Home Makers' Conference. 317 



mouey tliau refiucment came to South California for the wiuter. She 

 wished to make an impression ou the public and rented a house which 

 stood in a large yard adorned with much shrubbery and numerous urns 

 standing on showy pedestals. I did not see the interior of the house, 

 but she gave a glowing description of its two pianos, its wealth of rugs, 

 pictures and statuary, closing with the remark: "It's very artistic, 

 lots of art, you know." I wish she were the only one whose conception 

 of the artistic is "lots of art, you know." 



Our nation 's fathers in the early days classed works of art as luxu- 

 ries and placed so high a tariff upon them that only the rich could 

 afford to buy them. As a natural result, the next generation grew up 

 with the idea that Art is something which can be bought with money — 

 that beauty is expensive, and the more expense the more beauty. For 

 many years we have had the teaching of art listed in our school courses 

 of study, but until recently the work has been confined largely to the 

 copying of pictures or the making of pictures of objects in which the 

 children felt no interest, and which had no connection with their lives 

 except through the drawing book; and the drawing book was a thing 

 to be hated, for a slip of the pencil might mean the eraser — the eraser 

 was quite sure to mean an ugly blur, and a blur meant a low mark, and 

 perhaps a scolding. A few little girls were able to produce pages filled 

 with painfully exact lines and many curlicues, and were praised for 

 their accomplishments; so there grew up in their minds that idea that 

 fanciness and ornamentation are artistic and — the more curlicues the 

 more art. To many of the boys art meant only a bugbear, a foolish 

 waste of good time which might be more profitably spent making good 

 kites or strong sleds. 



It is perhaps small wonder in the face of these conditions that there 

 are still some among us whose sense of the beautiful is either asleep or 

 choked out, and who regard art as something that can be bought with 

 money, and to be artistic is to have ' ' lots of it. ' ' 



Not long ago I chanced upon this quotation — 



"Art is not a thing to be done, but is the best way of doing what- 

 ever needs to be done," 



And this expresses the idea which I have in mind today. This art is 

 that delicate sense of fitness, of proportion, that power to do and say the 

 right thing and at the right time; we frequently call it good taste. 



The possibilities of house decoration range over a field as wide as 

 the number of houses to be lived in, from the well-to-do builder who can 

 employ a professional decorator, to the humble home whose beauty must 

 be created from some goods boxes and a few yards of burlap and cheese 

 cloth; but let us rejoice — beauty, like happiness, depends not upon the 



