228 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
the curtain came the shadow of a woman. She 
raised in her arms the shadow of a baby, and 
kissed it ; then both disappeared, and I walked 
on. 
What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the sha- 
dow of a mother’s love, so traced as to endure 
forever? In this picture of mine, the group 
actually moved upon the canvas. The curtains 
that hid it revealed it. The ecstasy of human 
love passed in brief, intangible panorama before 
me. It was something seen, yet unseen; airy, 
yet solid; a type, yet a reality ; fugitive, yet 
destined to last in my memory while I live. It 
said more to me than would any Madonna of 
Raphael’s, for his mother never kisses her child. 
I believe I have never passed over that road 
since then, never seen the house, never heard 
the names of its occupants. Their character, 
their history, their fate, are all unknown. But 
these two will always stand for me as disem- 
bodied types of humanity, — the Mother and 
the Child; they seem nearer to me than my 
immediate neighbors, yet they are as ideal and 
impersonal as the goddesses of Greece or as 
Plato’s archetypal man. 
I know not the parentage of that child, 
whether black or white, native or foreign, rich 
or poor. It makes no difference. The pre- 
sence of a baby equalizes all social conditions. 
