and in thunder and lightning would stand on the crest of a hill like a wild and beautiful spirit-in tune with the rhythms of black mystery. Bobby was dear and comic, Sniff loved a joke; but the Maid's eye was shadowed by some tragedy of phantom ages long since past, and she looked upon life in a sort of nobility of sorrow. The outer world moved in unseen circles, and she herself dwelt in a land of fantasy where seen things were all unreal and only the unseen were actual. The Maid had as kindly a heart as Bobby, as beautiful a pace as Sniff; but these things came to her not of training or volition, but through the mysteries of past ages and long lines of noble sires. When I rode Bobby I talked to him, when I rode Sniff I was proud; but before I even mounted Maid Marian I questioned my own worthiness.

T

O be astride a horse-it connotes mastery, and it most readily betrays him who is not a master. Such a one mounts questioningly; he holds the reins as though they were fuses, and his eyes linger in tremulous inquiry on the horse's ears. It is very simple to ride. As the The Art of Riding White Knight so carefully explained to Alice, "The great art of riding is to keep your balance properly." To ride well parallels itself in subtler meanings with the mastery of life, for the keynote of both is only to keep your balance. Both the horse and the world recognize the master by the sure, firm hand on the reins. Yet the horse by his obedience has not become servile and he may yet teach the world something of his philosophy; for his sturdy neck arched in the strength of labor typifies noble effort, and he has learned to glorify drudgery and make of service a token of regality.

Stevenson always wanted to write a story about a man galloping up to an inn at night; and the very suggestion brings a tingle to the imagination.

"By on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he."

He heard him in the sleepless midnights of his childhood; and, indeed, the sound of thudding hoofs always makes the heart beat faster. The sociable clattering of a singlefooter on asphalt, the crackling of twigs and leaves on the quiet autumn trails, the muffled rhythm of a canter on the turf, its res

onance on a bridge—all these make music in the ears and bring the very smell of adventure. To him who rides there is always "something lost behind the ranges❞—and his heart yearns for it.

My horse

Riding makes for intimacy. knows the touch of my hand; I understand his semaphoric ears-and we hold subtle and secret conversation. I think he likes to feel my hand under his mane and to have me talk to him; I like his clumsy gentleness, his yearning eyes, and his soft breathing when he puts his head close to mine. We like to go carefully through quiet mountain trails and then to stop suddenly to listen to the murmuring stillness of the woods. We like to come suddenly to an upland plateau where the wind blows strong, to stand on the highest point and hold our heads high and to take deep breaths. Neither of us is insensible to the artistic possibilities of our silhouette-though there be no one by to see. Riding brings also a certain calm regard of life; with it comes vigor of happiness, quietude of thought, and an unspeaking comrade who will listen. The whine of saddle leather and the soft jingling of the bit invite one to reposeful thought; and there is nothing in the world that synchronizes better with philosophic contemplation than the crisp, equine munching of a bit of grass.

But I am not always in this mood of meditation, and I love fierce, swift darts of speed, with the wind and the road rushing by. Nothing in the ecstasy of motion compares with the delightful wickedness of galloping up a hill; a series of peaks in Darien with new worlds sweeping to one's ken, the horizon leaping in the sky, then falling back to spread in wider circles on the land—and always before one the arching neck and proud head and the fuzzy softness of two ears pricked forward. Oh! I pray I may never be satisfied with the "equable jog-trot of feeling," but always, like some brave figure in an old romance, seek my new adventures in a hilly country, on the gallop-that in sudden bursts of vision my horizon may lift and spread itself into new worlds.

Newspaper

served for the paper that came, twelve hours late, from the great city which was, for that town, the centre of things; the place where things happened, or One's Favorite to which the news of them came humming on the wires of the world. To the children of the family in the provincial town the newspaper favored by their elders was as integral a part of life as, say, the kitchen stove. One knew its pages and its columns as one knew the rooms of the house. Just as a particular kind of flowervase was in the left-hand corner of the top shelf of the parlor closet to the right of the folding-doors, or a special bottle of medicine lived on the middle shelf of the little cupboard of the passage-way next the bathroom, so would you find certain items of news at the top of the first column on the third page, or at the bottom of the last column on the fourth. You knew your paper through and through. As to the editorials, you didn't usually read them when you were a child. As you grew up you did taste of them from time to time and learned their point of view. As children do not always walk in the footsteps of their fathers, quite possibly you did not agree with the opinions set forth, but that made no difference. The paper was an institution, whether you agreed with its politics or not.

In the family which I knew best there were two favorite newspapers, a daily and a weekly. There were others—the local paper which came daily and the outside ones which came incidentally, but these two were a matter of course, like daily bread. One hardly thought of life without them. The daily paper we read for the news and for its foreign correspondence; less for its editorials, even when we grew up, though they served the purpose of showing us that there were two sides to a question, since they differed so often from our weekly paper. That one we early learned to read, precisely on account of its editorials, those pungent, witty, sometimes ferocious comments and criticisms which showed neither fear nor favor. It was finely independent, our weekly, and praised or blamed irrespective of party; blaming more than it praised, to be sure, since human affairs are so imperfectly managed, but not the less entertaining for that reason. Mostly we agreed with it, but even when we did not agree we enjoyed it. Our daily undoubtedly trimmed its sails to the winds of party poli

tics. We expected that and took no offense, even though we preferred independence.

So time went on. The younger generation in its turn grew old. The old editors died and were replaced by new ones, but we still read the favorite newspapers, caring as little as ever whether we agreed with their views so long as we were greeted by the familiar front page and could still find the various items at their old stands, or could be gently entertained by the same sort of criticism of life, even though a trifle less salted with wit than of old.

