Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

THE WATERED LILIES. The Master stood in His garden Among the lilies fair, Which his own right hand had planted And trained with tenderest care. He looked at their snowy blossoms And marked with observant eye That His flowers were sadly drooping, For the leaves were parched and dry. “ My lilies need to be watered,” The Heavenly Master said; “ Wherein shall I draw it for them And raise each drooping head ? ” Close to his feet on the pathway Empty and frail and small An earthen vessel was lying, Which seemed of no use-at all. But the Master saw and raised it From the dust in which it lay, And smiled as He gently whispered, This shall do My work to-day.” It is but an earthen vessel, But it lay so close to me; It is small, but it is empty, And that is all it needs to be.” So to the fount He took it And filled it to the brim; How glad was the earthen vessel To be of some use to Him! He poured forth the living water Over His lilies fair, Until the vessel was empty, And again He filled it there. He watered the drooping lilies Until they revived again, And the Master saw with pleasure That His labor was not in vain. His own hand had drawn the water Which refreshed the thirsty flowers, But He used the earthen vessel To convey the living showers. And to itself it whispered As He laid it aside once more: “Still, while I lie in His pathway, Just where I did before. “ Close would I keep to the Master, Empty would I remain, And perhaps some day He may use me To water His flowers again. Jfcihntfars mtir JIrL GENIE ORCHARD. NOTES. the term Janvier “in speaking of plaques; the 1 Tench decorators refer only to perfectly flat or slightly curved surfaces of any shape, and without a bottom rim or base.” The Crockery and Glass Journal discussing this matter recently, justly remarked that this excludes all porcelain from the definition, as only faience or earthen ware can be fired without the rim or foot to which he refers. But, as is often the case, the jour nal says, the term “plaque” is a misnomer, or rather, a designation used properly at rst,but afterward corrupted by inaccurate usage to apply to an article of a quite dif ferent kind. Its literal meaning is a thin plate or slab of metal, and the verb means to veneer or to plate, as silver plating and the like, so that the term “ plaque ” can only be properly applied to articles in metal stamped or hammered into shape. Common usage, however, sanctions its em ployment to describe all kinds ornamental articles formed from either metal or pottery designed to be hung against the wall for the adornment of the room. Silver sharps in France have been flood ing Paris with counterfeits of old French plate, and it has just been discovered that the bogus goods are ordinary modern plate when made in Germany, and, after being imported as such, have the old Paris mark put on them and are fixed up to look like the real old goods. Five men in this busi ness have been fined from S2OO to S6OO each. It is no uncommon thing in Japan to find artists and artisans working rapidly with both hands at the same time, and some paint with their feet with equal fa cility. Os course, there are many left handed persons in Caucasian countries; but it is rare indeed to find a European artist working with his feet in Japanese fashion. M. Ch. Fellu, of Antwerp, does it. He has no hands, and seems to get on pretty comfortably without them. A correspondent of Society, a London journal, saw him at work recently in the Museum, “ making- a copy,- and a very good one, too, of Franz Hals’ picture of ‘The Fisherboy of Haarlem.’ M. Fellu holds his palette and mahlstick with his left foot resting on a little low table, while with his right foot supported on the mahlstick, he firmly and apparently easily enough grasps the brush with which he works. He seems to possess great power and nicety of touch with his toes; no doubt they are as sensitive as our fingers.” “ The Decorative Treatment of Chil dren,” is the amusing topic of a writer in the London World. He divides them into (1) Reynolds children, (2) Italian children, (3) grotesque children. There is no type, he thinks, “so admirably harmonious, so entirely right in an [esthetic English home” as the first-named class. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that “if ar.y parents were so blest as to have a whole family of Rey nolds children they would be justified in refurnishing, in moving, nay, in building a house which should be a fit casket to hold so precious a possession.” Their large round eyes, if blue, would carry out the sentiment of the china on the walls, “ de liciously repeating the hue of the Oriental plates; if hazel, the lustrous warmth of the lacquer trays.” Os course Reynolds children must wear white frocks with broad sashes, red shoes and coral beads; with mob-caps for the girls, unless the room is too revoltingly Philistine. But mere dressing, of course, will not make a Reynolds child. Demeanor is an essential element of success. The