Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-07-28

Are Discussed
BY MRS. WILSON WOODROW


had few days ago with a famous
portrait painter.
do you realize" he said, "the
extent to which people are enslaved
| by opinion? l don't mean in the
conventional sense of public opin-
| ion'-that is an old story, of ccfrse.
To revolt against the bondage of
public opinion is quite smart now,
especially among those who talk a
great deal about Individualism and
Self Expression. 1t satisfies the hu-
man longing for martyrdom, and
outside the war zone the only mar
tyrdom the twentieth century affords
! is notoriety, which is easily achieved
by defiance of public opinion.
why" he went on, almost any
insignificant person under the sun
becomes an oracle if by hook or
crook he can be invested with the
show of authority when he speaks.
! That's one of the many things the
war has done for us. It's only neces-
sary for somebody to say that he has
heard so-and-so from someone who
has unusual means for getting spe-
cial information, and the widest
kind of a yarn is accepted and pass
! ed along with additional confirma-
tory details
| "Of course, such extravagances
would not be possible If people did
| not allow themselves always to be
overwhelmed by personality-the
| personality of other individuals 1t
confronts all of us whichever way
we turn. 1t colors our life, it i'm
pairs our judgment and prevents us
from having any opinions that are
really and honestly our own.
And we all go about the world
blissfully ignorant of the fact that
about 95 per cent. of the views that
we express are second or third or
fourth hand. It's to be expected of
! young people. AS Emerson remarks,
In youth we are mad for persons
But the unhappy fact is that we re-
tain this stupidity. My father was
the only person l have ever met
who had an adequate understand
ing of it as a destroyer of original
| ity and spontaneity in the indi-
vidual."
l found his remarks both inter-
esting and puZzling, coming from a
| painter of Portraits for one of his
profession must necessarily be a
student of character and psychol-
ogy.
Tell me about your father" I
probed.
We'll. he was remarkable, be-
cause he recognized the truth of the
point / am trying to make, and did
all he could TO educate me to meet
| it,"
How" I asked.
"Why, he instructed me never to
believe anything anybody told me
to take everything I was taught in
a tentative sort of way, never as
final statement" --..
And did he warn you against
him self tOO2"
Certainly he did" was the un-
ruffled reply. II know the bare
statement of it sounds crude, but"
Never mind the crudity of 1t,
for the moment anyway" I inter-
rupted hastily. Not that I con-
slider it unimportant, but what I
would like to know is how you, of
all persons, can reconcile such teach
ing with your own work? l should
think such skepticism on your part
would make all your portraits Carl
catures and satires."
He looked at me a moment with
eyes that seemed to vision the in
visible, and then turned to me with
smile.
when / paint a portrait" he said,
i've got to ignore the speech and
the posing of the sitter, and get at
the character that lies beneath. The
reason so many people in he world
are weak and ineffective is because
they haven't the courage and the in
itiative to voice their own individual
views. You have no idea how char
acter and real personality are OBJ
scured and clouded by opinions alb
solutely foreign to their possessor
but which nevertheless he has adopt
ed as his own on the recommenda-
ton, so to speak, of another per-
son.
Don't you realize" he went on,
earnestly, that there ought to be
as many points of view in the world
as there are people in it? If you
need any proof of this, take a walk
up Fifth avenue or any other crowd
ed thoroughfare and watch and
study the faces you see. Recall the
faces of your multitude of acquaint-
ances. Do you ever see any two thot
are identical? Are you ever at a
loss to distinguish one from anoth-
er? Twins sometimes, yes. But they
prove nothing but the rule.
Think of what this infinite va
riety in physiognomy means. OF all
the hundreds of millions of people
in the world, of all the billions that
have been. each one of them has
and has had facial distinctions that
have made it possible to recognize
and identify one from the other. All
with the same structure, general
and in detail, yet each supremely
different.
what makes the difference?"