From Jest to Earnest. Edward Payson Roe

gallery of the Louvre, represents two oxen feeding at a rack."

      "Come, Julian, hand over your sword. It won't do for you or any one to sit in judgment on such painters as Mr. Hemstead has named. You are fairly beaten. I shall admire barn-yards in future, through thick and thin."

      "That is hardly a fair conclusion from any testimony of mine," said Hemstead. "A barn-yard may be all that Mr. De Forrest says of it, but I am sure you will always find pleasure in seeing a fine frolicsome horse or a group of patient cattle. The homely accessories may, and sometimes may not, add to the picture."

      "How do you come to know so much about pictures? Theology has nothing to do with art."

      "I dissent from Judge Marsden's decision now, most emphatically," replied Hemstead. "Is not true art fidelity to nature?"

      "Yes, so it is claimed."

      "And where does nature come from? God is the Divine Artist, and is furnishing themes for all other artists. God is the author of landscapes, mountains, rivers, of scenes like that we saw this morning, or of a fine face and a noble form, as truly as of a chapter in the Bible. He manifests Himself in these things. Now fine paintings, statuary, and music bring out the hidden meanings of nature, and therefore more clearly God's thought. Theology, or knowledge concerning our Creator, is a science to which everything can minister, and surely the appreciation of the beautiful should be learned in connection with the Author of all beauty."

      "I never thought of God in that light before," said Lottie. "He has always seemed like one watching to catch me at something wrong. Our solemn old Sunday-school teacher used to say to us children just before we went home, 'Now during the week whenever you are tempted to do anything wrong, remember the text, "Thou, God, seest me."' When wasn't I tempted to do wrong? and I had for a long time the uncomfortable feeling that two great eyes were always staring at me. But this isn't sleigh-riding chit-chat," and she broke into a merry little trill from a favorite opera.

      Hemstead, with his strong love of the beautiful, could not help watching her with deepening interest. The rapid motion, the music of the bells, the novel scenery of the sun-lighted, glittering world around her, and, chief of all, her own abounding health and animal life, combined to quicken her excitable nature into the keenest enjoyment. From her red lips came ripples of laughter, trills from operas, sallies of fun, that kept the entire party from the thought of heaviness, and to honest-minded Hemstead were the evidences of a happy, innocent heart.

      With secret exultation she saw how rapidly and unconsciously the unwary student was passing under the spell of her beauty and witchery.

      One must have been cursed with a sluggish, half-dead body and a torpid soul, had he not responded to the influences under which our gay party spent the next few hours. Innumerable snow-flakes had carried down from the air every particle of impurity, and left it sweet and wholesome enough to seem the elixir of immortal youth. It was so tempered also, that it only braced and stimulated. The raw, pinching coldness of the previous day was gone. The sun, undimmed by a cloud, shone genially, and eaves facing the south were dripping, the drops falling like glittering gems.

      Now and then a breeze would career down upon them, and, catching the light snow from the adjacent fence, would cast it into their faces as a mischievous school-boy might.

      "Stop that!" cried Lottie to one of these sportive zephyrs. "De you call that a gust of wind? I declare it was a viewless sprite, or a party of snow elves, playing their mad pranks upon us."

      "I prefer fairies less cold and ethereal," said De Forrest, with a meaning look at the speaker.

      "What do you prefer, Mr. Hemstead?" she asked. "But where we people of the world speak of fairies, sprites, and nymphs, I suppose you permit yourself to think only of angels."

      "Were it so," he replied, "I should still be of the same mind as

       Mr. De Forrest, and be glad that you are not an angel."

      "Why so?"

      "You might use your wings and leave us."

      "Were I one, I would not leave you after that speech. But see how far I am from it. I weigh one hundred and fifteen pounds."

      "I wish you were no farther off than that."

      "What do you mean?"

      "It's not our weight in avoirdupois that drags us down. But I am not going to preach any more to-day. Listen to the bells—how they echo from the hill-side!"

      "Yes, Julian, listen to Bel," said Lottie to De Forrest, who was about to speak. "I'm talking to Mr. Hemstead. See those snow-crystals on my muff. How can you account for so many odd and beautiful shapes?"

      "To me all the countless forms in nature," said Hemstead, "prove an infinite mind gratifying itself. They are expressions of creative thought."

      "Nonsense! God doesn't bother with such little things as these."

      "We do not know what seems small or great to Him. The microscope reveals as much in one direction as the telescope in another, and the common house-fly seems in size midway in animal life."

      "And do you believe that the Divine hand is employed in forming such trifles as these?"

      "The Divine will is. But these trifles make the avalanche and the winter's protection for next year's harvest."

      "What is that?" asked Harcourt from the front seat, where he was driving.

      "Do you know," cried Lottie, "that Mr. Hemstead thinks everything we see, even to nature's smallest trifles, an 'expression of the Divine creative thought.'"

      "Is that scene such an expression?" asked Harcourt, with a sneering laugh, in which the others joined.

      By the road-side there was a small hovel, at the door of which a half-fed, ill-conditioned pig was squealing. When they were just opposite, a slatternly, carroty-headed woman opened the door, and raised her foot to drive the clamorous beast away. Altogether, it was as squalid and repulsive a picture as could well be imagined.

      "Yes," replied Lottie, looking into his face with twinkling eyes, "was that sweet pastoral scene an expression of creative thought?"

      "The woman certainly was not," he answered, reddening. "A thought may be greatly perverted."

      "Whatever moral qualities may be asserted of her manners, costume, and character," said Harcourt, "she is not to blame for the cast of her features and the color of her hair. I scarcely know of an artist who would express any such thought, unless he wished to satirize humanity."

      "You can call up before you the portrait of some beautiful woman, can you not, Mr. Harcourt?"

      "Let me assist you," cried De Forrest, pulling from his inner pocket a photograph of Lottie.

      "Hush, Julian. I'm sorry you do not appreciate this grave argument more; I'll take that picture from you, if you don't behave better."

      "Well, I have a picture before me now, that satisfies me fully," said Mr. Harcourt, turning to Lottie with a smiling bow.

      "Now, suppose that you had painted just such a likeness and finished it. Suppose I should come afterwards, and, without destroying your picture utterly, should blend with those features the forbidding aspect of the woman we have just seen, would you not say that your thought was greatly perverted?"

      "I should think I would."

      "Well, Mother Eve was the true expression of the Divine Artist's creative thought, and the woman we saw was the perversion of it. You can trace no evil thing to the source of all good. Perfection is not the author of imperfection."

      "Who does the perverting, then?" asked Lottie.

      "Evil."

      "I don't think it fair that one face and form should be perverted into hideousness, and mother left with something of the first perfection."

      "Evil is never fair, Miss Marsden."

      "But is it only evil? I have heard