It is this moment that Fru Hansen has chosen as the motive for this remarkable tapestry. Her fertile imagination has fairly reveled in this amazing whirlwind of quaint and bizarre detail, and this merry swirl of gleaming, laughing colors. Tired, the bold Northwind nears the goal, followed by his three brothers, the mystic birds of the sea. Completely lost in admiration of the dazzling magnificence of the fairy palace, sits the little maid on his back with her small bundle in her hand, her face wearing an expression of mingled astonishment and doubt. The composition is joyous in its exuberance of action and mischievously jolly in hidden surprises found in the details. This masterly piece of work is surrounded by a border in which one is fain to confess there is found all the known and unknown flowers on earth.

Of the three pieces exhibited I think 'Semper Vadentes" unquestionably the most beautiful, insomuch as it is free from all capricious eccentricities, delightful though they may be. Its dignified inscription in medieval Latin, "Semper Vadentes-Semper Agentes Semper * E. Natu. in Vitam. ad. Aeternum Domine" is most happily chosen, though even without it, it would be no less impressive. It is an earnestly eloquent pictorial sermon and Fru Hansen has here, through the medium of her art, expressed thoughts of deepest import. The four figures, each bearing a symbolic token, ever wandering and yearningly looking toward the great distant sea, eternity, form one of the most sympathetic notes in this beautiful symphony of color. Poetic in conception, perfect in technic and as a work of decorative art, Fru Hansen has in this piece achieved her greatest triumph. This tapestry was sold to Mr. Sadi Carnot, son of the late President of France.

From Paris I went to Christiania to gain a more intimate knowledge of Norway's development of the industrial arts. As a matter of course I visited Fru Hansen's studio and not only saw the enormous ancient loom but was shown the various processes of the preparing and dyeing of the wool. The loom, while unique in its way, is similar in some respects to the high-warp looms (Tapisserie de haute lisse), in which the warp-threads are vertical, as compared with the lowwarp looms (Tapisserie de basse lisse), used in the Gobelins, in which the warpthreads are horizontal. Many of the crude old features have been changed or modified to suit the modern requirements.

In speaking of her work Fru Hansen said: "I invariably use living models for my figure compositions. Form, above all, is with me the means for the display of colors. The colors are like the sun in my art, consequently the form must be subordinate and arranged so that I obtain the color scheme I have decided upon. Without feeling or thought any art is worthless. worthless. An inharmonious blending of colors has the same unpleasant effect on me as a false measure in a musical composition.'

Fru Hansen has recently moved into her new home, "Bestumhus," a charming house of original architecture, perched on the crest of a cliff in the vicinity of Christiania. She has a predilection for dazzling white. The exterior of the house is white, and in her large specially designed studio, where the huge ancient loom occupies the entire length of the wall, everything is in white, relieved here and there by the brilliant colors of the rugs and the portieres. In this cozy, though rather isolated retreat, lives this remarkable woman to whom not only Norway but the art world at large is indebted for the masterly works her creative genius has produced.

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HE American woman and the English woman are the product of two exactly opposite conditions of civilization. In England, the being to be looked up to, the being for the woman to sacrifice herself to, is Man, and the root of the evil, and it is an evil both for man and woman, is deep. It comes very largely from the existing law of primogeniture, a law which makes the eldest son in England a creature of entirely fictitious value. He is the heir to a title, the heir to large estates, and a person of great importance from his birth. His nurses indulge him, his tutors favor him, his mother is more lenient with him than with the other children, and when he grows up, girls smile at him, and mothers angle for him.

There is always this idea of title, and of the superiority of the man who bears it and of the superiority of man anyhow. By constant suppression and an always perfectly apparent air of superiority, Englishmen have managed to suppress very largely the Englishwoman; certainly they have succeeded in making her conventional. The ideal wife and mother is she who simply reiterates her husband's ideas, and has none whatever of her own. The fact is that Englishmen like a woman in one capacity, that of a wife and a sweetheart; they know nothing of women as friends, as companions, as intimates. Indeed, you will very rarely find the broadest-minded Englishman who will acknowledge that such a thing as a tender and intimate friendship can exist between a man and a woman unless there is, or has been, or will be, a warmer sentiment at the bottom of it. That feeling of absolute comfort which exists between an

American man and woman is something that is unknown in England. Here, for instance, is a paragraph from the Saturday Review:

The average man is still jealous of his helpmeet and partner. His ideal at heart is still the farm

yard cock, strutting about with all his worshipful hens. He is willing to find them nice tender little bits, but they must not be able to find them themselves.

When a young man of family and fine connections marries rich girl, he considers it only right that her fortune should be exploited for his own ambition. When you see this gentleman with the rich wife, his manner is generally kindly but indifferent. He is the man; he has married the woman and given her a certain position by doing it. Therefore he is entitled to any and all sacrifices for his career. All London shouted with laughter at Mr. Gilbert's memorable line in "The Pirates from Penzance":

When the coster's finished stamping on his

mother.

