434 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



must consist largely of engravings, etchings and photographs, for few persons 

 can afford to buy many paintings, and if these are not of the very highest order 

 the reproductions are decidedly preferable. Again, in a home where there are 

 children one should find as large a collection as .possible of loose pictures and 

 illustrated books, containing etchings and engravings, which the children must 

 be allowed to handle as freely as they do their toys — books not intended for 

 children, but such as a critical and cultured taste demands for its own enjoyment, 

 for it is only by such constant, free and unwatched handling of precious mater- 

 ials, that the more precious child mind can get the food it needs to bring all its 

 divinity to maturity. A child is even more moody than a grown person, and is 

 not always in a receptive humor, when the mother is ready to take out the prized 

 volumes and rare portfolios, and with many injunctions to. " be careful " lay 

 them before the childish eyes. All the intellectual doors a mother can open for 

 her little ones must stand wide, and she must educate in herself a divine econo- 

 my which will teach her that all the wear and tear of earthly fuel are nothing in 

 comparison with the priceless fires to be fed by it, and that the little finger-marks 

 in her valued books and pictures are the sure testimonials of unquenchable bright 

 spots in the childish soul. 



"But what is the use of all this fuss and feathers about a few pictures," cried 

 one practical soul. " I shan't take all that trouble when I don't intend to be an 

 artist, and what good will it do me to know a little something about the Sistine 

 Madonna and the Laocoon ? " But, dear friend, man is such a complex creature, 

 and usually so stubborn in wickedness, that all the aids which can help him to 

 rise above his natural animal level are worth trying. Plato rated art only fifth in 

 the scale of good things which may elevate mankind, but we moderns, believing 

 that art comes nearer than anything else to a visible illustration of those very un- 

 attainable ideals of which Plato is always preaching, place it among the very first 

 of our aids to morality, because , if rightly studied and appreciated, it refines the 

 tastes and makes the man less capable of coarse sinning, while used as a means 

 of education, it keeps before the eyes and fastens in the mind the highest illustra- 

 tions of purity, goodness and beauty. 



As an educator for the body alone, art is worth introducing into every fam- 

 ily, for there is no doubt that as a nation, Americans are sadly lacking in strength 

 and grace of body, and there is not a household of young, growing children in 

 the East or West, which would not profit, physically, by the daily observation of 

 such figures as the Venus of Milo, the young Apollo with the lizard, or the Mel- 

 eager of the Vatican, while the Venus di Medici would be a vivid object lesson 

 to many a young girl who is dwarfing and deforming the figure which Mother 

 Nature gave her by the wearing an article of dress which is worse than an eating 

 cancer, because, as usually worn, it is eating the life and vitality out of half of 

 the women in the land. A walk down Main Street in Kansas City is a painful 

 experience to any one possessing a general idea of the internal structure of woman- 

 hood, together with even a moderate admiration for the soft flowing outlines of 

 a well developed womanly form, for such a procession of coffin-shaped incapa- 



