BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 55 



Indeed she found so much to interest her in Berlin "with 

 its colossal advantages that her stay of but a week, when 

 months of residence was required, seemed "only an aggra- 

 vation." She did not have time even to present all her letters 

 of introduction. Thus she refrained from seeking out the 

 famous Virchow, or Koch, the great experimenter, and several 

 others; but she consoled herself by remarking modestly, 



"Perhaps, too, an idea that I had no claim to intrude upon 

 these men, helped to keep me away." 



Under the impetus of her art enthusiasm, so rekindled in 

 Berlin, she went, directly on her arrival at Dresden, on the 

 i6th of October, to the Gallery and to the room containing 

 the Sistine Madonna, the effect of which she chronicles as 

 overpowering. She immediately entered into an elaborate 

 study of the colors, with the thought that a comparison of 

 the predominant tones used by different painters would be 

 interesting, and the suggestion "that the colors obtained by 

 one master may be owing to certain impurities," non-existent 

 in other localities, with the possibility that "our chemically 

 pure colors of to-day are perhaps the artist's worst enemies." 

 She would have been glad to spend months of study over the 

 collection of pictures, many of which were to her "dreams of 

 beauty," but she had only two days to spend in Dresden, "the 

 charming old place of her childhood," and there was much 

 else for her to accomplish. One thing she did not neglect to do, 

 and that was to visit her former music teacher, whom she 

 found still unmarried, and living with her old mother and sister 

 in rooms "filled with artistic souvenirs." Before making any 

 investigation of the chemical facilities of Dresden she visited 

 the wonderful glass-works of the celebrated Blaschkas, and 

 an extract from her account of them, well merits insertion 

 here, 



"The father (who formerly made glass eyes) had been in 

 America many years ago. He spoke Polish, Bohemian, Italian, 

 and German. They have recently begun to model flowers 

 after nature. They are artistic productions and accurate, 

 after life. It would be a stupendous addition as a botanical 

 collection of flowers for a museum. It has occurred to me 



