creative faculty of production. Every human being is potentially an artist, and persons of talent and genius are often picked up in unlikely homes. The history of genius often conducts us to obscure places, and causes us to stoop to enter lowly doors, where we journey to pay our debt of admiring gratitude to the masters of art.

Music is the art of the people and the natural language of religion. In one Settlement among the poor, when piano classes were announced, forty children appeared for the first lesson. Musical appreciation and interpretation are promoted by concerts and lectures. Taste is formed by hearing good music, and having articulate commentaries on its spiritual significance. The chorus joins the genial factor of fellowship with the somewhat austere pleasures of pure art.

It has been found that working people will enjoy strong and noble music. Programmes of successful concerts, which attracted and held the attention of uneducated people, children and adults, contain the names of the greatest composers. Sensational enjoyment is not the end to be sought, but worthy ideals should be symbolized. The works of J. S. Bach have been received with genuine enjoyment. An evening was given to hearing the story of the Niebelungen Ring, with illustrations from the Walkuere. A folk-song programme gave them Russian music, Irish songs, negro melodies. At Christmas a great hall is filled to hear Gounod's "Nazareth" and the "Holy Night," with solo and chorus. The children sing carols, and the

magic lantern tells the wondrous story in a series of classic pictures. Such efforts raise music above mere entertainment, and make it minister to ideals, social sympathy and sustaining hope.

The discovery and development of musical faculty come with class work and instruction in instrumental and vocal music. Private and class lessons are given in piano, voice, violin, mandolin. The writer heard with exquisite pleasure a fine tenor at a meeting of working people, and found upon inquiry that the voice belonged to a young man whose mother sold slate pencils and candy at the little shop opposite the school-house. Is it not a pity, a social loss, that chill penury should freeze the genial current of such souls? Can society afford to choke back flowers that blush unseen in city deserts?

PICTURES.-Here is a city district where more than a hundred thousand people reside, and they have never, in twenty years, shown the slightest sign of care for engravings or paintings. No reputable merchant of fine prints has thought of wasting time in a canvass of this district. Most people "in society" have imagined, if they took one moment from selfish pleasures to give it a thought, that these hard-worked people are without pictures because they care nothing for beauty and have no nerves or mind for what is lovely. But this judgment is superficial and built on narrow information. An occasional charity visitor in these remote regions has discovered pathetic attempts at decoration. A gaudy chromo, stripped from a baking-powder box

or saved from the Christmas edition of a penny newspaper, had been pinned, unframed, to the wall paper. Residents of the Settlement became aware of these suppressed yearnings for beauty. Coming nearer to the people they learn of aspirations of which the high world of commerce and fashion does not dream. They persuade kind possessors of good pictures to lend them for an exhibition so near to the people that they can reach the place without car fare. Invitations are sent out to the inhabitants of the "slums." They pour forth from these huge caravansaries and from humble cottages by the. thousand to rest their souls and gather delightful images of the enchanted land of art. Many times this experiment has been tried with success.

Another graceful work of love adorned is that of lending photographs and prints in the homes of the poor. Once in a few months these pictures are exchanged for others, and the collection travels about until the entire group has tasted of their fine quality. Women who belong to the Settlement clubs thus become missionaries of perfection, and they feel themselves to be sisters of the mighty masters. Art is made truly "at home," and the home itself is transfigured; it becomes a shrine of the muses. It was from the Hull House that the movement sprang which promises to carry fine works into our school rooms. Miss Starr was the founder of the Society of Art in Schools and already important progress has rewarded the enterprise.

E. Sociability.-The Settlement seeks to cultivate the spirit of friendship because it is itself

an element of welfare and happiness, and because it furnishes a social atmosphere or climate in which all other good plants flourish and bear fruit. Social classes may be necessary. In the process of evolution, up to date, human beings of all degrees of personal power and all varieties of taste have been produced. Persons of similar disposition, who desire the same things and have the same resources naturally come together. Men of wealth select the choice building sites and let the poor take what is left. Such classification, satisfaction and localization it may not be possible to prevent. Parents desire to protect their children from the influence of coarseness, dirt and ignorance. They wish to promote marriage of their sons and daughters with those who have attained similar position and advantages. "Do not marry for money, but go where money is."

It is useless to quarrel with a force which is so old and so strong. But we cannot fail to recognize a danger which goes to the roots of our civilization. Social classes are held apart by social hates. Enmity is born of isolation. Our cities are also divided by differences of race and language. Religion itself, which ought to hold up the ideal of human unity, being manifested in clashing creeds, competing ecclesiasticisms and proselyting campaigns, is itself perverted into an instrument of hostility and division.

Social classes exist among the poor as well as elsewhere. There are many curious principles of stratification. The mother of a girl who worked

in a tobacco factory was ashamed to tell her neighbors and her pastor where the child spent her days, and gave out that she was a "saleslady" down town. The mother excused herself for the lie by saying that the children of the neighborhood would not speak to the daughter if they knew that she earned her ribbons at a tobacco bench. Dr. Moore ("A Day at Hull House") gives a glimpse of the fact in her story of a visitor. When the coffee house was opened, with its stained rafters, its fine photographs, and its row of blue china mugs, it had a reflective visit from one of its neighbors. He looked it over thoroughly and without prejudice, and said decisively : 'Yez kin hev de shovel gang or yez kin hev de office gang, but yez can't hev 'em both in the same room at the same toime.' Time has shown the exactness of the statement. Its clientele, increasing with its increasing efficiency, have selected themselves, and it is not the man in overalls who is the constant visitor, but the teacher, the clerk, and the smaller employer of the region. The laboring man sends his children for bread and soup and prepared food, but seldom comes himself, however well within his means the fare may be."

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The cultivation of friendship is more than a sentimental crusade for an empty sepulchre; it is required by the conditions of national and municipal health; by the necessities of a free and representative republic. He who fans the flames of class hate is a public enemy; he who fosters genuine sociability and honest understanding through personal ac quaintance performs a patriotic service. This