THE RELATION OF ART TO USE.
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place in the "beautiful city of the dead," overlooking the sun-lit waves of the harbor of New York.
There is a strange legend connected with the village of Eusserthal, in Switzerland, about a certain golden organ that stood in the chapel of an old convent. The convent was once attacked, and the monks, fearful for the safety of their golden treasure, sank it in a marsh near by. The monks were obliged to fly and died in distant lands, while the convent fell to ruin. Every seven years the sweet notes of the organ are heard at mid-night, and as one listens a light ripple of sound breathes through the golden pipes, growing in volume and intensity, the melody verberating and reverberating through the still air, till at last, just as the morning god ushers in the day, the divine music dies away into a faint echo. But no one has seen the organist, and the discovery of the treasure is reserved for the future.
So when scientific curiosity concerning
the North Pole grows too intense, let us without further expenditure of money or terrible loss of life, turn trustfully and contentedly to our beautiful legends of open seas and balmy breezes and Elysian shades beyond the towering walls of ice, and to the belief that this Northern Paradise, as well as the golden organ, is reserved for the future to discover.
The Arctic problem, in the earth's present civilization, is practically insoluable, and just so sure as night follows day, will disaster follow in the wake of an Arctic expedition. "This is the be all and end all." If the time ever comes when "the magnetic North, gazing from her throne of snow," shall yield to some mariner influence and open her icy gates, we need never fear but that our American colors will first "flout the sky," and that the frozen North will pay her due homage. But till that time comes let us shun the far North as a monster that bodes no good.
THE RELATION OF ART TO USE.
KATE L. RIDENOUR, Modern Literature Department, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI.
GOOD sometimes reaches the point where it becomes an evil. Work, the salvation of the individual and of the race, the grandest gift of all, may cease to be a blessing. In the struggle for dollars, man follows any path leading to the desired goal. Some of the avenues opening before him are so long and monotonous that brain and body become mere automatons. He is no longer free; he is the slave of his trade.
Is there a cure for this narrowness of soul, this poverty of individuality? What means can be employed to secure broadness of vision and culture? The best intellects of the age reply: the wise use of leisure. The flowers of literature and art are to be had for the culling, and they shed a fragrance over life which neither age nor fickle fortune can take away. The beauty
and the goodness of the Past and the Present weighed in the balance against the homely and the evil part of living, surely " dip the scale, so that life rises."
While the benign power of the school, the pulpit, and the press is universally acknowledged, art as a valuable influence is not everywhere accepted. Some take for their point of outlook the extremely practical, and, viewing every problem through a glass d'or ou d'argent, see no money value in art and regard a cultivation of the love of beauty as time idly spent. Let such an one turn to Nature and read the page she unrolls. He will see there, written in letters of every hue: Beauty and Utility. He will learn that delicate structure and harmonious coloring are combined in the rose with the perfume so valued in commerce, that the solemn grandeur of the