Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

teau, and made it seem a home for the gentle arts of peace rather than a fortress for defense. This new note was strengthened by a walk through a little grove of lime-trees, laid out in geometric lines, and with their branches clipped and trained to make a roof of green splashed with gold by the sun. Beyond their shade we gazed upon the doorway where Charles VIII., they say, bumped his foolish head so hard that he died.

Then we turned to the chapel of St. Hubert, perched over the edge of the rock on foundations that rise from its foot. Its diminutive size, its perfect proportions, and the wonderful stone carving of its walls and ceiling give it a fair title to the often abused description, a gem of Gothic architecture. Above

the entrance is a graphic carving of the miracle of St. Hubert, who, you will remember, was a mighty hunter, and was converted by the vision of a snow-white stag bearing a crucifix between his antlers. A tablet in the floor of the chapel is a pathetic reminder of a noble genius, for it records the fact that among the human bones which it covers "are supposed to be the remains of Leonardo da Vinci."

As at Chaumont, little of the interior of the château is shown, but we hardly felt the lack. The view from the top of Charles VIII.'s tower of the flowering valley of the Loire afforded compensation, if any were needed after the rose garden, the grove, and the chapel. If we had seen Amboise without fore

[graphic]

"A GRAPHIC CARVING OF THE MIRACLE OF ST. HUBERT"

[graphic][subsumed]

"THE CHAPEL OF ST. HUBERT, PERCHED OVER THE EDGE OF THE ROCK ON FOUNDATIONS THAT RISE FROM ITS FOOT"

knowledge and without a guide, our impressions would have been unqualifiedly delightful. But the memory of Catherine de Médicis and her ruthless

massacre of the Huguenot conspirators in the courtyard casts a shadow over the place.

The balcony of hand-wrought iron,

once decorated with the hanging bodies of the arch-conspirators as a warning to possible sympathizers, still overhangs the Loire. The guide points out the spot on the terrace where the scaffold stood, and the window where Catherine achieved her most unpardonable cruelty. There she kept that gentle pair of lovers, her son Francis II. and Mary Queen of Scots, at her side while the brave Huguenots mounted the scaffold with a psalm on their lips. We shuddered at the remembrance, then turned again to the roses and the glorious valley of the Loire.

We left the château with reluctance and wandered through the streets of the town below. The windows of a dusty, musty old curiosity shop attracted us,

and we went in to poke around among old furniture, andirons, books, trinkets, and unclassifiable junk. A young giant, more like a farmer than a shopkeeper, answered our queries and made suggestions, till M'dame found a delightfully battered pewter inkstand and a little history of Marie Antoinette with quaint engravings. M'sieur, meanwhile, gloated over an Elzevir edition of Thomas à Kempis for the ridiculous price of ten francs. We coveted a chair ("It would go so beautifully with our desk"), a toilet case ("Mais, oui, m'dame, of the Empire"), and a fan (" If we were only sure it was real tortoise-shell"), but restrained our eagerness and beat a valorous retreat to the hotel and déjeuner.

we

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

A TENEMENT ROOM

BY JAMES OPPENHEIM

As a nest where the rooks bow down the branches, deep in the shattered street, this room-

Black is the way and broken the steps that climb through the filthy gloom Six dark strata of Souls lift up from the torrent of Souls that sweeps the

street;

The atmosphere is of human breathing; the noise, of vast hearts' beat!

As a lamp in the Deeps, the storm-deeps rolling, this room is a flame in the human storm,

And I sit me down with Father and Mother and Children-cheery and warm!

Under, far under, stupendous and still, the Earth rolls on with the million

suns;

Over, far over, stampeded through space, the herd of the wild stars runs.

Under, but near, O near, touch-near, the roaring sea of Humanity rolls,
Over, but near, O near, spirit-near, leaps the wild wave of Souls-
And here, right here, the bright faces shine of these human beings, these
Souls, these forms-

I am nested deep in the human Deeps-aye, swirled in the Human storms!

