add to the permanent collection of the Chicago Art Institute.

At many of our best exhibitions Mr. Redfield's paintings have taken honors over the work of other justly famed artists. In 1901 he received the Temple Medal, which is the highest award of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He has also received a gold medal from the Art Club of Philadelphia. Among other notable recognitions that have been accorded him were medals given at the Paris Exposition in 1900; the second Hallgarten Prize at the National Acadamy of Design; the Shaw Fund Prize, Society of American Artists; the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal for the best landscape, from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; and the second medal and one thousand dollars award at the recent Pittsburgh Art Exhibition at the Carnegie Institute, to which we have referred.

Mr. Redfield is one of the coterie of American artists who are doing sincere and honest work that cannot fail to aid in the building up of a great American He is a man gifted with the im

art.

aginative power that enables him to catch the brooding spirit of nature, the soul of the landscape, and to so reproduce it that it is much the same whether one looks on the landscape or on the artist's canvas; and it is the possession of this power that differentiates the artist of genius from the mere technical expert who, though he may reproduce every object visible to the eye with cameralike fidelity, is unable to come so en rapport with nature herself as to be conscious of the soul of the great Mother. Hence her charm, her witchery, her wonderful essence, elude him. Technical knowledge is necessary to great work, but it alone is not enough. It must be complemented by the imaginative power to penetrate the holiest of holies of that which is portrayed. Only the man of genius can do really great art work such as is being done by Mr. Redfield and other of our artists who are laying the foundations for a great American art. B. O. FLOWER.

Boston, Mass.

TH

HE TRIP in early summer from Italy into Switzerland, through the Italian lakes by boat and over the Alps by diligence, is only less memorable than the reverse trip in the early spring from the snows and storms north of the Alps down into the flowers and sunshine of Italy. On crossing the Simplon Pass early one June, I was surprised to find that the runners had been taken off the diligence only a week before and that even yet our road ran for miles through deep cuts in the snow and occasionally through long tunnels in the solid ice. In one place we had to walk, or rather climb, over the wreckage of an immense

avalanche which had swept through the valley two days before, choking up the road and devastating everything it touched. A forest of gigantic pines had been mowed down as with a scythe, while a half dozen peasant families, together with their houses and farms, were still lying beneath fifty feet of snow and rock. But if Nature has been to the Swiss a stern and sometimes even cruel Mother, she has at least developed in them certain hardy virtues which are of greater value than all the bloodstained riches and enervating luxuries of the Orient.

On crossing the frontier from Italy into Switzerland one is sensible, almost

immediately, of a change in the psychic atmosphere, of a spiritual and even physical invigoration from a new ethical ozone in the air. For a time one revels in the wonders of Italy nor counts the cost, but after a few months spent in warding off beggars, hunting out overcharges, refusing bad money and preventing the robbery of trunks in transit-the exasperated traveler not infrequently ends by getting the impression, which is manifestly unjust, that every Italian, from prince to pauper, is a miniature Machiavelli, who lies and steals from centuries of inherited instinct. This is the psychological moment to start north and seek repose in a land where honesty is as nearly universal as is the ability to drive a shrewd bargain.

Perhaps the first sociological observation the average traveler makes on entering Swiss territory is the fact that the land is as free from beggars as Ireland is from snakes. I am sure that everyone who has had occasion to travel to any great extent in foreign lands, will agree with me that whoever may be responsible for this immunity from beggars

deserves an even higher place than St. Patrick in the calendar of saints. A man has a fair chance to defend himself against a serpent, but what can the most fearless of us do with the beggars of Italy, or the Orient, but "pay, pay, pay," or submit to their intolerable, unceasing and ever-increasing importunities? Often at the frontier of Italy, or even of France, you can see beggars gathered like flies and mosquitoes on a windowscreen in summer-unable to get in but ever ready to pounce upon you as you come out.

To be sure, the poor are to be found in Switzerland as elsewhere, especially in the cities, but as the worthy poor are all cared for at the expense of their native communes, I believe the proud claim that no one ever dies of starvation in Switzerland to be quite justified by the facts. From the experience of a friend of mine, it seems that some of the country districts have arrived at an almost unscriptural condition as regards poverty. Having spent a very agreeable summer at one of the little Swiss mountain-resorts, on leaving he handed the village

pastor fifty francs for his "poor." "You are very kind," said the Swiss, "but really I cannot accept this, as we have no poor."

