House and Garden 
As the sensitive eye of'the modern has grown weary 
of the gaudy restless color scheme, so also does his 
soul shun the strong excitements and gives itself'over 
rather to a gentle resignation. Mournful contem¬ 
plation of the fading of all beauty gives the ground 
tone which is repeated by the cabalistic and astro¬ 
logical circles and designs on wall and ceiling, by 
the sickly flowers at the window and the monotonous 
purling of the fountain. Thin streams ripple out 
between two rose colored mussels at one side of the 
atelier and in the marble basin drive the fallen flower 
petals around, picturing in the whirling motion of the 
water rare patterns whose continual dissolving and 
reuniting one could gaze at as in a dream and there¬ 
with forget the hours. The gurgle of the fountain 
makes the silence in the cool halls audible. One 
catches the echo of his own words as if they were re¬ 
peated by invisible lips and starts back with a shock 
when he suddenly espies his own face in the mirror 
between two masks of marble. Here is nothino- but 
O 
enigma, questions without answers, until the im¬ 
agination is bewildered and one thinks that every¬ 
thing is only a dream. My host finally takes me— 
and with every step I catch some picturesque vista— 
up into the Holy of Holies, a room of twilight and 
pale blue and dull gold, which is exclusively set 
apart for reverie. Here, like an altar, might have 
stood the triptych on which the artist is already work¬ 
ing and whose central portion symbolically shadows 
forth the frankincense. 
Fwo golden rings are fastened on one of the walls. 
“They contain,” explained Khnopft', “the names of 
the two artists whom I revere the most, Edward 
Burne-Jones and Gustave Moreau.” One of the 
former’s sketches hangs here, a present from the 
great pre-Raphaelite, and in connection with Mor¬ 
eau I called to mind a painting of Khnopfi’s in the 
studio which was almost an obeisance to the Paris¬ 
ian hermit and looked as if it had been put together 
entirely with precious stones. It represents St. 
Anthony, after Flaubert, as temptation comes to 
him in the form of a woman with child-like innocent 
expression and tries to entice the inhabitant of the 
desert by olfering him fabulous riches. 
“Will you have the shield of Dgian-ben-Dgian, the 
builder of the Pyramids ? 1 have treasures shut up in 
galleries where you could lose yourself as in a forest. 
I have summer palaces of bamboo reeds and winter 
palaces of black marble. . . .Ah’ if you only would.” 
Finally we visit the garden. Round about the 
house grow flowers with exotic blooms, as they ap¬ 
pear in the backgrounds of the old fourteenth cen¬ 
tury masters, the portraits of a Domenico Veneziano 
or a Pisanello; and behind the house a broad expanse 
of lawn is shut in by a breast high parapet. No 
other house is visible from here and the view falls on 
the Bois de la Cambre as upon an immeasurable 
primeval forest. 
I take my leave. The black door shuts behind 
me, and an unbroken silence reigns as before. Had 
I only dreamed My eyes fall on the inscription: 
Passe-Futur. Its meaning is clear to me now for the 
mystery of Khnopft’s art has revealed itself. Our 
life lies in the past, our longings in the future, there is 
no present, but that which we call existence is made 
up only of memories and hopes. The instant is 
fleeting, it is and is no more, our business, our words 
are matters of indiff erence, only the dreams are true 
and everlasting and reality is a passing shadow. 
I had no more eyes for Brussels. The turnouts of 
the Bois, the cafes of the boulevards, the banalities of 
the Wiertz museum, everything paled at the thought 
of that artificial paradise in which I had been per¬ 
mitted to pass a single hour.— Dekorative Kunst. 
THE FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM IN AMERICA III 
By Frederick W. Keesey* 
(^Continued from the 'July Nuinher of House and Garden) 
^ I 'HF matter as to financing the park project 
was a troublesome proposition to determine. 
The precedents and experiences of very many park 
undertakings, both in this country and in Europe, 
were carefully looked into. Almost every scheme 
of providing for the cost of park lands and the im¬ 
provements was considered. 1 hey included direct 
assessments on contiguous property in full or in 
part; partial assessment on adjacent lands; and for 
the entire cost being provided in the general tax 
^Courtesy of the J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 57 Rose St., New York. 
levy upon the whole district or municipality. Each 
appeared to have advantages against other more or 
less potent disadvantages. Direct assessments were 
found to have been cumbersome, costly and unsatis¬ 
factory, and in many places difficult, and not in¬ 
frequently impossible, to collect. Ibis was due to 
the fact that every public park, as to location, 
size, property environment, and other conditions 
determining assessable benefits on adjacent prop¬ 
erty, is a law unto itself. No two, in these respects. 
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