And I belong here by right of birth-I am even as these, I am one with these

How well their words and their glances and touch-each flush that flickers and flees

Are doors to their Souls where I enter in, and live five lives in place of one, Are gates of common Man where we mingle like five blent rays of the sun !

O People! O human, human beings! I thank my stars that I too am human!

That I may share the up-struggle of the World with you, O Man, O Woman! That I may taste your miraculous glories of Love and Gladness-deepest, of Pain !

That I may be of your shining faces in the World-rush, the Labor and strain !

That I may feel the lift and the thrill of hands that lock and of lips that meet,

That I may sit in a little warm room with souls and hearts replete— That I may know, beyond grandeur of Earth, O Man, even here in the pitiful gloom

Of these shattered walls, God's grandeur sweeps, yea, in a little room!

CHILDREN

THE STORY OF A NOVEL SOCIAL SETTLEMENT

BY THOMAS TAPPER

Owing perhaps to the influence of the rebellion of the Puritans against what they believed to be the malign influence of æsthetic beauty in a world of sin, we are only just beginning to recognize in this country the educational and civilizing function of the arts. Music is the last of the arts to feel this new forward impulse. As recently as thirty years ago in New York, then as now the metropolis of the Western world, the boy or man with a taste for music had a hard struggle. It was well enough for girls to study music, but the boy who wished to devote himself to the piano or to the violin or to the cultivation of his voice was considered guilty of abnormal weakness. When Theodore Thomas began his career in this city, he played in a modest German garden which the "solid citizens," with a few heroic exceptions, looked upon askance. In the last twenty five years there has been a marked improvement in the attitude of the public towards music in a scheme of education; and yet to-day it is not an uncommon thing to find university men who boast, with some degree of complacency, of their inability to tell "Yankee Doodle " from "God Save the King," and this inability is somehow or other accepted as a mark of great intellectual development. There are, to be sure, some university men who cannot spell accurately or who are unable to distinguish the seven table from the eight table in multiplication, but they do not boast of it. The truth is that the man of well-rounded education ought to know something about music just as he is supposed to know something about literature and the pictorial and plastic arts. He may not know how to write a book, but he ought to be able to distinguish between Laura Jean Libbey and Robert Louis Stevenson; he may not wish to paint a picture, but he ought to know why the Coney Island artist who does your portrait with colored chalk and both hands in three minutes is really not an artist; he need not play the violin or the piano, and perhaps wisely does not sing, but he ought to be able to discriminate somewhat intelligently between Schumann and Philip Sousa. Every serious attempt, therefore, which is made to develop and direct a sound and discriminating musical taste in this country, and a respect as well as a love for music, deserves public recognition. It is for this reason that we have asked Mr. Thomas Tapper, the Director of the Music School Settlement, to describe that remarkable institution to our readers. It was established in November, 1894, and is now an incorporated organization, of which Mrs. Howard Mansfield is President, Mrs. George L. Nichols Treasurer, and Miss Eleanor Crawford Head Worker. The address of the School is 55 East Third Street, New York. No visitor to the School can fail to be impressed with the fact that it is exerting not merely an aesthetic but an ethical influence upon the community in which it is situated-an influence all the more profound because it is that which comes from the daily intercourse of teachers and students who have a common enthusiasm for a noble art.-THE EDITORS.

I

T is three o'clock, and the children are hurrying through the basement door to the desk where, for a few cents, they procure the ticket in exchange for which they receive a lesson.

The attendant inquires of the young girl who is nearest :

plans. She is two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of her schedule. This is not required of her, but it is an asset on which she has reckoned. If it be cold and stormy without, she knows that she is at liberty to spend the time in the School, where it is warm, homelike, and

"When do you have your lesson, attractive. No rules restrict her actions, Lena ?"

[blocks in formation]

save the one which demands quiet in order that no disturbance may reach the teaching rooms. If it be summer-time, Lena makes her way to the back yard

« AnteriorContinuar »