skipping-rope and other airy and graceful exercises are ad missible for the Reynolds child, and gen tle play with a dog may be encouraged. The Italian child is darker, dreamier, less lyric, and more tragic than the Rey nolds child. It may degenerate into the grotesque, but its great point is that it re mains decorative. For this type, we are reminded, “ drapery is what is needed, softness, amplitude. No bows or ribbons, or frippery—-they are out of plaoo •• should interfere with the sense of' subdued intensity; hair in heavy plaits for a girl, or a long flowing roll—not curls— for a boy, and any amount of elaborate needlework.” It is to be further noted that the Italian child is the only type that admits of really gorgeous treatment. The grotesque child is difficult to treat, and involves an elaborate psychical study of character: “ Mere color, mere form are still all-important, as bearing on the gen eral harmony, but there will be subtle dis harmonies in the child itself, which must be obliterated or reconciled.” SNOW BALLS. A beautiful design for the panel is the snow ball, and may be treated in the fol lowing manner: The mode of treatment in oil-colors is as follows: Sketch the design carefully in outline with charcoal or lead-pencil. If a back-ground of color is desired a warm gray, shaded down to brown, would look well. For this, mix white, black, vermil ion and a little blue of any kind. Begin at the left hand corner with the lightest tint of this mixture. Make your strokes from left to right, not directly slanting, but in a short curved slant. These strokes will give an atmospheric effect to the back ground. Work close to the outline but not so close as to lose it. Put in darker shades of your background color on the right hand of the snow-ball and darker still beneath the flowers, leaves and stem, but at the very bottom use a lighter tint. Paint the snow-balls (the whole flower) a yellow-green gray. When nearly or quite dry, each little flower can be separately done with white tinged slightly with lemon yellow. Make the yellow-green gray, with lemon-yellow, black and cobalt. Do not put pure white in the high lights, but give a creamy effect by the addition of lemon-yellow. For the under sides of the turned up leaves, use terre-verte white and lemon-yellow, just enough of the latter t® take off the blue tinge. Paint the upper leaf to the right and the second leaf to the left, with zinober green No. 1 shaded with zinober No. 2 and In dian yellow, chrome green No. 3, or indigo added. The other leaves can be painted and shaded with the same colors except zinober No. 1. Do not leave dark lines of color for the veins of the leaves; indicate these rather by the shading. The stem is also green, the high lights in zinober No. 1. If instead of the greens mentioned, you have the chrome greens on your palette, you can modify them by adding lemon yellow, Indian yellow and deep cadmium. Do not call the painting finished until you have painted over the whole a second or third time. To paint the same design in mineral colors on china, proceed as follows: Rub the surface of the china with a drop or two of fat oil and a little turpentine on the rag. Draw the design (only the out line) with a lead pencil. Leave the white of the china for the high lights on the flower; for the shading use pearl gray No. 6, mixing yellow and a little black in the darker parts. Keep it warm in tone. For the greens use grass green No. 5, lightened with mixing yellow and deepened with emerald-stene green ; in the darkest parts add dark green No. 7. Use a thin wash of emerald-stone green and pearl gray No. 6 for the turned-up parts of the leaves. When the color is quite dry, cut out the shape of each separate petal with the yel low gray mixture used before, and tinge the whole flower with as thin a wash of mixing yellow as you can put on. Com pared with the china itself it must look like cream yellow. JOSEF HOFMANN. What a wonder he is to be sure! A very boy, delightfully child-like in all his ways, apart from his musical precocity— his room at the Windsor littered with toys, fond of play and not over fond of study— his gift certainly seems a direct inspiration. It is discouraging to artists who have grown grixy in the study of music, to see this little chap in knickerbockers and turn down collars, possessing instinctively all they have labored years to acquire. He hears for the first time a difficult composi tion played by a scientific musician. He listens as I have seen a mocking-bird listen, with head a little on one side, and bright, self-confident eye, to a strange bird—canary or skylark, heard for the first time—then when the piece is finished, he skips light-heartedly to the piano and plays it through in all its phrases with an ease that seems simply miraculous. Os course he does not give the full expression of those meaning-laden compositions of the masters. His wonderful mechanical gift cannot grasp the soul of music, but all its form is there tripping from his tiny fingers, and