do; but it serves for instance of the first requisite he
demands, which is freedom. "Let use take care of itself." "It will," he
says. "There is no beauty without freedom."

Nothing is too high for him, nothing too low or small. To speak more
truly, in his eyes there is no small, no low. From a philanthropy down to
a gown, one catholic necessity, one catholic principle; gowns can be
benefactions or injuries; philanthropies can be well or ill clad.

He has a ministry of co-workers,--men, women, and guileless little
children. Many of them serve him without knowing him by name. Some who
serve him best, who spread his creeds most widely, who teach them most
eloquently, die without dreaming that they have been missionaries to
Gentiles. Others there are who call him "Lord, Lord," build temples to him
and teach in them, who never know him. These are they who give their goods
to the poor, their bodies to be burned; but are each day ungracious,
unloving, hard, cruel to men and women about them. These are they also who
make bad statues, bad pictures, invent frightful fashions of things to be
worn, and make the houses and the rooms in which they live hideous with
unsightly adornments. The centuries fight such,--now with a Titian, a
Michel Angelo; now with a great philanthropist, who is also peaceable and
easy to be entreated; now with a Florence Nightingale, knowing no sect;
now with a little child by a roadside, holding up a marigold in the sun;
now with a sweet-faced old woman, dying gracefully in some almshouse. Who
has not heard voice from such apostles?

To-day my nearest, most eloquent apostle of beauty is a poor shoemaker,
who lives in the house where I lodge. How poor he must be I dare not even
try to understand. He has six children: the oldest not more than thirteen,
the third a deaf-mute, the baby puny and ill,--sure, I think (and hope),
to die soon.

They live in two rooms, on the ground-floor. His shop is the right-hand
corner of the front room; the rest is bedroom and sitting-room; behind are
the bedroom and kitchen. I have never seen so much as I might of their way
of living; for I stand before his window with more reverent fear of
intruding by a look than I should have at the door of a king's chamber. A
narrow rough ledge added to the window-sill is his bench. Behind this he
sits from six in the morning till seven at night, bent over, sewing slowly
and painfully on the coarsest shoes. His face looks old enough for