still worn,
the sword at his side; no one even faintly remembering the days of
youth and longing and sweet unrest, whose heart does not respond to
the mere mention of the miniature. The old family portraits, in their
heavy frames of gilt, are very precious; even the hideous crayons must
not be hidden in the garret, although we may wish they never had been
drawn; and in the ancient baronial homes of England are portrait
galleries of which the owners are justly proud.

But these are works treasured largely because of inherited arrogance.
At best they are a part of the furnishing, at times almost a part of
the very architecture. How different the miniature! Whereas the family
portrait is for show, here we have that which proverbially in secret
has been cherished. Quickly it has been thrust next a fair,
lace-covered and fright-panting bosom; it has been the sole souvenir
of a stolen happiness, an almost voice-gifted reminder of dear, dead
days of the long ago; it was the pledge of his return given in the
hasty or hard-fought flight of the daring youth whose image it is; or
perhaps it bears the lady's face, and has been found on the breast of
a warrior slain in battle; or, dearer than holy relic, was still
caressed by the poet troubadour, even though he knew his mistress long
ago proved faithless. More than one queen, for reasons of state,
placed at the side of a mighty king, has gazed each night in hopeless
adoration at the miniature of some one far from the throne, yet who,
supreme and alone, reigned in her heart.

No token of love permitted by Venus has been the recipient of half the
secret kisses the miniature may boast; none has so frequently been
washed in tears. Almost, in fact, the tiny bit of color set in bijou
jewels might be hidden by a single pressure of the lips, and one tear
would be to it a bath of beauty. Indeed, its very name reveals it as
the love token, for it comes to us from a certain word of French
having in English the most velvet sounding and most endearing meaning
in our somewhat limited language of passion.

Miniatures, to be sure, are the love tokens of comparative
maturity--and, unfortunately, of comparative prosperity. Professor
Sanford Bell, fellow in Clark University, who has the somewhat dubious
honor of being the pioneer in the scientific treatment of the emotion
of love between the sexes--I dislike that line intensely, but, really,
I see no way out of it--has discovered that "as early as