only the artistic or musically sensitive ear can detect or feel the deficiency. Josef composes too. He has composed, it is claimed, fifty pieces of music, which his mother has written. They are mostly serious—bordering on sadness. One of them, called “Les Launs” (Tears), is full of plaintive sobbing cadences. Like the boy poets, “he writes old.” Youth is always in love with grief, because they have, as yet, known only the poetic shadow: “ Few sorrows hath she of her own, My love, my life, my Genevieve. She loves me best when most I sing The songs that make her grieve.” * •» * But Josef Hofmann, after all, is not such a marvel as Blind Tom. He has in telligence and quick wit in other things than music. He has had instruction. His father, a skillful musician, has been his teacher. His mother has musical talent joined to a fine imagination. But Blind Tom had no instruction. He could receive none, for he was, and is, an idiot, incapable of being taught. Yet he too, at young Hofmann’s age, played difficult composi tions after hearing them once. He repeated upon his tin milk cup, all sounds that came to his ear, as he sat in his wooden cradle in the babies’ room, minded by a superannuated “ maumer,” while his slave mother worked in the field. One day, when he could creep about the yard, he had a thrilling sensation. He heard a piano for the first time. The black, sight less creature crawled toward the sound. It came from the parlor*window of the big house, the home of General Bethune, his owner. He reached the window and sat down under it, drinking in the sounds. Every day, when he was put out in the yard for the sake of the sun and that he might amuse himself, the blind idiot made directly for the parlor window and seated himself on the ground beneath it. If no music was played he cried and beat a dolorous measure on his tin cup. One day, while Miss Bethune was playing he found his way into the house, creeping up the steps and into the parlor. When she stopped playing, the young lady heard a dissatisfied grunt behind her, and turning round, saw her black auditor, and good naturedly began to play for him, while he sat motion less on the carpet, like a small baboon carved in ebony. This happened often. One day the creature was alone in the room. He could walk by this time, and he found his way to the piano that his young mistress had just left. He climbed upon the stool and began to press the ivory keys— began indeed to repeat the piece the young lady had just left off playing. Imagine the delight of the blind creature, whose sole intelligent sensation was his passion for music, when he found that he could produce harmonious sounds upon something so superior to his tin cup in. melody and expression. Imagine, too, the amazement of his young mistress, when she hurried back to see who was playing, and found the musician to be the blind slave boy, always looked upon as an imbecile. Imbecile he was and remains, in every other respect, an enigma, unexplained to the many skilled artists and crowned heads of Europe, before whom he has played. Why should music alone—said to be the most difficult art to acquire—occasionally spring forth, seemingly full born as Pallas, from the brain of some child or half-witted creature ? Why does not some spontaneous child artist give us an exact copy of Michael Angelo’s “ Moses,” as this little Josef produces for us a sonata of Beethoven ? —Mary E. Bryan, in N. Y. Fashion Bazar. WOMAN’S REAL LIFE. Woman’s real life begins at marriage, and for the woman the first step is renun ciation. She must give up with a good grace the exaggeration and romance of love making. The warmest hearted and most unselfish women soon learn to accept quiet trust and the loyalty of a loving life as the calmest and happiest condition, and the men who are sensible enough to rely on the good sense of such wives, sail around and away from the gushing adorers for true affection and comfortable tran quillity. Just let a young wife remem ber that her husband necessarily is under a certain amount of bondage all day; that his interests compel him to look pleas ant under all circumstances, to offend none, to say no hasty word, and she will see that when he reaches his own fireside he wants most of all to have this strain removed, to be at ease; but he cannot be if he is afraid of wounding his wife’s sensibilities by for getting some outward or visible token of his affection for her. Besides, she pays him a poor compliment in refusing to believe what he does not continually assert; and by fretting for what is unreasonable to desire, she deeply wrongs herself, for “A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seemed, thick, bereft of beauty.” The flat pieces of iron shaped like the letter S that are frequently seen on the walls of old brick buildings are said to be an ancient symbol of the sun. Their origin may be traced back to Asia, where they were in use in prehistoric time, and the same sign was once employed on the official seals of Sicily and the Isle of Man.