e stimulus which impelled him to
act, the purpose for which he toiled, and the end which he
accomplished--is shelter.

A man of special sensitiveness to the appeal of color and form finds
himself also in the open. He is weary with the way, which shows but
broken glimpses of the road. His spirit, heavy with the "burden of
the mystery," is torn by conflict and confusion. As he looks across
the stony places to the gnarled and weather-tortured trees beyond,
and up to the clouds piling black above him, there is revealed to him
a sudden harmony among the discords; an inner principle,
apprehended by his imagination, compels the fragments of the
seeming chaos into a regnant order. These natural forms become for
him the expression external to himself of the struggle of his own
spirit and its final resolution. The desire rises in him to express by
his own act the order he has newly perceived, the harmony of his
spirit with the spirit of nature. As life comes to him dominantly in
terms of color and form, it is with color and form that he works to
expression so as to satisfy his need. The design is already projected
in his imagination, and to realize concretely his ideal he draws upon
the material of nature about him. The picture which he paints is not
the purpose of his effort. The picture is but the means. His end is to
express the great new harmony in which his spirit finds shelter.

Both men, the traveler and the painter, are wayfarers. Both are
seeking shelter from stress and storm, and both construct their
means. In one case the product is more obviously and immediately
practical, and the informing purpose tends to become obscured in
the actual serviceableness of the result. The hut answers a need that
is primarily physical; the need in the other case is spiritual. But it is
a matter of degree. In essence and import the achievement of the two
men is the same. The originating impulse, a sense of need; the
processes involved, the combination of material elements to a
definite end; the result attained, shelter which answers the need,--they
are identical. Both men are artists. Both hut and picture are
works of art.

So art is not remote from common life after all. In its highest
manifestations art is life at its best; painting, sculpture, poetry, music
are the distillment and refinement of experience. Architecture and
the subsidiary arts of decoration adorn necessity and add delight to
use. But whatever the flower and final f