re very subtle = of ours. I anything rechetic outlook pen question "æsthetic" their vocabicated, I do s in the strict ey had their f prints and ather, just as g and conseas the Ameri us, art as it England, and red here, was more nor less nd in its very ieu of the colit kept itself one quality netically, our ed collector - his rôle. It nd makes his ith a strong mplicity, and he American for full two n sophistica tion as time goes on. We are susceptible to rococo influences now and then. (There is a piquant instance in the room with painted decorations on the second floor, brought from Marmion in Virginia.) But chiefly our sophistication finds its efflorescence in grace and elegance. Our good taste stands firm. Our restraint is unshaken. You can see our evolution in perhaps its most eloquent phases if you observe the big ballroom taken out of Gadsby's Tavern at Alexandria, Virginia, and the room from the Powel House in Philadelphia. To the former, I may note in passing, Washington came for his last birthnight ball, in 1798, riding over from Mount Vernon, only eight miles away. The Powel room is richer than the ballroom, serving to show how wealth asserted itself, but both have the same austere stateliness. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is beautiful to see how the purity and reserve in matters of style, which we have now to gain through education, were then practised by our craftsmen and their patrons quite naturally and as a matter of course. The visitor to the American (The cornice designed by McIntire; the mantel by Bulfinch.) Wing will see clearly enough, if he gives his mind to it, the idea and the ideal there enshrined. He will see that the Forefathers liked as part of their measured, well-mannered mode of carrying them selves in the world a cool, serene, and handsome gracious lines, telling particularly in the environment. They liked delicately wrought mouldings of wainscot, panelling, and cornice. They liked a brilliant chandelier, a shining lustre. With high appreciation and always without extravagance they welcomed Chippendale and Sheraton, and took to their hearts the architectural motives of Robert and James Adam. They were always without extravagance, I have said, and I repeat the words because they affirm a fastidiousness at the core of the subject. There was luxury in that old America beyond a doubt. When John Adams made a note of the dinner that he had at "Mr. Nick Boylston's" one winter night in 1766, he added these words: "Went over the house to view the furniture, which alone cost a thousand pounds sterling. A seat it is for a nobleman, a prince. The Turkey carpets, the painted hangings, the marble tables, the rich beds with their crimson damask curtains and counterpanes, the beautiful chimney-clock, the spacious corden Adams so breathless, but it is certain that it had a fundamental simplicity infinitely removed from one of those exotic interiors in which your modern Mæcenas is lodged. It is the key to the American Wing, this simplicity, and with it there goes a kind of beauty. Both elements pervade the whole broad scheme, the rooms as rooms and the pictures that they make of our earlier civilization. Moreover, the spirit of the place is exemplified again in those smaller objects which diversify and fill out the general design. Consider the pottery, the glass, and the silver, especially the silver. Our craftsmen were never more judicious or more suave than when they worked in silver. It is of the craftsmen, to tell the truth, more than of the artist in the ordinary acceptation of the term that you think in the American Wing. American painting has its Strong Men of the Wild West REMINISCENCES AND REFLECTIONS ON THE LAW AND TWO FLAGS BY JOHN HAYS HAMMOND BUNDANCE of gold and cattle and superabundance of "bad men" were not the only colorful lures of the old days of our West, from '49 on down into the '80s. Those fruitful times brought forth epic marshals and sheriffs, and that hearty type of heroic good women whose lives are an imperishable pattern in the fading tapestry of frontiers. Northward across the border, Mr. Kipling's Sergeant Precisely and his fellows of the Canadian Mounted wrought their lonely sagas of the snows. But the era of certified courts and organized police was slow and late in reaching our own Far West, and in the interim the decenter citizenry were forced to form vigilance committees again and again, and to use the immediate noose. But when, here and there and finally everywhere, communities did become legally organized, many of the "killers" of yesterday were employed as the peace officers of the new day. Inevitably some of them did not put off their "badness" in putting on their badge, but that condition far from prevailed. Most of the gunmen chosen to ride herd on these mixed and turbulent populaces bore the name of having, theretofore, shot their man only when forced to. No weak characters, no inexperienced or vacillating persons could have run those mining-camps and cow towns a day. It is very unlikely that they could have kept their office a week. And despite the fact that the tenure of office of such officials as sheriffs in many parts of the West was very short, as many fell victims of desperate bandits, the offices were coveted by many aspirants for the dead sheriffs' shoes. The American is, and ever has been, the individual fighter par excellence. These "Wild West" settlements were made up for the most part of individual fighters, the good, the not-so-bad, and the "bad." And they inhaled an exhilarant outdoor life. Only strong men can handle strong men, anyway, no matter what the surroundings. Too often, at that, the handling left dead men in the street, and from some of them badges had to be unpinned. Sidney Smith puts it rather well: "With a number of little, independent hordes, civilization is impossible. They must have a common interest before there can be peace; and be directed by one will before there can be order." There was "Wild Bill" Hickok. As scout and spy on the Union side in the Civil War he had made a record few men have equalled. As a sharpshooter it is doubtful whether he ever was excelled. Like thousands of others, the war over, he went seeking his fortune in the West. He never accumulated anything to mention. Quiet, unoffending, he was repeatedly forced to take life, by the law of that day that each man's life and belongings were his to have and to hold if he could, and as a killer his name stands above those of all the other gunmen the West develoned At tha |