But all at once we have waked up. Great and terrible things are going on in the world. It is not enough for us to read the news. We must read also what is said about these portentous events abroad and about our own affairs at home which, more than ever before, are the affairs of the world. And now, when over a great part of the civilized world ordinary living is suspended and the stark realities are all that matters-now, to an extent we never thought of before, we find ourselves demanding that the men who, sitting in their offices, pen in hand, are trying to influence opinion, should subordinate politics to sincerity. Too much to ask, apparently, with a presidential election impending. In view of that election there must be, it seems, exaggeration here, suppression there; and much vituperative criticism which, with a little more pains, could be more seemly and yet quite as effective. And although the political opinions of our favorite paper matter no more to us than the political opinions. of any other lifelong friend who may agree with us or differ from us without influencing our affection, its manners and its morals suddenly matter a great deal to our freshly awakened sensibilities.

We turn to our weekly. There, at least, we shall find sincerity and independence. We do find these qualities, but allied to a singular lack of adaptability, which also jars on us as it never did before. Our weekly elected some time ago to inherit traditions rather than tradition.

Well, of course we know that no journal which is the organ of a political party is going to put politics in the second place. We know, too, that no editorial has as much influence as its writer dreams that it may have. And we still read the newspapers, our two old friends among the rest; but gone is the day of the favorite. One feels a little homesick.

F

THE TAOS SOCIETY OF ARTISTS

EW American painters of note have given serious study to the American Indian. A number of men have depicted the red man since the early day when Catlin went out with the dragoons to draw them from life upon the plains, but these men have, for the most part, left only faithful portraits of chiefs and tribesmen that, artistically, have little more value than colored photographs-documents of permanent value, to be sure, perpetuating the memory of a disappearing race. Most painters, like most of the public, if asked, would declare that the real Indian has passed away and that the degenerate of today is scarcely worthy of his brush.

Yet in certain parts of the Southwest, difficult of access, I confess, and primitive as far as living conditions are concerned, tribes of Indians still exist quite as Coronado found them centuries ago. Acoma perched upon its lofty mesa, the Hopi villages of the Painted Desert, and certain pueblos of the upper Rio Grande afford wonderful op

portunity for the artist, but it is next to impossible to live in them without bringing along one's entire outfit.

In many ways the most extraordinary of them all is the pueblo of Taos. Here, luckily, only two miles from the Indian village, lies an old Mexican town, as picturesque in its way as the pueblo itself and affording a comfortable sort of Spanish hostelry. So the painters most interested in the Pueblo Indian and his ways, little by little, have congregated here and made this spot their headquarters. Set on a prodigious tableland at the feet of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about ninety miles north of Santa Fé, Taos Pueblo piles its two great community houses, fortress and dwellingplace alike, five or six stories high, with the Taos River running merrily between.

The picturesque corrals of cedar logs; the warm, blank, sun-dried mud walls; the rude ladders that lead from terrace to terrace; the mountainsides clothed with forest; the never-ending reaches of prairie afford countless suggestions for pictorial background,

while the Indians themselves focus the attention as they go about their work in their old accustomed ways, unchanged and practically untouched by centuries of contact with the white man. Basket-weavers and potters work in the primitive whitewashed rooms; women bake at the outdoor ovens; the men sit upon the roof-tops wrapped in blankets, blown into noble folds by the keen mountain breezes.

The pioneer among the Taos painters was

the primitive life of his models. His first studio in Taos was an abandoned church which he put in order and floored over with cedar "to keep the dead Penitentes down," as he quaintly expressed it. He then took an old garden adjoining and built himself a new and larger studio in the pueblo style, in which he now works and stores his rare and precious collections of baskets, mats, and costumes.

Joseph Henry Sharp, who came down here from the Crow Reservation in Montana, where he has stayed for many a year in a commodious log cabin studying and painting the Indian. Ethnologically his work is of the greatest value, for he has painted from life a number of remarkably fine portraits of the plainsmen. One important group of these hangs in the Smithsonian Institution, while another, much larger, more than a hundred in all, has been given to the University of California by Mrs. Phoebe Hearst.

Mr. Sharp spared himself no pains in making these portraits and in studying the backgrounds suitable for his pictures, painting snow scenes out-of-doors, with the temperature near zero, and sharing in every way

After him and at his suggestion, about

seventeen years ago, two other painters came to Taos and became so enamoured with its possibilities that they sold their wagon and outfit and decided to settle there for good. One, Bert Phillips, has remained ever since. The other, Ernest Blumenschein, though he lives in New York, goes out to New Mexico almost every year.

Mr. Blumenschein's paintings of the Indian have improved steadily in quality and give great promise for the future. He does not content himself merely with the picturesque side of Indian life, but is preoccupied primarily with harmony of line, mass, and color, building compositions that "carry' and please the eye with their fine decorative effect. In this mood he painted his "Wise-man, Warrior, Youth," a group forming a noble silhouette against a gray-blue sky. There is a rare sympathy in the faces that far transcends the mere transcription of type. These three men might, indeed, be merely looking at a game, but then again they might be deeply thinking, pondering-the far-away, thoughtful expression on the youth's face in particular suggesting some vague memory, some indefinite longing.

This picture, when shown at the Academy a few years ago, was awarded the Isidor Gold Medal. "The Peacemaker," that followed it, is another decorative composition, but built on a more monumental plan, the two groups standing like pillars or caryatides at each side of the canvas, an extended