It only shows that even the coster has a contempt for woman. I doubt very much if anybody stamping on his mother would appeal to an American as humorous.

With men at such a premium, naturally if a woman does not marry in England she is considered more or less a failure; she must marry, indeed, to be considered. Marriage gives her social position, an opportunity of enjoying the society of other men. It gives her authority, it gives her freedom. freedom. If an English spinster, young or old, had a large fortune, a chaperone, a splendid house, and wanted to have a salon and to give dinners and lunches, she would find a difficulty in inducing the men to come. Each man who was invited and eligible, would turn it over in his mind as to whether she wanted to marry him or not, and if he did not want to marry her, he would not give her the

benefit of the doubt nor take the trouble to go to the house; knowing that marriage is the thing most to be desired in England.

American women are just the opposite of their English sisters. And Thomas Jefferson never did a wiser thing than when he put aside the law of primogeniture. In the eyes of any state in the union a girl is of the same importance as her eldest brother; if she gets no more, she certainly gets no less from her father's estate than he; and she can scarcely estimate the advantages of her freedom, for in freedom lies truth. From her earliest infancy she has an opportunity to know boys and men as they really are, just plain human beings, some of them good, some of them bad; some noble, some ignoble; some fine, some rough; but at any rate they are none of them mysteries, enveloped in the dreams of ignorance. There is nothing so healthy, so normal, so sane, as an intimate knowledge of each other by the two sexes.

The American likes not only the one woman, but women. He takes the trouble to understand their point of view, their lives and their occupations. He is inter

The American woman, who is all joyous activity and who is sure of herself and her own position, and can be just her own charming self- everybody being quite satisfied with that does not realize her immense advantage over the women of other nations. Englishmen will all, if they are candid, say that American women are terribly spoiled by their men. What is the definition of "spoiled?" It means that American women appear to be frank and happy, and without guile; honest, fearless and courageous and sure of themselves, and sure of their own opinions.

The Englishman wants a woman to look up to him; the American wants a woman to look at him. The American is always ready to give a woman her chance if she is literary, or artistic, or scientific. He is willing to put out his hand to help her along her thorny path. The Englishman thinks she ought not to have any path except that of a home-bred, home-loving, cow-like animal.

Here is the opinion of an intelligent Englishwoman on other women:

The very fact of women (and women more particularly of the intellectual type that assembled at the Women Workers' Conference) asking the

able and makes friends of them; and surely he must have studied them appreciatively and helped them in their development, or else the American woman would never have blossomed into the wonderful creature that she is to-day. The most admirable thing about her is her friendliness, her kindness and her affection for other women. She is generous in compliments, in thoughts, in little appreciations.

It was Ouida who wittily said, many years ago, that if Mr. Gladstone died and the weather was good in England, all conversation would cease. The conditions of America are so natural and simple that if a man or woman has any individuality at all, it is allowed to develop and to become unique and interesting. Individuality in England is considered rather plebeian, particularly in a woman; and any one who wishes to be reserved and well bred would do well to make an exhaustive study of an encyclopedia before entering English society. Your sub-conscious mind and your speaking mind must be absolutely dissimilar.

women?" strikes one at once as an admission that here also the men have the best of it. Indeed, Miss Soulsby confessed that she had not even an arriere pensee in the matter. With quite emphatic candor she stated that, as a rule, women are less honorable than men, and she formulated a formidable list of their defections from the standard of honor which she had gathered from her girl friends. Here are some of them: Women will give in wrong scores at golf; they will cheat at croquet and bridge; they will cry fault at tennis when they simply mean that they can not take the ball; they will take the benefit of the doubt when a man would not; they will hand on confidences; they will cheat at examinations; they will break promises; they will back out when they find they are not on the popular side; they will face both ways in conversation; they will read other people's letters; they will overhear conversations and read letters.

Surely there are no American women who would make such a wholesale attack upon their sisters. The American woman, with her quick perception, her lively intelligence, her opportunities of knowing and understanding something of human nature, and with the protection and the care that she receives from her men, is the most fortunate woman in existence. Sometimes, perhaps, she asks too much of

life, but she also gives a great deal. She is capable, well read, witty; she is gowned beautifully and wears her clothes with distinction, and her taste is an instinct.

I have seen women from the extreme West, who had scarcely seen a bit of brica-brac or a piece of old furniture in all their lives, come to England, and in two years their homes would have a century's air of cultivation and of knowledge. The taste of the American woman is one of the most remarkable things about her. I take, for example, a woman in Louisville, who has absolutely perfect taste. She always rejects the false and selects the true in everything. She is a beautiful judge of stuffs and of old china, of old silver or pottery; she understands pictures, tapestries and fine embroideries, and in her own dress and her own habits she is as dainty as a flower. Her discrimination of the good is in no way superior to that of very many American women, and, what is almost as valuable as taste, they have a certain chic, which is not at all like French chic, a little daring and sometimes even a little vulgar. In an American it is just a sort of pretty coquetry. will see it in a girl of sixteen. A fresh little beauty will wear a pink sun-bonnet with a white muslin dress, and lo! the fashion is set for all girls of sixteen to wear pink sun-bonnets. It is not so much the sun-bonnet as the angle of the rosy headgear and the cunning air with which it is worn.

