exhibition of art, where
picture after picture follows rapidly and the crowd expresses judgment by
applause, will not long be in doubt what pictures make the strongest
appeal. The "crowd" applauds three types; something recognized as
familiar, the "happy hit," especially of title, and, (not knowing why) all
pictures, without regard to subject, _which express unity._ The first two
classes are not a part of this argument, but of the last, the natural,
spontaneous attraction of the healthy mind by what is complete through
unity contains such reason as cannot be ignored. Subjects of equal or
greater interest which antagonize unity fall flat before this jury.

There is no opportunity more valuable to the amateur photographer than the
lantern slide exhibition, and the fact that even now no more than ten or
twelve per cent. of what is shown is pictorially good should provoke a
search for the remedy.

For the student, to fill the eye full of good compositions and to know why
good, is of equal value with the study of faulty composition to discover
why bad.

The challenge of compositions neither good nor bad to discover wherein
they could be improved is better practice than either.

This is the constant exercise of every artist, the ejection of the sand
grains from his easy running machinery.

Before photography became a fashion it was the writer's privilege to meet
a county physician who had cultivated for himself a critical picture
sense. The lines of his circuit lay among the pleasantest of pastoral
scenes. Stimulated by their beauty it became his habit, as he travelled,
to mark off the pictures of his route, to note where two ran together, to
decide what details were unnecessary, or where, by leaving the highway and
approaching or retiring he discovered new ones. After a time he bought a
Claude Lorraine glass. It was shortly after this purchase that I met him.
His enthusiasm was delightful. With this _framing of his views_ his
judgment grew sensitive and as he showed these mirrored pictures to
friends who rode with him he was most particular at just what point he
stopped his horse. The man for whom picture galleries were a rarity,
talked as intelligently upon the fundamental structure of pictures as most
artists.

"I buy the pictures of Mauve," remarked a clergyman in Paris, "because he
puts into them what I try to get into my sermons; simplicity,
suggestiveness and logical sequence."

CHAPTER XVI - C