rom a farm-house so long as it is fluffy enough to be indistinct.

These defects, sympathies, tendencies, whatever one may call them,
only prove the more conclusively that there are many varying standards
set up by many minds. That which can easily be proved in addition is
that many a false standard owes its origin as often to a question of
bad digestion as of bad taste. They also show us that no one man or
set of men can rightfully lay claim to holding the one key which
unlocks the mysteries of nature, while insisting that the rules
governing their use of that key _must_ be adhered to by the rest of
the world.

There are, however, certain laws which control every pictured
expression of nature and to which every eye and hand must submit if
even a semblance of expression is to be sought for. One of them is
truth. In this all schools concur, each one demanding the truth, or at
least enough of it to placate their consciences when they add to it a
sufficient number of lies of their own manufacture to make the subject
interesting to their special line of constituents. Among these I do
not class the lunatics who are to-day wandering loose outside of
charitable asylums especially designed for disordered and impaired
intellects, and whose frothings I saw at the last Autumn Salon.

But to our text once more, taking up the first requirement; namely,
selection.

By selection I mean the "cutting out entire" from the great panorama
spread out before you just that portion which appeals to you and which
you want to have appeal to your fellow men.

Speaking for myself, I have always held that the most perfect
reproductions of nature are those which can be _selected_ any day,
under any condition of light, direct from the several objects
themselves, without arrangement and fore-shortenings or twistings to
the right and to the left. Nothing, in fact, seems to me so
astounding as that any human mind could for an instant suppose that it
can improve on the work of the Almighty.

If it is a street, and if you wish to express its perspective, and the
bit of blue sky beyond, with a burst of sunlight illumining the
corner, the figures crowded against the light, forming a mass in
themselves, and it interests you at a glance, sit down and study it
long enough to find out what feature of the landscape impressed you at
_first sight_. If, as you look, the first impression becomes weakened,
perhaps it is because the immediate foreground, which