The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-03-13
MIR. LITTLE AND THE MONA LISA.
A Kansas View of Da yincrs Picture
-Chicago to the Rescue.

The most interesting face in the
Louvre is the Mona Lisa, a woman's
head by Leonadro da. Vinci, who. you
will remember, painted on the wall of
a room in Milan the famous Lords
Supper we so often see. If you have
heard of her you would know her
without guide or sign. There is an
Individuality about the portraits from
Leonardo'S brush as marked as those
by Dickens pen. The Mona Lisa sur
passes them all. She looks one right
III the eye and seems to say: Il knew
you would come. 1 have been expect
ing You all these centuries. You are
too late to tell me anything l am
conversant with your life history and
emotions. You sprang into the race on
the plains of Kansas, and fought
thousand little battles before the
round of your life let you stand here.
have lived and known and felt all
that comes to you or your kind l. too,
nave long since experienced despair
and failure, hope and accomplishment.
Love has come and love has gone for
me. Ambition has nursed my efforts
Fame has crowned my deeds. Friends
have semi-occasionally sustained my
fiattering hopes Enemies have often
enough crossed my attempts. I know
how and where you will end. We are
and our little lives are rounded with a
sleep. Men talk of the mysteries of
the SphynX. She could go to school
to Mona Lisa AS you go, her eyes
follow you and say: Eyes, you go as
all the others, and leave me nailed to
the wall. OF all human kind only I
must live on wall with painted faces
about me-" And one can't decide
whether she merely smiles to see him
go, or demonstrates at his departure;
and II you are as I was, you turn, go
back and lift your hat and say: Good
day, madame. I appreciate the fact
that | appear discourteous and ungal-
liant in leaying-in abandoning you to
your centuries on the wall; but I am
as yourself, only one of the poor tools
and fools of late. I must myself for
myself, feel, see and know as you
For is it not SO written in the books?
Besides, madame, the girl from Chicago
is reckoning from the doorway, and-I
must CO." And the very worst of it
is that one can't decide whether she
smiles in sanity henediction and an
gelic pardon of your shortcomings
half sneeEs in sarcastic reflection on
the futility of your aims and efforts
or awaits in patient, gentle reSigna-
ton for-quien saDe? This woman
may have lived amid the splendid sins
OF q sanity palace or in the sanity
sanctity of a convent when she was
Leonardo's model In the one case she
had passed her apprenticeship at Man
itou, Minnetonka, Monte Carlo or
Cairo; in the other she had known the
goodness and gentleness of innocence
somewhere, somehow. She is fitting
type of the careless. fastidious. gay,
frugal metropolis. For Paris has a
wicked reputation which it's conduct
does not warrant, q, good character
which it's intentions do not merit, a
glorious fame which it's deeds do not
deserve, a thrifty soul for which it re-
ceives no credit. 1t is great because it
is very human. The mystery of the
Mona Lisa, the secret of Paris is the
enigma Of human nature IN all lands
and climes-a secret which was never
hidden, a sign-board which was never
found.-Edward G. Little in the Agora.