ssion of a
generous slice of the Van Bahr fortune; Toady revelling in the objects
of his desire; and, best of all, she lived to find that it is never
too late to make oneself useful, happy, and beloved.

PSYCHE'S ART

"Handsome is that handsome does."

I

Once upon a time there raged in a certain city one of those
fashionable epidemics which occasionally attack our youthful
population. It wasn't the music mania, nor gymnastic convulsions, nor
that wide-spread malady, croquet. Neither was it one of the new dances
which, like a tarantula-bite, set every one a twirling, nor stage
madness, nor yet that American lecturing influenza which yearly sweeps
over the land. No, it was a new disease called the Art fever, and it
attacked the young women of the community with great violence.

Nothing but time could cure it, and it ran its course to the dismay,
amusement, or edification of the beholders, for its victims did all
manner of queer things in their delirium. They begged potteries
for clay, drove Italian plaster-corkers out of their wits with
unexecutable orders got neuralgia and rheumatism sketching perched on
fences and trees like artistic hens, and caused a rise in the price of
bread, paper, and charcoal, by their ardor in crayoning. They covered
canvas with the expedition of scene-painters, had classes, lectures,
receptions, and exhibitions, made models of each other, and rendered
their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their
conversation ceased to be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they
prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French sauce, refraction of the
angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of
color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic
disorder was visible; some cast aside crinoline altogether, and
stalked about with a severe simplicity of outline worthy of Flaxman.
Others flushed themselves with scarlet, that no landscape which they
adorned should be without some touch of Turner's favorite tint. Some
were _blue_ in every sense of the word, and the heads of all were
adorned with classic braids, curls tied Hebe-wise, or hair dressed a
la hurricane.

It was found impossible to keep them safe at home, and, as the fever
grew, these harmless maniacs invaded the sacred retreats where artists
of the other sex did congregate, startling those anchorites with
visions of large-eyed damsels bearing portfolios in hands delicately
begrimed wit