Address — Henry C. Potter. 47 



them ? Every new invention, every increased convenience, every clever substi- 

 tute for the work of the hands, by the work of a machine or the product of a 

 factory, gives multitudes of people more leisure hours, and with them, often I 

 fear, idle monotony, but often also, I rejoice to believe, more disposition for 

 other tasks and interests than the mere handicrafts of the shop or the household. 



Last evening I spent a night in Ulster County under the roof of a friend, 

 to whom I ventured to call attention to the interesting fact of the large decay of 

 the old-fashioned handicrafts of women. I gave a few days from my own 

 experience as illustrating the kind of hospitality, always kindly and generous, 

 that one whose office is a very peripatetic one on one side of it so constantly 

 experiences, and I described, among other things, the hospitable board of a good 

 lady at which I had sat a little while before, on which, from the beginning to 

 the end of the feast, there was not one single thing to be eaten which she had 

 mixed with her own cunning, or knowledge, or cleverness. I inquired about 

 the pressed tongue, the Boston brown bread, and preserves, as they came on in 

 succession, and I learned that one had come from a shop, in a tin, another in a 

 can, and another in a glass jar. I said to this lady : " Did it ever occur to 

 you what is being lost out of our American life by the multiplication of inven- 

 tions which are giving to us our food in prepared forms, and depriving the 

 people who give it to us of the opportunity of preparing it for us?" "Ah, 

 yes," she said, "but did it ever occur to you how much larger a leisure comes 

 into the life of a woman who is thus released from the old tasks?" " Yes," I 

 said, " I had thought of that. But what is she learning? What is she taught 

 to do with her leisure ? " 



My friend, Dr. Leipziger, has reminded us of the privilege of the com- 

 panionship of nature. But ask the people who live most in the environment of 

 nature in its directest sense, how much they know about it ? How much have 

 they been trained to observe of a stone, or of a flower, or of a sky ? And when 

 they come into a realm of wider knowledge, how much has that higher culture, 

 which it is the office of such an institution as this to give, been within their 

 reach, or added to their knowledge? 



I was standing in the Alhambra some years ago, listening with a party of 

 tourists, English, American and other, to the description which the guide was 

 giving us of the splendid hall in which we stood. He undertook, among other 

 things, to translate some of the legends, which are in Arabic, on the walls, and 

 which some of you will remember there. I confess I thought them extremely 

 tame and pointless to be honored with such a place ; but I received an electric 

 shock when, after our guide had traced with his hand a sentence which ran 

 along the wall in Arabic, saying : " That means ' Truth is good, and happy is 

 he who pursues it,' " I heard behind me a voice saying, " That's a thundering 

 lie ! " I looked around, and there was a man in a fustian jacket, who, I found 

 out afterwards, was a Scotch engineer on his way to Constantinople to take 

 charge of a factory. He had been educated largely in London, in the British 

 Museum, and he had, in connection with the University of London, mastered 

 enough Arabic to relieve the ignorance of all the rest of us, and to silence that 

 guide, I hope, forever. Now, then, stop a moment and realize what came into 

 the horizon of that man when he got into Constantinople, incomparably the 

 most beautiful vision as you come up the Sea of Marmora, I think in the world. 

 Imagine him going about and being able to take layer after layer off of that old 

 life and bring it into inspiring contact with his own educated intelligence ; and 

 reflect, ladies and gentlemen, that that is what this institution has brought 

 within the possibility, not only of you and of me, but of the humblest artisan, 

 mechanic, day laborer in this city ! 



If once the love of knowledge is kindled in him, he has within the worlds 

 of these museums possibilities for enlarging the horizon of his knowledge which 

 are not within the reach, so far as his own resources are concerned, of the 

 wealthiest man on this continent. 



