Before the boys and girls get through with the high school they will know pretty well what is in the Metropolitan Museum, why such an infinite variety of objects claim a place in an art museum at all, wherein lies the claim of each to be called beautiful, and perhaps a little of how each was made. In other words, they will have gone a long way toward a fair conception of the meaning of that abused word "art." It is a thousand pities not to speak at length of the fully developed work for the schools and the public in Boston or of the fascinating nature lessons given to grammar-graders in the American Museum of Natural History. Judge if it is exciting to a small geographer to be allowed to hande to his heart's content an Exin sled, studying out for himself every detai of the packing, or to go bird's-testing n the galleries with a wonderful lady who knows how to let little people into all the magic of wild life. But there, docentry was my topic, while my text was the Metropolitan The whole secret of the docent's success Bes in the power of the human touch. The divine fire of enthusiasm is ill to kinde with flint and steel or even with sulphur matches. It leaps flame fashion from human torch to human torch, and once kindled is not lightly blown out. Give us docents enough, and the torches fired at their steady flame will soon make an end of the twilight of American æsthetic life. ECSTASY BY HAROLD T. PULSIFER I heard the wind among the trees, Star-deep, soul-wide, The sudden tide Swept on and over me. My hidden dreams, a sudden sea All glorious they came, A blazing light That made the night A living thing of flame. I laughed to hear the vagrant breeze; I leaped to touch the stars ; With wind and wave No voice can save Mine ancient prison bars. The flesh and sense that prisons me Shall vanish in the wind! How free thou art, My soul! My heart! Mine eyes alone were blind! T Jan, the Polish Miner By Walter E. Weyl With Pictures by Wladyslaw T. Benda HE dull sun breaking uncertainly through the April clouds fell aslant upon the brown floor of Battery Park and the gray walls of the tall office buildings looming up behind. It seemed to Stanislaus, who had been patiently waiting all the afternoon, that to-day the sky and earth in America were like the gentle neutral tints of the plains of his beloved Poland. He seemed to see again the little thatched huts, the gay little flower-gardens, the groups of picturesque peasants in their many-colored blouses, even the white grunting pigs streaked with the mud in which they wallowed. And yet he was not in Poland, which he had left three years before, but in New York, at Battery Park, awaiting the coming of his big brother Jan. The tender arrived, and after a moment's pause the sea-wearied passengers filed out in bewildered groups. There were Galician Jews and Slovaks, and here and there a broad-shouldered German. Then Jan appeared. He was above the height of the other men of the boat, and was broad and deep-chested in proportion. He had on a sordak, or sheepskin coat, with the fleece turned inside, and on his head, covering the yellow shock of hair and throwing a shadow upon the broad, flat nose, was a huge battered felt hat. He seemed unconscious of the strangegarbed Americans, and it was not until he had actually collided with Stanislaus that he seemed to recognize the little man in the derby hat, the ready-made overcoat, and the green-flowered tie as his own brother, his own mother's son. Then the tears came to his eyes. He did not see the hand clumsily tendered him, but, incontinently dropping his bundles, he threw his flapping arms around his brother. Then he kissed him twice. "Blessed be the Lord Jesus Christ!" he cried. Stanislaus had the word "Hullo" on his lips, but it seemed incongruous after the ardent Polish salutation. "Blessed be the Lord Jesus Christ!" repeated the tall man. 66 For ages and ages! For ages and survived. Though housed in miserable, deserted shanties, though feeding on what they could get, though maligned and persecuted by every one, they stood their ground until new immigrants came to swell their ranks. In the twenty years prior to Jan's arrival they multiplied twentyfold, and while in 1880 there were less than 2,000 Poles in the anthracite regions, there were by 1900 over 37,000 of them. You can't maltreat a people when it grows big. The Poles soon grew to be too large a contingent of the manynationed population to be defrauded and insulted at pleasure. Like the Hungarians, the Italians, the Lithuanians, the Slovaks, the Austrians, and all the other non-English-speaking mine-workers, they increased so rapidly that soon they were in a majority in the Shenandoah district, and thenceforth they became comparatively free from the persecutions of the older inhabitants. There were other reasons why the Poles and their fellow-foreigners became immune from the earlier attacks. It soon came to be realized that the hard-saving Poles were in possession of money, and men with lands and houses to sell sought out the despised immigrant. The old Englishspeaking miner had been displaced. He had been defeated by these men with lower standards imported by the coal companies, and he was anxious to leave the country and seek his fortune elsewhere. So he sold his house, and where one English-speaking family had lived before, three or four Polish families now lived, or perhaps only one Polish family with seven or eight Polish boarders. It was in such a house that Jan first lived, with six other lodgers. He did not pay much, for the men clubbed together for the cost of their coarse, simple food, and the one woman in the group cooked for all. It was not a clean establishment nor an attractive one. If some of the men were drunk, the others were obliged to sleep harder to shut out the noise, and if, as sometimes occurred, there was fighting, it was the better part of valor to leave the place for a while until the drunken brawl was over. Jan did not drink or fight, and he did not like the life with these rougher men, and he longed for the time when he, like Stanislaus, could be married and live in a shanty by himself. It happened sooner than he had anticipated. By living on one-third of his slender income Jan saved enough to enter upon the perilous matrimonial venture. The imported bride looked out with wide, curious eyes from beneath her flowered kerchief, and obediently she followed Jan to all the Shenandoah stores, where the bridegroom, according to the Polish custom, bought her trousseau. The picturesque kerchief was discarded for a muchbedecked American hat, made in a sweatshop for the immigrant trade, and Jan spent other dollars for American shoes, American gloves, and for a strange article of apparel unknown to the staggered bride-a very stiff and very new corset. The trousseau purchased, there remained no further obstacle to matrimony, and so a year after Jan's arrival the marriage took place. There were many wedding guests who wanted to dance with the pretty bride, and each man who claimed that honor placed, according to the Polish custom, a quarter of a dollar in the bride's apron. Then the wit went around. To each of the guests he made his address, ascribing hyperbolic virtues to the young girl about to be married, and speaking of the many necessities and expenses that marriage entails. Each of the beer-drinking guests gave to the marrying couple a financial token of sympathy, and when the protracted wedding was over, Jan found that he had not only paid all expenses, but had made by the marriage a substantial gain of twenty dollars, to say nothing of a blushing wife. The house to which the new couple moved was not sumptuous. It consisted of two small rooms, about sixteen feet square, built of hemlock boards, with weather-strips nailed over the crevices. There was no ceiling, plastering, or wallpaper, and there was nothing to keep the place warm or to make it attractive. The owner of this miserable shanty was a great mining corporation, and although the rent was but four dollars a month, the profit was high, for the house had cost only three hundred dollars at the beginning, and since its erection, twelve years before, not a dollar had been spent upon repairs or improvements. Luckily for them, neither Jan nor |