, Put jn both
V HIT -JmFKr
MRS. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT,
President of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
From the "Mail and Times," Des Moines.
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt .
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president
of the National Woman's Suffrage As
sociation, is one of the finest speakers
in the country. She presents a cnarm
ing appearance on the platform, her
arguments are clear and logical, her
statements truthful and intetesting and
her wit, of which she possesses no small
amount, is keen and quick. She never
fails to charm, please and convince. As
a writer, speaker and philanthropist,
Mrs. Catt has no superior. She is an
Iowa woman and Iowa may well feel a
pride in this noble, talented daughter.
She is a graduate of the State Agricul
tural college of Iowa and has also taken
a special course in law. She has had a
wide and varied experience, having been
principal and general superintendent of
the Mason City high school, joint editor
and owner with her husband of the Ma
son City Republican. She has also the
distinction of being the first woman
reporter in San Francisco; and it was
while engaged in this work that the sad
condition of so many wage earning girls
who came under her direct notice
caused her to give up her newspaper
work and resolve that her life and abili
ties that God had given her should be
devoted to the cause of women until
the time should come when all women
should have equal right and equal
wages in the field of labor. She has
traveled all over the United States and
investigated all conditions of women;
she gives her time, talentH and self to
her chosen work and contributes large
sums of money. Her husband, who is
heartily in sympathy with her in the
work, also giveB freely of his wealth.
She has a beautiful home, Benson
Hurst, on Long Island Sound, a half
hour's ride from her New York office.
This home is an ideal home with well
trained servants who have, learned to
be skillful under their mistress' train
ing. In this nome, our president, lec
turer, writer and philanthropist be
comes an ideal wife and home maker,
and thus in Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt
we have a beautiful, well-rounded type
of American woman, eloquent and witty
on the platform, dignified and business
like as president of the N. W. S. A.,
talented and instructive as a writer,
motherly and wise as a philanthropist,
finely gowned and queenly in society, a
true wife and home maker in the
truest sense of that much abused term,
a womanly woman. Mail and Times.
cases the pictures must be true to his
ideas of nature to natural probabilities.
If they are not thus true, they are re
jected. In all literature and art success is at
tained only when pen and pencil repre
sent nature in her various moods and
developments. Shakspere was emphat
ically the student and child of nature.
Humanity, physical nature, science,
were all hie; he knew everything, for
knowledge is only an acquaintance with
nature. He sings, and not England and
America oply, but the whole world, cries
encore; his plays are brought out, and
the strong heart of humanity, which
changes not, responds as it did two
hundred years ago.
The art of sculpture seems to be more
closely related to the ideal, taken as a
whole, than painting. The great tri
umphs of the sulptors have been in the
representation of the human form, by
the attitude and expression of the statue
representing heroic or moral sentiment.
This art is no less representative than
painting, yet it represents less.
Sculpture was doubtless practiced
first of all the imitative arts. Its first
manifestations, like those of the other
arts, consisted of blind, infantile grop-
ings after an expression of an inward
ideal.
For tbousapds of yeare sgulpturo was
confined to religious subjects, and con
trolled by hierarchical influences. It
embodied certain fixed types from which
no deviation was permitted, and thus
progress was effectually prevented. The
first historic sculptors are those men
tioned in the thirty-third chapter of
Exodus, about 1500 years B. C, al
though lone before this time the art of
carving stone and metals was known to
the various eastern nations. It was in
Greece that sculpture was elevated to
the position of a fine art. In the sixth
century B. C, having escaped from sac
erdotal contra', it was rapidly brought
to a Btate of perfection which it has not
occupied since the decline of Hellenic
art. But the sixteenth century gave us
Michael Angelo, and the nineteenth
Powers and his Greek slave; so let us
hope for a metempsychosis of the spirit
of the old masters.
Poetry is one of the most important
representative arts. Poetry is the anti
thesis of Bcience. While it is the lead
ing office of the latter to impart knowl
edge, the mission of poetry is the
impartation of pleasure. The poet is
preeminently a life-enjoying being. He
always is able to find some luscious fruit
or fragrant blossom on life's thorny tree,
which he embalms in the rhythmic
vepture of immortality. And this is the
mission p the poetic art, representing
truths, beauties, glories, that others lees
gifted may see them, too; thus charm
ing the sick, world-weary bouI away
from its gloomy prison into a realm of
peace and rest.
In speaking of the art of music, we
have an idea of musical sounds and
their harmonic relations.
Probably none of us ever saw a mu
sical instrument whose scale compre
hended more than seven and one-half
octaves; a sound above or below this
would not Le musical to the human
ear. What a wonderful thought is that
of the absolute musical scalo, of God's
musical instrument, if you please. This
great instrument epans tho universe; we
can appropriate only seven octaves out
of the infinite scale. Who knows but
the inhabitants of Mara or Venus use
the seven next above or below those of
our scale?
Our physical organization permits us
to know comparatively little of muic.
if our faculties enabled us to use seven
ty octaves instead of seven, the variety
and changes would be infinite. Who
shall say than the Creator did not tnako
the whole universe in accordance with
the immutable principles and possibili
ites of the diapason, and that creation is
not a vast musical instrument, and the
different worlds the stops and keys?
In the mythology of olden times we
read of Orpheus who by the influence of
his lute could enchant wild boasts,
while rocks and trees danced to the time
of his music. In this lifo of ours we
often drink from a bitter cup, we feel
as if Providence had mingled with it
no sweet. Life seems like a forest
through which a fire has swept, burning
and blackening every vestige of green
and leaving a dreary desolation. But now
steals upon the soul a breath of music,
and the wilderness is changed to a grove
of gladness; the skeleton arms of tho
trees are bending beneath their burden
of bloom and verdure, while even the
blocks and stones smile their satisfac
tion with so pleasant an existence. Then
do we realize that Orpheus was not all a
myth then have we tasted of the sweet
that distills from the bloom of the
musical art!
Miss L. W. Law, newly-elected presi
dent of the Business Women'B associa
tion of New York, occupies the respou
sible position of general manager of one
of the largest life insurance companies
in' the country. Miss Law's early ambi
tion was for a literary career. From the
position of proof reader in a large pub
lishing house she became an expert ac
countant, and soon had entire charge of
the financial side of the bueineas. Fail
ing health demanded a change of occu
pation, and the insurance business was
undertaken at a time when most com
panies looked with disfavor on women
as beneficiaries, to say nothing of man
agers and solicitors. Miss Law was the
first woman who occupied the position
of general manager, and there is only
one other woman occupying a similar
position at the present time.
At the recent annual meeting of the
Michigan Women's Press Association,
a resolution was adopted to petition the
forestry committee of the state federa
tion to consider the need of making a
beginning in the direction of preserving
the beautiful trailing arbutus. Through
out the state club women are active in
the work of tree culture and forest protection.
One of the most practical forms of
club work which has been taken up in
the cities is the lunch and rest room,
where shoppers and business women can
secur3 a hot lunch at a trifling expense,
or may use the tables free of charge
when they bring their lunches from
home. Couches, easy chairs, books, pa
pers and magazines furnish the means
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