now upon one branch, now upon another, of that widely extensive subject, the pedagogics of sloyd.

The work in the sloyd-rooms forms a whole with the theoretical instruction, and is arranged as can be seen by the Swedish school exhibit. In arranging a series of models, the exercises entering into this kind of sloyd are made the basis for a gradual progression. This is a characteristic of the Nääs method; for by this means it has been found possible to maintain the demand made by the partakers in the course, that the work executed by them should be neat and exact. They have not been allowed to hand in incorrect or half-done work; and even if, as may be, more than one student, unaccustomed to such neatness and exactness, has complained of the "pedantic way" in which the work of the students has been examined, the complaints have been received with equanimity. For it is undoubtedly owing to the maintenance of these strict requirements that it has been possible to open the way to the schools for a system of sloyd instruction which laid weight, not upon the amount, but upon the quality, of the work executed.

The sloyd instruction according to the Nääs system is introduced into almost all of the Swedish common schools. One of the main objects of this instruction is to train the eye of the pupil to discern and the hand to execute. Special weight is laid upon the development of the eye and the sense of form. Among the models there are many which are termed "modeling models"form models and which require a freer employment of the tools. According to this the fundamental tool is the knife. One of the principles is that sloyd articles should be satisfactory from an æsthetic point of view.

Those who desire to get more information in regard to Swedish pedagogic sloyd I beg to refer to a pamphlet, obtainable in the Swedish School Exhibit, entitled The August Abrahamson Foundation Nääs, and edited by Otto. Salomon. With regard to the work in the schools that have for their special object education for artistic handicraft, I beg to call attention to the Swedish School Exhibit, where the Technical School of Stockholm exhibits work of its students, and especially to that section of the school called "The Higher Art Industrial School."

Regarding the teaching of drawing: I have had opportunity to observe the school exhibits of the United States; that in this country the old method in the teaching of drawing, to let the pupils be occupied by abstract drawings, . has been abandoned; and that instead thereof drawing from actual objects has been introduced. The very interesting address delivered by Dr. Bahlsen in this room last Tuesday informed us that Germany also has adopted this method with great advantage. I have only to remark that such a reform has been undertaken in Sweden; i. e., copying from drawings has been displaced by drawing from actual objects, selected, of course, according to certain rules.

The fundamental principles are: Instruction in drawing should be chiefly based upon the immediate rendering of characteristic form from the child's surroundings, both in nature and in daily life. Development of the ability of

the child to observe independently, to understand and to reproduce an object, both as to form and to color, accompanies the instruction in other subjects. How these principles are enforced is illustrated by models for drawing and pupils' work that are to be seen in the Swedish School Exhibit.

At the same time that teaching of drawing as arranged in accordance with the aforesaid principles receives greater practical importance, it also gets more interesting and is in a very high degree instrumental in developing the pupil's artistic inclinations.

But it is not only by instruction in drawing and sloyd that the child's sense of art should be developed. One must also try to influence the child with regard to this by other means.

Before closing, I wish briefly to mention some points of view to which attention has been paid in our country. When a new schoolhouse is to be built, the best possible architect is chosen in order that the building, altho it be very plain, should by its proportions have an educating influence. In the choice of colors for walls and of school furniture this requirement also ought to be observed. The walls of the schoolhouse ought to be decorated, if possible, by original works of art, or, for lack of such, by good reproductions. In order to help our different kinds of schools in this effort, a society has been founded that has frescoes painted by eminent artists, and valuable reproductions, bought in order to present them to the schools. A sketch of such a fresco by the well-known Swedish painter, Carl Larsson, is to be seen in our art exhibit.

The teacher ought to take the children to collections of art, where such are to be found, and he ought to open their eyes to the beauty of nature in the school garden and on excursions. By doing one's best to give the children beautiful surroundings, by teaching them to observe and to reflect on these, and to make, themselves, beautiful works, will result, no doubt, in a more refined taste and an improvement in the artistic handicraft of the nation.

ART EDUCATION FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AS SHOWN AT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION IN THE NORMAL SCHOOLS, ART SCHOOLS, AND ART HANDICRAFT

MISS ANNA VANDALAINE HENKEL, FIRST ASSISTANT SUPERVISOR OF DRAWING, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, ST. LOUIS, MO.

So large a subject for a few minutes' talk is indeed appalling, and so I shall try to give briefly only a few of the impressions given me by my visits to the Exposition during the past few weeks.

Gradually the idea that we Americans are not an artistic people will grow fainter as we grow not only to love and appreciate art and beauty, but also to be creators and producers of artistic and beautiful things. The opportunity

to see such productions from many countries that is given to the great masses of our people by a world's fair such as was held at Chicago eleven years ago, and is now with us in St. Louis, is one great factor in creating the appreciation of art that must exist before the second stage can be attained, the desire to achieve artistic production.

A few years ago the term "art" suggested to the majority of people a vision of "oil paintings," done generally by a maiden aunt or deceased grandfather, who, one would hear announced with great pride, had never taken a lesson. I have vivid recollections of being called upon to admire these works of art, and of inward struggles to refrain from suggesting that some good instruction might not have been such a disastrous thing after all. At that time sculpture also was sometimes suggested by the term "art;" but surely only sculpture and painting.

I shall frankly confess that, with this few minutes' talk in view, I have recently become a listener to conversations not intended for me conversations of people visiting the Exposition, as I have examined the pictures in the Palace of Fine Arts, or looked at the costumes of the Japanese of a thousand years ago as shown in the central pavillion in the lovely little Japanese garden on the hill, or listened to the music while I rested before continuing my search for the beautiful or interesting. I find that there is a much wider understanding of the term "art" than existed eleven years ago; that the term is no longer applied only to painting and sculpture, but that in many minds it is reclaiming its broader and truer meaning.

