The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-08-30

eyokes flow of feeling which We mus takenly identify with the national ban- uer. Much the same deep-seated sen- timent attaches to our national coal or arms, the eagle and the shield. Both the flag and the national eseutcheoh
 are rightly immutable.
 But the matter is wholly different
 with the seals and coats of arms Of our
 various commonwealths. The chances are that the ordinary citizen of fair ln-
 telligence would be at a loss for an an
 swer if asked off-hand to describe the seal of his own state. It is not. there fore, an altogether hopeless task to es- say a few observations upon the. art
 istic merits and defects of state seals
 with the idea of effeeting an improve
 ment in some of them. Timely alterat-
 ation is the more necessary because
 the state shields are employed more and more for the architectural orna-
 mentation of public buildings.
 There is, of course, no reason-we
 may as well admit it at once-why our state coat of arms should conform thechnically to heraIdie requirements so long as they do not violate the more imperative behests os good taste. Not a few of the states have seals which are dignif1ed, beautiful to the eye, and
 graced by symbols of historical asso-
 citation. Thus the Calvert arms which l have been transformed into the official
 shield of Maryland satisfy all of these desiderata. So. too, the state seal, of Connecticut three conventionalized grapevines upon plain field, surm- bunting scroll with the motto, Qui
 Transtulit Sustinet, is altogether in
 good taste. Many of the shields of fend the eye, however, and the over 1 crowding of details upon a limited sur 1 face, the inartistic attempt to preserve traces of historical association, the use tions, and occasionally an indiscrimin-
 ating and exuberant civic magnilo- quence which eliminates in the veriest artistic bathos. ..>s .....
 Some one has suggested that if our civilization were suddenly to be plotted out and the sole remaining monuments were our gravestones, the inscriptions and figures thereon would produce a ] most bewildering misconception of our views upon most subjects of human in- terest. Very similar would be the re- | suit, if all that remained to the far-off historian and archeologist, as the
 sources of our history, were the coats of arms of our commonwealths. For example, they would certainly be mys- | tified as to the Indian aborigines. The noble red man appears on three shields I and in three distinct garbs. On the Massachusetts shield stands Natty Bumppo, shapely and muscular in | build, clad snugly in his deerskin jack ct and leggings, with bow and arrows l in hand, and a couple of crow feathers cooked atilt in his hair--one, by the way, of our best shields, artisticaily considered, Of the whole lot. On Flori- da's shield stands placid and buxom l Mrs. To. with fringed skirt failing to ! the knee-she whose image formerly advertised the tobacconist's shop -hoid- ing branch, presumably of the weed, doubtless portraying the aboriginal race
 that inhabited the Everglades.
 But the height of Philistine vuIgarity
 is reached in that newly devised shield of Oklahoma. Here is meledramatic
 Indian of the difne-novel variety, who l is made to look like an iguana or
 horned toad by 10-foot string of
 feathers down his back, is striking
 hands with a plebian white, while be-
 fore them both an irnpassive goddess of liberty in a star-spangled waist and l red and white bunting striped skirt
 holds aloft the scales of justice. Equal
 ly baffling to the future archeologist is the industrial equipment represented on state shields. Tn the effort to pre- I serve historical associations of an in-
 animate kind, the designers of our re. publican escutcheons have accumulated
 a prodigious assortment of machines
 and other impedimenta, which to-day
 savor less of antiquity than of the junk 1 shop. Antique ploughs such as Cin-
 cinnatus would have discarded, sea
 craft of wonderful pattern, sail-bearinl
 canal boats, steam briggs, and side.
 wheelers, besides which trireme look.
 modern, lie, in hopeless juxtapositior
 with the cornucopia, the Phrygian car
 or piieus, and similar classical paraphe
 nalia. How early was this tendency tC
 mix classical and colonial symbols is
 amusingly illustrated in letter writ.
 ten by John Adams to his wife, the re. ldoubtable Abigail, under date of Augus IA, 1776 He relates that he has beer iput upon 8 device committee of Con. igress to prepare a device flor a greai lseal for the Confederated States" anc lrecounts various devices suggested by Jefferson, by Franklin, and by himself lone of the designs proposed to the com lmittee represented on one side of tho lseal Liberty with her pileus: on tht other, a rifler In his uniform, with Iii. lrife-gun in one hand and his tomahawl lin the other; this dress and these
 troops, with this kind of armor, beine peculiar to America, unless the dres.
 was known to the Romans .
 Another amusing peeuliarity of thes, shields is seen in the curious distribu tion of heraldic flora and fauna. Tht Hone pine of Maine and Vermont, no les'
 than the palmetto of South Carolina, il
 highly appropriate, but it is hard to sa! lwhy the Wolverine state has it's shield
 supported by a stag and an elk, or wh!
 Missouri has appropriated the bear ant
 Indiana the buffalo. Judged by mum, ibers, the deer is the most popular 0 lheraldic animals, second only to tn,
 ubiquitous eagle. Louisiana display Tits ingenuity in domesticating the peli