You

The American woman has clearly demonstrated what sureness and happiness, poise, charm and gracious gaiety of manner can do toward the making of a woman. Besides these things, she has the warmest and most loving and maternal heart in the world. The perfect understanding and the delightful intimacy between children and their parents in America is almost an unknown quantity in England.

Another side of the American woman is her virile grip of youth. Not in frivolous dress or manner; not in dyed hair or flirtations, but in mind, in constantly improving herself, and in mental cultivation certainly she defies time. But I pray the American woman not to lose sight of the fact that she owes her position, her freedom and even her nobility, to the selfsacrifice and the generosity of the Ameri

can man, who, whatever his faults may be, or whatever his life may be, gives with both hands to his women.

Grant Allen, that brilliant writer, who had a perfect fund of information about all sorts of things, said, "Every American woman is by birth a duchess." And the American dukes? There aren't any. These ladies' husbands, fathers and brothers are business men working hard for the duchesses. That's why I say quite seriously the American woman is the only real aristocrat now living in America. The reason is not far to seek: they represent the only leisured class in America. They are better groomed, better got up and better mannered than their brothers. It is because the men are almost all immersed or absorbed in business, while the women are fine ladies who stay at home and read, and see, and interest themselves widely in numberless directions.

The consequence is that nowhere, as a rule, does the gulf between the sexes yawn so wide as in America. One can often observe it in the brothers and sisters of the same family. And it runs in the opposite direction in Europe. There, as a rule, the men are better educated, and more likely to have read and seen and thought widely, than the women.

With

The American man likes his own women best and he wants to marry at home and he generally does marry at home. It is said that Englishwomen are not greatly attracted by American men, and the quality of the article has something to do with it. American men are not usually attracted by Englishwomen, even if they have grace and beauty. They are lazy and dislike too much exertion, while the American is accustomed to the ease and comradeship of American women. an English girl an American would have to do all the talking and all the thinking and all the courting, and make all the exertion of getting acquainted. A nice clean skin, well-dressed hair, and dumb, shy, appealing eyes are not enough to attract him. He has seen too many amusing, witty, original, fearless girls to bother himself for long over a shy and uncomfortable maiden, no matter how pretty she may be.

It is almost impossible for any foreigner thoroughly to understand another

nationality. Because American women do not wear their hearts on their sleeves and are pleasant and agreeable and charming they are often voted in England as heartless beings. It is only because the English do not understand American manners, and probably Americans do not understand the English. Very likely the Englishwoman would be as charming, as gay and as bright as the American woman if she was placed in exactly the same atmosphere, and her individuality was allowed to develop and her natural charm to assert itself, but like so much else in England she is mostly an artificial product, suppressed and snubbed and kept in her proper place by her inferior master, Man.

The thing that the American woman has to be most proud of is that she has made her mark upon this old and conservative civilization. Englishwomen have looked on in wonder at the comfortable intimacy, the agreeable friendship and

the helpfulness of one American woman to another, and they are beginning to copy American manners; they are beginning to be agreeable to each other.

I said not long ago to an Englishman who said he did not like the American accent, that he ought to become accustomed to it as quickly as possible, because the next house of peers would speak with an American accent. And, I added, the accent will be west of the Mississippi, as all American heiresses east of that mighty river have been married by impecunious foreigners. He begged my pardon and said he didn't understand the humor of my remark. I told him that there was hope for him in the future because there wasn't any humor in the remark; it was simply a statement of cold facts. And if there is ever a genuine understanding and a real entente cordiale between the two countries it will be due to that wonderful, that gracious, that daring product, the American woman.

HE Old World is undergoing as rapid transformation as the New in the leveling process that accompanies our modern era. Its cities, once so quaint and peculiar, with sharply defined features of their own, reflecting past centuries in many curious house or quarter, in winding street or forbidding rampart, have been Haussmannized, to use a convenient phrase, and now bear largely a common stamp, a stereotyped appearance. Americans who have never been abroad do not without delay cross the Atlantic, they will soon find no Europe in its current sense, for towering sky-scrapers, ser

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pentine subways, electric trams, apartment hotels, arc lights, with successive rows of residences on conventional lines, will meet their astonished gaze. London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Budapest these cities change in sections every decade; and if the process is long continued they will practically cease structurally to be the capitals which their names and traditions suggest.

Such changes, it is true, have always taken place. The cities abroad have never been stationary; their growth, despite periods of disaster or decline, has been continuous. If the fine dust that hermetically sealed Pompeii after the eruption destroyed that city, it no less preserved its characteristics for two thousand years, although turned to stone. The modern era is as inexorable in its destruction of what is old or antiquated; but it restores and rebuilds a thousandfold until