to the dignity of Banker Brush, and the grandeur of Congressman Deering
who came to service regularly--but on foot, so intense was the spirit of
democracy among us.

Theoretically there were no social distinctions in Osage, but after all
a large house and a two seated carriage counted, and my mother's
visitors were never from the few pretentious homes of the town but from
the farms. However, I do not think she worried over her social position
and I know she welcomed callers from Dry Run and Burr Oak with cordial
hospitality. She was never envious or bitter.

In spite of my busy life, I read more than ever before, and everything I
saw or heard made a deep and lasting record on my mind. I recall with a
sense of gratitude a sermon by the preacher in the Methodist Church
which profoundly educated me. It was the first time I had ever heard the
power of art and the value of its mission to man insisted upon. What was
right and what was wrong had been pointed out to me, but things of
beauty were seldom mentioned.

With most eloquent gestures, with a face glowing with enthusiasm, the
young orator enumerated the beautiful phases of nature. He painted the
starry sky, the sunset clouds, and the purple hills in words of
prismatic hue and his rapturous eloquence held us rigid. "We have been
taught," he said in effect, "that beauty is a snare of the evil one;
that it is a lure to destroy, but I assert that God desires loveliness
and hates ugliness. He loves the shimmering of dawn, the silver light on
the lake and the purple and snow of every summer cloud. He honors bright
colors, for has he not set the rainbow in the heavens and made water to
reflect the moon? He prefers joy and pleasure to hate and despair. He is
not a God of pain, of darkness and ugliness, he is a God of beauty, of
delight, of consolation."

In some such strain he continued, and as his voice rose in fervent chant
and his words throbbed with poetry, the sunlight falling through the
window-pane gave out a more intense radiance, and over the faces of the
girls, a more entrancing color fell. He opened my eyes to a new world,
the world of art.

I recognized in this man not only a moving orator but a scholar and I
went out from that little church vaguely resolved to be a student also,
a student of the beautiful. My father was almost equally moved and we
all went again and again to hear our young evangel speak but never again
did he touch my heart. That one discourse