FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 57 



Our sensible, practical friend, Mr. Stockstill, asks another ques- 

 tion: " What is an artist good for? " 



After I have given Rubens Rembrandt the expensive education 

 you advise, and the advantage of Art-school besides, of what earthly 

 use will he be in a busy, work-a-day world like this ? Will he be an 

 ornamental superfluity, only fit to talk " tone, old masters, the Re- 

 naissance and pre-Raphaelitism " in the drawing-room, or a wild en- 

 thusiast who never combs his hair, and taking a great white umbrella, 

 plants himself in some waste and solitary place, daubs furiously 

 canvases which unpainted cost $2.50, and painted cannot be sold for 

 twenty-five cents ? Nothing of the sort. After leaving the halls of 

 his Alma Mater he will be ready and proud to step into a carpenter's 

 shop, and having served a short apprenticeship at the bench, a new 

 sign will appear on one of the streets of your village, R. R. Stockstill, 

 Architect and Builder, and that town will owe more to you in the 

 gothic arches of its churches, its commodious school houses, impos- 

 ing court house, elegant music hall, palatial villas and exquisite gems 

 of cottages, — a thousandfold more to you, sir, or to the education 

 you have given your son, than if you had invested the money it cost 

 you in city bonds and burned them on the spot. 



Or he may become an inventor of machinery, and by some lucky 

 patent make all your fortunes. Or he may become a Bridge Builder, 

 or a Designer, and of this class the name is legion. I will enumer- 

 ate only a few of the different departments, in each of which there 

 is a steady demand for designers of cultivated artistic tastes. First, 

 Engravers and chasers in gold and silver. A lady in Philadelphia 

 has laid by a snug little fortune by chasing the backs of gold watches. 

 She easily earned $i per hour. It is light work, but requires skill in 

 drawing. There are but few first-class engravers, and the demand 

 for engraved jewelry and silverware is on the increase. 



Another branch of the same business is that of the lapidary and 

 cameo-cutter. There are two kinds of cameo-cutting — one with a 

 lapidary's wheel of hard stones, as the onyx and the sardonyx ; but 

 the more common are the shell-cameos, which are cut with small 

 steel chisels from the white portion of the shell,, leaving the choco- 

 late color for the back ground. In Mrs. Lee's "Sculpture and 

 Sculptors," we find an account of those who have engaged in cameo- 

 cutting in the United States. Then we have ivory cutters and pearl- 

 workers, and workers in the Intaglio and Mosaic. "A great deal of 

 money is expended on monuments, but there is a lack of variety in 

 the designs," and marble, under any circumstances, is a noble field 

 for the artist. 