My first summer in Switzerland was spent cycling, boating and climbing the hills and mountains about the Lake of Thoune. I was entirely satisfied and delighted with my life there until I joined a fellow-tourist on a week's cross-country walking tour. On this trip a world of new and unimagined possibilities opened up before me. I learned that to really see Switzerland aright one must use one's legs as well as one's eyes, and thereupon dedicated my next summer to "doing" the country on foot. About the middle of the following June, in pursuance of that idea, my wife and I, with heavy hobnailed shoes on our feet, alpenstocks in our hands and a mountaineer's knapsack on my back, set forth from Thusis early one morning to walk over the Julier Pass into the Engadine. At noon we snatched an hour's nap at a little wayside inn and lunched on brook-trout fresh from the water and vegetables fresh from the earth. Then off we started again, expecting to arrive at our hôtel in time for a seven o'clock dinner, but by eight o'clock the sun had gone down, the stars had come out, and still we were tramping wearily along with no hôtel in sight. People had warned us not to be caught out after dark in this Italian canton, where hosts of newly imported Neapolitan laborers, "who would kill a man for a franc," were working on a railroad line. My wife had just declared she could not possibly go another step, when suddenly, coming up behind us, we heard voices laughing and singing and realized that we were being followed by a gang of these Italian laborers returning from their work. We looked for a peasant's hut or a clump of trees in which to hide until they had passed, but in vain. We were in an open space and had already been seen. How I cursed Cook's agent at Pallanza, who had pried open the locked dress-suit case

I had left in his charge and stolen my revolver! Meanwhile I quickly outlined a plan of defense in case of attack. It was not necessary to urge my wife to walk as fast as possible. In true Christian science fashion she straightened herself and strode along so that I could scarcely keep pace with her. To my dismay our pursuers quickened their gait in proportion. We had just decided that nothing short of Providence could extricate us alive, when a faint tinkle was heard. Gradually it grew louder and louder, and suddenly the stagecoach came swinging up from behind scattering the Italians like a flock of chickens. We stopped it and almost trembling with delight climbed on board. At Muehlin my wife dined and breakfasted in bed, and meekly took the diligence over the Julier Pass into the glorious valley of the Engadine. From St. Moritz we walked all over that favorite of European resorts. The hôtels were open but the guests were few and much in demand. There was as yet none of the dust or heat of summer and the woods and meadows were radiant with a glory of flowers and ferns. "The field of the cloth of gold" was tinsel compared to this, Nature's own carpet of gold and silver and sunbeams, every strand alive and breathing out incense and gladness. As we glided over the lakes, threaded the forests and scaled the hillsides, every atom in my being rejoiced in a feeling of kinship with nature. With the delight of a child or a savage I feasted my eyes on her harmonies of color and form, touched the trees and the flowers with my hand-in a word felt and gloried in a personal, mysterious relationship with these inspiring, calming fellow-members of Nature's family.

After two most perfect weeks, a drenching rain held us and a half-dozen other tourists, weatherbound for three dreary days. We spent the first day playing whist, the second day discussing the weather past, present and future, and lying loquaciously to keep up our spirits.

"Yours in great haste."

A fellow-traveler was more fertile than I. He went to the desk, bought some paper decorated with beautiful, glistening lithographs of mountains, lakes and glaciers, and wrote to a wealthy invalid aunt, well known for her perennial acidity of temper, as follows:

"The day is like a dream of Paradise. The mountains are so enticing in their radiant garments woven of snow and sunbeams that it seems almost a sacrilege to stay indoors. Yet I cannot let the day go by without sending you a breath from this bright world, without attempting, in my feeble way, to share with you the glory and gladness that are mine,

but which cannot be fully mine, until I know that they are partly yours. How I wish that you were with me. [Then shuddering as the sky grew blacker and the air damper and more depressing.] The day only needs you here to give this scene completeness. As we cannot see this fair country together, however, I shall live in the hope of sometime making excursions with you in that land of which this is but a faint intimation, where travel is without fatigue, the days without clouds and the hotels are kept by the angels."

He then held the letter out of the win

dow, caught a raindrop and wrote under

it: "Pardon this tear."

On the following morning, having had the good luck to find a "return carriage' bound for Andermatt, we set forth for a three-days' drive through one of the least tourist-spoiled valleys in Switzerland. We lolled in the carriage and drank in the kaleidoscopic view; we dropped asleep and dreamed of lands certainly not more fair; we walked along the carriage-side gathering wild flowers

serve

to support huge standing armies, turn with longing and hope. The Swiss have a system of militia which is very efficacious, and yet saves millions of money to the taxpayers and years of freedom from military service to the soldiers. Practically all Swiss serve from the age of twenty to fifty in the militia and reserves. The raw recruits go into schools, the infantry for forty-five days, the calvary for eighty days. After this the cavalry serves sixteen days each year, and the infantry and artillery fourteen days each every other year. The reserves only five or six days every four years. The officers, of course, are carefully trained in good schools for a period of years. This short service would be insufficient were it not preceded and supplemented by military training for boys in school and rifle practice every year by practically all Swiss citizens. Targetshooting is the national sport and, in accordance with the law, a place for target-practice must be supplied by every town in the country. As an encouragement, prizes of all sorts are offered by the national government. Thus little Switzerland, with a population of less than three millions of people, has an army of 337,000 of the most martial soldiers of Europe, armed, equipped and ready to take the field at a moment's notice. In glaring contrast with this system of militia are the systems of military service in the other countries of Europe. In talking with a young Frenchman a year or so ago about military matters I was astonished at the intensity of his feeling on the subject. "Our military service is far worse than three years cut out of our life," he said bitterly. "Our pay is but an American cent a day, so that during my service, in order to make life at all livable, I had to spend for necessary incidentals the hard-earned savings of years, with which I had hoped to start in business for myself. During my barracks-life I formed new habits, lost the skill which was the result of long