figures are no mere conventional allegories, they are true creations. To their creator the unseen was as real as the seen nay, it was more so. That Shaw was riding to his death at the command of duty was the only thing that made Shaw memorable. That Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty - Victory and Peace in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure entirely original and astonishingly living; a person as truly as Shaw or Sherman themselves. He could not have left them out. It were better to give up the work entirely than to do it otherwise than as he saw it.

I have described and discussed but a few of the many works of this great artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms. Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be studied by every one. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate justly the greatness of an object that is too near to us—it is only as it recedes into the distance that the mountain visibly overtops its neighboring hills. It is difficult to understand that this man so lately familiar to us, moving among us as one of ourselves, is of the company of the immortals. Yet I believe, as we make this study of his works, as we yield ourselves to the graciousness of his charm or are exalted by the sweep of his imagination, we shall come to feel an assured conviction that Augustus Saint-Gaudens was not merely the most accomplished artist of America, not merely one of the foremost sculptors of his time, we shall feel that he is one of those great, creative

minds, transcending time and place, not of America or of to-day, but of the world and forever.

Where, among such minds, he will take his rank we need not ask. It is enough that he is among them. Such an artist is assuredly a benefactor of his country, and it is eminently fitting that his gift to us should be acknowledged by such tribute as we can pay him. By his works in other lands and by his worldwide fame he sheds a glory upon the name of America, helping to convince the world that here also are those who occupy themselves with the things of the spirit, that here also are other capabilities than those of industrial energy and material success. In his many minor works he has endowed us with an inexhaustible heritage of beauty - beauty which is "about the best thing God invents." He is the educator of our taste, and of more than our taste of our sentiment and our emotions. In his great monuments he has not only given us fitting presentments of our national heroes; he has expressed, and in expressing elevated, our loftiest ideals; he has expressed, and in expressing deepened, our profoundest feelings. He has become the voice of all that is best in the American people, and his works are incentives to patriotism and lessons in devotion to duty.

But the great and true artist is more than a benefactor of his country, he is a benefactor of the human race. The body of Saint-Gaudens is ashes; but his mind, his spirit, his character, have taken on enduring forms and are become a part of the inheritance of mankind. And if, in the lapse of ages, his very name should be forgotten as are the names of many great artists who have gone before him yet his work will remain; and while any fragment of it is decipherable the world will be the richer in that he lived.

ELECTRA, in her excitement, found herself unable to stay upstairs at her accustomed tasks. She had to know what grandmother thought of this ill-bred woman. But speeding down, she saw grandmother in the garden paths with Billy Stark. There they walked intimately arm-in-arm, and grandmother talked. There was something eager in the pose of her head. Evidently what she had heard quite pleased her, if only because it was some new thing. And there was Peter at the door. Instantly the light sprang renewed into Electra's eyes. Peter would do still better than grandmother to confirm her triumph, though at the moment even she charged herself to be lofty in her judgments and temperate in expressing them. Peter did not look at all like one who had himself heard unlovely news. His face glowed. There were points of light in his dark eyes. Rose had left them there, and Electra, with the sick certainty of the jealous, knew it. They went silently into the library, Peter holding, as well as he might, the lax hand hanging at her side. In the morning light of the room, they faced each other, and she asked her question, the one that, unbidden, came leaping to her lips.

"Did you meet her?"

her, it was so savage. Even in the haste of the moment, she had time for a passing surprise that she could be so moved by Peter. He was looking at her with innocent perplexity.

"Rose?" he said. "Nothing. I told her I was coming here and she – He paused, for he was on the point of adding, "She sent me." Peter could see how ill-judged that would be.

Electra, her proud glance on him, was considering, balancing probabilities. With his artist's eye he saw how handsome she was, how like, in the outer woman, to his imperial lady. Such spirit in her could only, it seemed, be spent for noble ends.

"Has she told you?" asked Electra, and there was something, he saw, beyond what he suspected. Her voice rang out against her will: "No, she has n't. She means, for some reason, not to tell you. But she has had to tell me."

Peter was staring at her.

"Has something happened to her?" he asked quickly. "I must know."

That mysterious rage she was so unwilling to recognize in herself got possession of her again.

"It means a great deal to you," she breathed.

"Of course it does," said Peter honestly. "Don't keep me dangling, Electra.” Electra's mouth seemed to harden be

"Yes," he said, and then swept even Rose aside as deflecting him from his purpose. "Electra, I have decided to go

back to France."

Immediately she thought she saw why. Rose was going and he had to follow. "What did she tell you?" she cried sharply. The pang that came astonished

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flaming spirit in her, lest it consume too much. "If there is anything she wants me to know, she will tell me."

"My instinct was right," said Electra, now with equal steadiness. "She was not his wife. Tom never married her."

