[Illustration: "Blow, Wind Blow"

PERKINS' PICTURES]

Nevertheless, it is a matter of considerable difficulty still to
find colored pictures which are inexpensive and yet really good. The
Detaille prints, while not yet cheap, are not expensive either, and
are excellent for this purpose; but the insipid little pictures of
fairies, flowers, and birds may be really harmful, as helping to form
in the young child's mind too low an ideal of beauty--of cultivating
in him what someone has called "the lust of the eye."

[Sidenote: Plastic Art]

What holds true of the pictorial art holds equally true of the plastic
art. As Prof. Veblin of the University of Chicago has scathingly
declared, our ideals of the beautiful are so mingled with worship of
expense that few of us can see the genuine beauty in any object apart
from its expensiveness. For this reason as well as, perhaps, because
of a remnant of barbarism in us, we love gold and glitter, and a great
deal of elaboration in our vases, and are far from being over-critical
of any piece of statuary which costs a respectable sum.

[Illustration: RELIEF MEDALLION

By Andrea della Robbia, in Foundling Hospital, Florence.]

A certain appreciation, however, of the real value of a good
plaster-cast has been gaining among us of late years, and many public
schools, especially in the large cities, have been establishing
standards of good taste in this respect. Good casts and bas-relief,
decorate their halls and class-rooms. There are few homes that cannot
afford to follow their example. But in buying these things be not
misled by sales and advertised bargains. It is more than seldom that
the placques, casts, and vases thus obtained are such as could have
any valuable influence whatever upon the young lives with which they
are brought in contact. Meretricious and showy ornaments, designed to
look as if they cost more than they really do, have no business in the
sincere home where the children are being sincerely educated.

[Sidenote: Music]

The same general laws apply to music. No art has a greater and more
insinuating influence. The very songs with which the mother sings the
baby to sleep have an occult influence which is later revealed and
made plain. Such songs, then, should be simple. They may be nothing
but improvisations, the mother's mind and heart making music, but
they should not be melodramatic songs of the music-hall order. No such
mawkish sentimentalism as that show