light of that other time, when men
and women now grandfathers and grandmothers were young and handsome
boys and girls, seeking each other out in the fashion of polite beaus
and belles, a period that will never come again, it is certain. Mrs.
Cowdery need not be alarmed that modern painters wish to offer plain
homage to her fresh and engaging talents. It is an object lesson, if
such is necessary, to all men and women past fifty: that there is
still something for each of them to do in a creative way; and I can
think of no more engaging way for them than to recite the romantic
history of their youthful longings and realizations to a world that
has little time for making history so romantically inoffensive.

Mrs. Cowdery may be complimented therefore that she has followed her
professional daughter's advice to take up painting as a pastime, and
she has already shown in these brief four years, with all the
intermissions that are natural to any ordinary life, that she is a
fine type of amateur artist with all the world of rediscovery at her
disposal. She will be hampered in no way with the banalities of
instruction offered her by the assuming ones. She is beyond the need
of anything but self-invention, and this will be her own unique and
satisfying pleasure. It is in no way amiss, then, to congratulate
Mrs. Cowdery upon her new and vital artistic career. That she will
have further success is proven by the few pictures already created by
her. They show the unmistakable signs of taste and artistic
comprehension as applied to her own spiritual vision. No intervention
will be of any avail, save perhaps the permissible intervention of
praise and congratulations.

Incidentally, I would recommend to those artists who are long since
jaded with repetition and success, and there are many of them, to
refresh their eyes and their senses with the work of these outwardly
unassuming but thoroughly convincing amateurs, like Henri Rousseau,
Mrs. Cowdery and the many others whose names do not appear on their
handsome works of art. There is such freshness of vision and true art
experience contained in them. They rely upon the imagination entirely
for their revelations, and there is always present in these
unprofessional works of art acute observation of fact and fine gifts
for true fancy. These amateurs are never troubled with the "how" of
mediocre painting; neither are they troubled with the wiles of the
outer world. They remain always charmi