ESTHETIC EMOTION. 411 



SOME OF THE EXTRA-ARTISTIC ELEMENTS OF 

 ESTHETIC EMOTION. 



By JOHN COTTON DANA, 



FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY, 

 NEWARK, N. J. 



MY work in a library has brought me in contact with the art in- 

 terests of a gTeat many people. Most of these people have 

 been of the average, well-to-do, clerical, commercial and professional 

 classes in this country. Representatives of women's clubs and of art 

 classes of all kinds have been common among them. Many had 

 traveled or were making studies preparatory to visits to art centers 

 abroad. The modern public library thinks the promotion of interest in 

 art in its community is a proper part of its work. With this in view 

 it buys expensive books on art and photographs of paintings, sculpture, 

 iirchitecture and other things in the field of art. The library's close 

 connection with the schools also makes it easy for the librarian to 

 keep in touch with their work in drawing, design and general art in- 

 struction. I have had unusually favorable opportunities to learn about 

 the art interests and the esthetic perceptions of that very interesting 

 class of American women, the public school teachers. From them and 

 from supervisors of drawing in the schools I have learned something of 

 the interests of children in pictures and of their capacity for esthetic 

 cultivation. The libraries I have been connected with have made 

 great use in the schools of illustrations and decorations found in cer- 

 tain periodicals; not only of pictures from art journals, but also of 

 material published, not for its art interest, but for its illustrative in- 

 terest. For students of design, collections have been made of head- 

 and tail-pieces and initials, from many sources. Designs for wood 

 ■carving, embroidery, iron work and the like have been gathered and 

 arranged. Illustrations have been collected — sometimes by the chil- 

 xiren themselves — and arranged by artists, by subjects, by methods of 

 reproduction and by media used in the original. Collections have been 

 made for story-telling purposes, and to illustrate history, geography 

 and nature-study. Reproductions of famous paintings, sculptures and 

 huildings have been gathered and classified. I speak of this by way 

 of introduction; to explain my interest in the subject of art; and to 

 give grounds for presuming to speak upon it. The collecting of these 

 pictures, the purchase of art books and the encouraging their use have 

 "naturally brought me into close touch with the very representative 



