The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1899-07-27

hey also want practical help from men
who can give them work. You have
heard scores of sermons for all other
kinds of suffering men and women, but
we need sermons that make pleas for
the suffering men and women of Amer-
can art. Their work is more true to
nature and life than some Of the mas
terpieces that have become immortal
on the other side Of the sea, but it is the
fashion of Americans to mention foreign
artists and to know little or nothing Z
about our own Copley and Allston and
Inman and Greenough and Kensett.
Let the affluent fling out of their wins
dows and into the back yard valuelesa
daubs on canvas and call in these splen-
did but unrewarded men and tell them
to adorn your walls not only with that
which shall please the taste, but en-
large the minds and improve the morals
and save the souls of those who gaze
upon them. All American cities need
great galleries of art, not only open an
nually for few days on exhibition, but
which shall stand open all the year
round, and from early morning until
ten o'clock at night, and free to all who
would come and go.
What preparation for the wear and
tear of the day a five minutes look in
the morning at some picture that will
open a door into some larger realm than
that in which our population daily
drudges. Or what good thing the half
hour of artistic opportunity on the way
home in the evening from exhaustion
that demands recuperation for mind
and soul as well as body! Who will do
for the city where you live what w. w.
Corcoran did for Washington and what
others have done for Philadelphia and
Boston and New York? Men of wealth,
if you are too modest to build and en-
dow such place during your lifetime,
why not go to your iron safe and take
out your last will and testament and
make codicil that shall build for the
city of your residence a throne for
American art? Take some OF that
money that would otherwise spoil your
children and build an art gallery that
shall associate your name forever not
only with the great masters OF painting
who are gone, but with the great mas
ters who are trying to live, and also win
the admiration and love of tens Of thou-
sands of people, who, unable to have
fine pictures of their own, would be adj
vantaged. By your benefactions build
your own monuments and not leave II
to the whim of others. Some of the
best people sleeping in Greenwood have
no monuments at all or some crumbling
stones that in few years will let the
rain wash out name and epitaph, while
some men, whose death was the abate-
ment of a nuisance, have a pile OF Aber-
deem granite high enough for king
and eulogies enough to embarrass .
seraph Oh, man of large wealth. in-s
stead of leaving to the whim of others
your monumental CONNIE moration and
epitaphology, to be looked atwhen pao-
| pie are going to and fro at the burial OF
others, build right down ia the heart Of
our great city, or the city where you
live, an immense free reading-roOrn, or
a free musical conservatory, or FREQ
art gallery, the inches for sculpture and
the walls abloom with the rise and fall
of nations. and lessons Of courage for
the disheartened, and rest for the
weary, and life for the dead; and $50
wears from now you will be welding
Influence in this world for good. How
much better than white marble. that
chills you if you put your hand on It
when you touch it in the cemetery.
would be a monument in colors. IN
beaming eyes, in living possession, in
splendors which under the chandelier
would be glowing, and warm, and
looked at by strolling groups with cata-
|logue in hand on the January night
when the metropolis where the body
sleeps is all showed under!
I AS the day Of the lord Of hosts, 40
cording to this text, will scrutinize thu
pictures, I implorc all parents to see
that in their households they have
: neither in book nor newspaper nor o.
canvas anything that will deprave
pictures are no longer the exclusive
possession OF the affiuent. There IS not
, a respectable home in these cities that
has not specimens Of woodcut or stee
: engraving, if not of painting, and YOU
whole family will feel the moral uplift
: ing or depression. Have nothing q
your wall or in books that will familiar
/. ize the young with scenes Of cruelty ant
! wassail; have only those sketches mads
by artists in elevated moods and NON.
t of those scenes that seem the produc
E Of artistic delirium tremens. Picture'
? are not only strong but universe
!. language. The human race is divides
e into almost as many languages as ther
t are nations, but the pictures may speal
: to people of all tongues. vclapuk msnl
t have hoped, with little reason, woull
r become a worldwide language; but tn
I pictorial is always worldwide Ian
: guage, and printers types have no en-
9 phasis compared with it. We say tina
n children are fond Of pictures; but nc
ix. n.r $50 N x.yho, ho n Lao yfvs n hf,nl