Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-03-16
A LAY SERMON
ON ARIA NONRESIDENT THINKS
ALOUD ELOQUENTLY.
Encouraging Words
for Local Effort.

IaSteS-EncOurdSlO WofuS
for Local Effort.
EDS. RECORD UNION: If the report of
the proceedings of recent annual meeting
of the California Museum Association of
your city comprises correct representa-
ton Of the transactions and expressions of
the members, your Association is laboring
under very peculiar hallucination. 1t
appears from the report in question that
the Association is disappointed that inter-
est in the museum is not more general
One gentleman said he desired to have
every man in Sacramento member of the
Association. VIII you kindly permit a
nonresident of your city, an entire out
slider, to discuss with your Association,
briefly and candidly, the mental and moral
code to which it is subject.
TO THE STUDENT.
OF social ethics, society presents stratiica-
tions very much as the geologist presents
upon diagram an illustrative drawing of
various strata of geological formation.
Pardon the use of this illustration for a
purpose which will become apparent
Tried by standard of measurement which
would disclose the diversity among men of
intellectual attainment, moral being, re-
inement of taste, and society would pre-
sent pyramid, the horizontal lines Of
which grow shorter as you approach the
apex. When those who belong to line
in the Tooth linear length of the base line,
line near the apex, demand of those who
are on the longest lines of the pyramid, an
interest in the affairs which held the at
tention of those at their own altitude, they
simply prove their own want of ethical
knowledge.
TAKE ART FOR ILLUSTRATION,
And suppose that an art association is
formed in a community Of 100000 inhab-
itants. In that community there will be,
say, 500 persons, or one wo-hundredth
portion of the community, whose art
faculty is high enough to have true APP
probation of real art. OF these 500, 800
will be SO engrossed with other affairs as
not to be able to give matters of art per-
sonal attention. OF the remaining 200,
still near the the apex of appreciation of
art, 80 will attempt to be artists, and 5
of this so will achieve somewhat salts
factory degree of success. One may achieve
a standard of excellence which will secure
his work ready acceptance upon his repu-
tation as an artist alone. One hundred
and fifty will possess taste sufficient to at
tempt art, with no other higher ambition
than to become somewhat noted on the
plane of amateur effort.
Attempt to form an art association in
this community of 100000 persons let the
requirement of amateurship be such as to
demand thought, time, effort-in short,
work-and you cannot retain on the roll
of such an association
ONE HUNDRED NAMES.
Is not all this exactly true? Are there
art associations in each group of 100000
inhabitants? Is there one eminent artist
for each 100000 people of the United
States, 10 in each 100000 or 600 in the
100000? By no means. And yet the
propensity-if we may be allowed the use
of that term in this connection-to make
representations of scenes and objects is
manifested in the lowest form of savage
life. In short, the nascent art faculty
manifests itself in the infancy of the
race, as well as in the infancy of
individual specimens of the race A child
loves pictures it is interested in the draw
ing of a horse or dog; of the house in
which it lives; of the trees of the orchard,
with which it is familiar. 1t looks upon
the paper and recognizes by comparison
the resemblance between the object and
the drawing, and is interested. If it man.
ifests some facility in drawing at an early
age, its grandmother is haunted by dreams
of great eminence in art, and fits these
dreams to the grandchild in most consoling
radiance. This childish delight with the
counterfeit semblance on paper or canvas
of things encountered in the world has its
counterpart in the scenic effects of the
theater. A train of cars is a very common
object. There are perhaps very few living
in civilized life who have not seen train
of cars. The great majority would not
turn around to see one pass. People living
on the seaboard or near it have all seen
ships sail out of the harbor and yet ad-
vertise graphic and life-like representa-
ton of a train of cars crossing stage or
ship leaving dock, as the scenic accesso-
ries of drama, and your theaters will be
crowded nightly at cost of 81 to 50 so to
each occupant Of stall. People who
would not give a street-car fare to ride
from the Palace Hotel to the city front to
witness a magnificent steamship leaving
the harbor to cross the Pacific ocean will
give 81 80 and a street-car fare and spend
the whole evening at a theater witnessing
wRETcHED DRAMA,
Without plot, without wit, without wis
dom, simply because at some stage of dra-
matte action graphic representation of
locomotive followed by train of cars is
to cross stage, or mimic ship is to leave
a mimic wharf and explode upon a fiat
canvas painted by a whitewash brush in
some mimic perspective of the scenic
artists work. AIT is appreciated in the
rudest mind, but not from the standpoint
of cultivated appreciation. The Shoshones
on the plains of Nevada will look with awe
and wonder upon the marble statue by
which the civilized white man perpetuates
the memory of the great among his race.
Pictures enchain the attention, attract and
hold the interest Of men, but this attrac-
ton and attention moves on a wholly diff
ferent plane of thought and being from art
and being. 1t bears the same relation to
true appreciation of art which is found to
exist between sorcery and theology You
must not conclude that, because the saw
ages drew rude figures on the face of
painted rocks, or made rude carvings re-
motely resembling the forms of men and
animals, and that between these rudest at
tempts at art and the work of Phidias
there are
INFINITE CARNATIONS
On the principle that the greater includes
the less, therefore the works of Phidias
must find universal appreciation. The
greatest works of that greatest of masters