Omaha daily bee., 1899-12-10

: model with friends. Models are expensive
/ SO a week FOR children. $4 or So for a lrau
or woman for the mornings or afternoons
Canvas and paints are also expensive and
fire is a necessity whore models viii not
pose without. These things far m re than
food and lodging augment the expense CT
studying art in Paris.
+ It Is at tea time, between and o'clock
In the afternoon, hat the American Gr.5
club plays a role in most Of the stud nts'
lives. Six years ago the club was organ
lied by an American woman wife OF the
ambassador 10 France at that time, who
after four years in Paris determined upon
this as a remedy for some of the eyiG Of
III health and dscouragcment re.u.ting
from the homelessncss of American girl
students in the Latin quarter. a library
and a restaurant were opened to all Amer
lean women; furnished rooms in an agree
able old house built about a garden were
offered from $4 to IS a month, inclulng
free use OF two large woll-heated drawing
rooms ana a tea room, where every after
noon in the year any American woman IN
Paris may have as much tea ana as much
bread and butter as she wants, at he
kind hospitality of the founder and patron
'css Of the club.
The restaurant is a warm, pleasant room
the meals are wholesome and cheap, but
two forms of self-abuse seem to be common
to all women students and breaiwnners--
Cne is overwork and the other is gradual
starvation.
Nine American girls have gone crazy in
the Latin quarter because they worked all
day and all evening and ate one miserable
meal day and a great many free cups OF
tea in place of dinner For 60 cents a day
a girl may be well fed at the club; most OF
the girls never spend more than 80 cents
for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There arc
no restrictions for entering. Any unmar~
ried American woman who wishes to study
art or music in any Of it's branches
may stay at the club. She has the sympa-
thetic companionship cf compatriots, who
are working toward the same end as her
self; she has the protection and kindly in
terest Of a devoted American woman di-
rectrCss, as well as comfortable surroundings
fer price necessarily minimum, in an or
ganization which docs not even cover its
expenses.
For $50 a month it is also possible to live
in a French family and have the oppor-
tunity Of hearing French spoken. This
price in any way Of living, means a small
room, probably locking cut on small court
yard, where tho sun never shines and an
entire absence of luxury and in many cases
even of comfort.
Thus the disadvantages of student life in
the Latin quarter are the temptation to neg
lect health the danger, where no restric-
tOns are placed, of wasting time and find
ing 700 late what might have been discovered
in America, that the talent possessed is in
sufficient to justify the pursuit of an ar
tistic career and, lastly, an increasing
carelessncss and indifference to all conven-
tionalities, resulting from the freedom of
all responsibility or obligation toward an
older generation.
The great compensations are the powerful
atmosphere and influence cf art at its center;
the inspiration of surroundings artistic in
every detail; the stimulus of great masters,
ancient and modern, which every artist ad-
mits to be of ineomrarable benefit to the
gifted student who has first exhausted the
technical resources of the schools in Amer
lea. BESSIE VAN WORST.