There are several causes for this; several conditions have worked this result. First I shall place the influence of the great expositions beginning back in 1876 with the Centennial at Philadelphia. Of that my only recollection is of hearing described a wonderful piece of sculpture in butter-a butter cow. But I have also the lasting pleasure that some quaint little Japanese paintings brought from the Centennial afforded me all thru my childhood. I think we still have the butter cow and the Japanese paintings, but now the order could be reversed and the paintings placed first.

Then came the Chicago fair, and with it to multitudes, like myself, their first opportunity to see really fine works of art. As the weeks advanced, the crowds in the art galleries grew greater and greater.

At that time the development of art appreciation was doubtless with many in its first stage-the stage where it is the story told by the picture that holds the attention, and brings the visitor again and again before certain pictures. That no other picture at the Chicago fair attracted such crowds as did “Breaking Home Ties" shows this. It was the appeal to human experience that drew the people, not the understanding of art.

In watching the people in the Palace of Fine Arts in St. Louis, I am strongly impressed by the growth and development that have taken place in eleven years. This is surely one of the immediate results of our great expositions. To be sure, we still have the man from Missouri who was heard to say the

other day that the exhibition of pictures at the St. Louis fair is "fine, fine, remarkably fine;" why, he spent two hours and a half in the picture galleries, "yes, two hours and a half," and he considered the time well spent. This gentleman's interesting statement does not, however, affect the truth of the great growth along these lines.

The second factor that is contributing to this greater understanding is the work in our public schools. I have not been asked to speak about the public schools, but I cannot leave them out. It is comparatively few times that one is asked now why art education is undertaken in our public schools-schools educating pupils from every imaginable and unimaginable sort of home in this land of ours. The question, quite general only a few years ago, about whether the aim is to make professional artists of the pupils is a rare one, almost as rare as whether we expect the pupils to follow a literary career because they are required to study English and composition. Intelligent people quite generally acknowledge the right that art education has in the course of study in our public schools.

I have had a good deal of pleasure recently in listening to the replies of children of fifth and sixth grades when I asked them about the aim of certain exercises they were required to do. For example: Why paint plant forms or sketch them with pencil? Why make designs of any sort? In only a few cases did I receive the reply that the object was to make artists or designers of them. To make them quick to see, to enjoy, to become skilful with their fingers many were the answers, and the general trend of them was indeed the real aim-education-tho the answers were given in childlike language. If this be true of quite young children, how is it with the pupils in our normal school and our art schools, and with that still larger school, the people generally?

The solving of the problem of art education for the American people is not so slow as it seems at first, and the helps are many. Many are to be found here in this St. Louis Exposition. Those immediately concerned in education are finding an immense amount of help in the Education and Social Economy Building.

I am glad that all these exhibits are under one roof, making it possible to see and compare our ways with those of other countries. We find that in Japan there are normal schools just as there are in America; art schools, just as in America. So in other countries. In talking to a native of India a few days ago, whose pure English was a great pleasure to me, I found that it takes sixteen years to complete the course in India. So it does with us, when we take the eight years before the high school, four in the high school, and four years in college.

We find upon comparing that the ideas of modern education in the different countries are not so different-only the special ways of carrying them out. Our friends from across the different great waters seldom believe in educating the boys and the girls together. But the more important point all agree upon, and that is, that they all be educated.

For the methods of the schools we may study the exhibits in the Education Building; also for the methods of the art schools. For the results of those methods in the first instance we must study the people; in the second, we may visit the Palace of Fine Arts.

In studying the people, what are we sure to discover? That they are intensely interested in all sorts of handicraft, and in processes. It is a curious and interesting fact that, along with greater perfection of machinery and machine-made things, has come a revival of handicraft and hand-made things. The old order is reversed.

In these hand-made things, whatever they may be, do we find that subtle something we call art. Of the many buildings it has been my privilege to visit at the Fair, in not one have I found a lack of opportunity to study art in this broader sense. In the "Liberal Arts," the "Manufactures," the "Varied Industries," what manifold opportunities! What chaste designs in furniture, what wonderful work in textiles, what in carving, in metal-work, in leather! It is quite impossible to enumerate the things worthy of attention. How are these things educational? Contact with excellence in any form whatever, if it beget the desire to make our own efforts more worthy, is sufficient explanation. Pure joy in realizing beauty, and the effort to attain it in a great or a small way, is worth all effort.

Going from the great palaces of exhibits to the buildings of the various countries, the same opportunities are unfolded.

I have seen only a few of the state buildings, but in those few I have found much to enjoy and to study. New York is so dignified and harmonious. Mississippi shows a reproduction of the old home of Jefferson Davis, Beau Voir. In it are many things of historical interest. Indiana has a delightful state building. The coloring, the furniture, the arrangement thruout are unusually harmonious and satisfying. The paintings of the Hoosier School of ArtistsSteele, Forsyth, Adams, Stark, and many others—are well arranged, and prove that Indiana has an unusual number of strong painters. The collection of the bits of original manuscript of their writers shows how many authors Indiana has produced.

Among the achievements of the different countries, what could be more exquisite than the Japanese garden? To go to the top of the hill and look down over the restful stretch of green thru which runs the little stream winding in and out, as Nature herself would have made it, and in that stream the large irregular stepping-stones, the masses of beautiful Japanese iris with their lavender and purple blossoms and long straight leaves casting their lovely reflections in the water, convinces one of the perfection that may be attained thru art. Could we not take some hints about gardening? Have not the Japanese themselves shown in this very spot the superiority of that natural, irregular arrangement over the set beds of regular shapes? We have only to consider the flower-bed at the top of the hill, which is a crescent, and not half so delightful as the iris in the pool below.