Peter was tired of that issue. His controlled manner showed it.

"I know what you think about that, Electra," he said. "You see we don't agree. We must n't talk about it.”

Electra answered him with a gracious certainty.

"That was what she told me, Peter. She told grandmother, too. For some reason she has abandoned her deception. She has a reason for ending it. That was what she said. Tom never married her."

Peter's face was blazing, the indignant blood in it, the light darting from his eyes. He straightened. His hands clenched. His voice was thick with anger. "Tom never married her ?" "That was what she told us." "The damned scoundrel!"

Electra had been regarding him in serene certainty of her own position and her ability to hold it. But human nature flashed out in her, the loyalty of blood.

"Are you speaking of my brother?" she demanded.

"I am speaking of your precious brother. And I might have known it." Ire, gathering in him, suffused his face anew. "I might have known Tom Fulton would do the dastardly trick in any given situation. Of course he never married her."

"You don't seem to think of her," she reminded him, under her breath.

"Not think of her! What else am I thinking of? Poor child! poor child!

Electra was always having to feel alone in the world. Art left her desolate when other people sang and painted and she could only praise. Love and the fierce loyalty she coveted were always failing her and lavishing themselves elsewhere. She had one momentary impulse to speak for herself.

"Do you wonder now," she said, "that I would n't accept her?"

"Not accept her, when she had been hurt? Good God, Electra! how monstrous it is. You, a delicate woman, fully believed he had wronged another woman as lovely as yourself, and yet the only impression it made on you was that you could not accept her."

Electra resisted the impulse to turn away or put her hands to her face; the tears were coming. She held herself rigid for a moment, choking down the shuddering of her nerves, lest her lips quiver and betray her.

"No, no! She is beautiful, but that's not it. I can't theorize about it, Electra, only the whole thing seems to me monstrous. That he should wrong her! That he should be able to make her care about him in the first place-a fellow like him --just because he was handsome as the devil and had the tongue of angels - but that he should wrong her, that she should come over here expecting kindness—" It was Peter who put a hand before his eyes, not because there were tears there, but as if to shut her out from a knowledge of his too candid self. But in an instant he was looking at her again, not in anger, but sorrowfully.

"Isn't it strange?" she exclaimed, almost to herself.

"What, Electra ? "

"Strange to think what power a woman has a woman of that stamp." "Don't, Electra. You must n't classify her. You can't."

She was considering it with a real curiosity.

"You don't blame her at all," she said.

"You know Tom did wrong. You don't think she did."

"Electra," he said gently, "we can't go back to that. It's over and done with. Besides, it is between those two. It is n't our business."

"You could blame Tom!" She clung to that. He saw she would not release her hold.

"Electra!" He put out his hands and took her unwilling ones. Then he gazed at her sweetly and seriously; and when Peter was in gentle earnest he did look very good. "Electra, can't you see what she is ?"

His appealingness had for the instant soothed that angry devil in her. She wrenched her hands free, with the one hoarse cry instinct with mental pain,

"You are in love with her!"

Peter stepped back a pace. His face paled. He could not answer. Electra felt the rush of an emotion stronger than herself. It swept her on, her poise forgotten, her rules of life snapping all about her.

"I have always known it, from the first day you spoke of her. She has bewitched you. Perhaps this is what she really came for to separate us. Well, she has done it."

her head slightly, still in a designed re

moteness.

"I shall go to France," she said, "later. But I shall never marry you. That is over. As you said of something else, it is over and done with."

She glanced toward the door, but he kept his place. Peter was conscious that of all the things he ought to feel, he could not summon one. It did not seem exactly the woman he had loved who was dismissing him. This was a handsome and unfriendly stranger, and in the bottom of his heart surged a sweet new feeling that was like hope and pain.

"Let us not talk any more," she was saying, with that air of extreme courtesy which still invited him to go.

Peter walked slowly to the door. "I am wondering" he hesitated. "Why do you say that, Electra? Why do you tell me I am in love with her?"

He looked as shy as a girl. It struck her full in the mind that even in this interview she had no part. She had refused a lover, and he was going away with his thoughts stirred by another

woman.

"I said so," she repeated clearly, "because it is true. You are in love with her. Good-by."

Peter turned to her with one of his quick movements and held out his hand. She did not take it.

"Won't you shake hands, Electra ?” he asked. "I should think we might be friends." Honest sorrow moved his voice. Now, at least, he was thinking of her only.

Electra meant to show no resentment, no pain. But she had to be true.

"I can't," she said, in a low tone. "Good-by."

And Peter, seeing the aversion in her face, not for him perhaps, but for the moment, got himself hastily out of the room and into the summer road. And there before he had walked three paces, Peter began to sing. He sang softly, not at all because melody was unfitted to the day, but as if what inspired it were