Year: 1876

The Woman's Pavilion has taken sew


eral steps forward since | parted with it


last June. 1t has lost much of the as
pect Of thinness that marked it then
looks fuller, more complete. The lady
who "explains" Harriet and Mary
Johnsous S bedstead wears the same
beaming smile upon her face which she


wore at first, months ago, unabated


Think of the bores she has encountered,


think Of the questions she has answered,


think of the descriptions she has given


of that bedstead since then, and give


her palm for patience and amiability.
When | saw this building last many of
the show cases were empty. Now all


are full The displays of the Royal


School of Needlework have been added,
and, with honest loyalty, l am glad


most of them are ugly. An ugler ban


ner screen than that worked by the
Princess Beatrice ] never saw. II is a
dull purple, covered all over with yel-
low silk thread, in design utterly with
out beauty or character The princess


Louise's curtains are handsome, and


Queen Victory's dinner napkin is good
ly in size and delicate in tracery, as it
should be. This royal family are ar
lists, if nothing else. So, why in the
world didn't they send America of their


best or not send at all. The Queens
Etchings are interesting, especially of
her children Yet there is far more
beauty in a piece Of butter in which
another mother has nodded the tea-
lures of her sleeping child, over yon-
der. The crowd that gathers around
the little German maid in the Art Hall
is nothing to the pushing mass piling
and struggling on to catch glimpse of
the Dreaming Iolanthe" One might
readily think it woman material, the
plastic butter in her milk-pan, molde d
into loveliness by her beating paddle,
did we not know that Canova, when a
boy, made incarnate his first dreams of
beauty out OF the same evanescent sub
stance. Iolanthe dreams beneath a
crimson canopy in golden glory of gas
light and | did not see her. / could
not, for the terrible mob of men rush
ing on before Where brute force pre-
walls men will always have their sweet
rights, | fancy So let them take com
fort if a stray sister now and then bears
away a chance mental prize. Iolanthe
was made out of butter So these breth-
ren of mankind we're determined to see
her, no matter who they trampled under
feet in their progress. Iolanthe was to
me invisible but her maker was not.
She sat on the stairs just outside of the
canopy, gazing with curious interest
upon the struggling mob-a young wo-
man in deep mourning, with dark, lam
bent eyes, full of the sorrowful light of
genius. That this woman has rare gen
ius no one denies who gazes on this ex-
quisite face, dreaming in half conscious
sleep, yet modled by butter paddle in
a milk-pan In 1867, it is said, she
made her first model, " shell, suggested
by the butter paddle itself. As she stood
in her dairy-window, shaping the dainty
creation in the gathering twilight, the
possibility of the material for other and
more permanent shape first occurred 10
her" A year later, while gazing on the
features of her sleeping child, she re-
solved to transfix them in the material
before. o Iolanthe grew beneath her
hand in the milk-pan. She preserved
it for time, in ice and saltpeter; then
undertook to make plaster cast and fix
! it forever" The milk-pan was set up
on the table, the plaster mixed and
poured right on" 1t set at once
and hardened. Ignorant of any tech
nical method for loosening the mold, she
turned the miIk-p pan containing the har-
dened plaster over on the bread board,
cut out with jack knife tae bottom Of
the pan, and then set it over a pot Of
boiling water. The butter melted out.
She then turned the mold over, and there
was the beautiful face. Again the un-
taught worker poured more plaster into
the mold. already creased and prepared,
1t hardened readily. She had not
known enough as she expressed it, to
: color her first cast, and thus mark the
line between the mold aud the newly
prepared plaster. Thus the work Of
cutting it away was attended with much
difficulty and risk to the sleeping beau
ty. The experiment was sufficiently
/ successful, however. to satisfy her that
the process was perfect one; and she