"Oh," says some one, "It isn't the grosser pleasures I covet, but it is the gratification of an artistic and intellectual taste." Why, my brother, you have the original from which these pictures are copied.

What is a sunset on a wall compared with a sunset hung in hoops of fire in the heavens? What is a cascade silent on a canvas compared with a cascade that makes the mountain tremble, its spray ascending like the departing spirit of the water slain on the rocks? Oh, there is a great deal of hollow affectation about a fondness for pictures on the part of those who never appreciate the original from which the pictures are taken. As though a parent should have no regard for a child, but go into ecstasies over its photograph. Bless the Lord today, O man! O woman! that though you may be shut out from the works of a Church, a Bierstadt, a Rubens, and a Raphael, you still have free access to a gallery grander than the Louvre or the Luxemburg or the Vatican - the royal gallery of the noonday heavens the King's gallery of the midnight sky."

T.DeWitt Talmagae - Photo by Oscar Vall Gallen