th
intense interest into the basket, delighted with the opportunity to feed
the pretty creatures. The others are talking with the young merchant,--a
school-boy with book satchel held behind him, and an older girl holding
a curly-haired child on her back. The pure, gentle face of the young
girl is one not to be easily forgotten, and which reappears on other
canvases of the artist. The affectionate care of this older sister for
the child she carries is one of many instances in which the same trait
is shown in Meyer's pictures, and is eminently characteristic of the
Germans.

The earnest piety in which the children of these simple-hearted people
are reared is beautifully expressed in the companion pictures, Morning
Prayer and Evening Prayer, as well as in one called Simple Devotion,
where a little girl offers a bouquet to the Virgin of a wayside shrine.

In whatever mood the children are portrayed, they are always entirely
unconscious of observers, never posing for the artist, but caught
unawares on his canvas, in the midst of their pursuits. In this way they
always make pictures with "stories" in them, of just the kind to delight
the heart of a child.

Such art carries a beautiful and enduring lesson, whether the scenes it
represents are German or French, English or American. In these visions
of the simple and joyous life of the country, we are brought, as it
were, face to face with Nature, to enjoy her sweetest and most
beneficent influence.

IV.

THE CHILD-LIFE OF THE STREETS.

When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;
When I could not sleep for cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!
LOWELL.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHILD-LIFE OF THE STREETS.

Ragged, dirty, and unkempt; untrained in all the pretty graces of
refinement; deprived of all the fostering care of the home, how can the
children of the street afford the artist any subjects for his canvas?
Because, in spite of deprivation and poverty, they possess the
imperishable treasure of a happy heart; and happiness is the true secret
of the beauty of childhood. The child's buoyant vitality is proof
against any disadvantages in his external surroundings; for his horizon
is limited to the present. Yesterday's hunger is quickly forgotten in
to-day's pl