tes, my father had forty-five minutes and I had fifteen
minutes to close the debate.

As father talked I wondered how he ever got hold of so many facts. He
piled them up until my first address was swept away by the triumphs of
art. The only hope I had for the affirmative was in the closing
fifteen minutes. Fortunately for me, the judge was a bachelor and very
much in love with a golden-haired, accomplished young woman who lived
in a country home very near the schoolhouse, and was then in the
audience. In closing the debate I referred to father's address in a
complimentary manner, and then asked the judge to be seated in
imagination on a knoll nearby. On one side of that knoll I placed all
my father had claimed for art, withholding nothing. On the other side
was the home of this Blue Grass belle. I began a description of her
home and personality. I pictured "the orchard, the meadow, the deep
tangled wild-wood and every loved spot" the judge well knew. I
pictured the brook that ran through the meadow into the woodland and
on down the valley, singing as it ran,

"I wind about and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing;
Here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grey-ling."

When my time was half gone I felt I was gone too unless I could get a
little nearer the heart of the judge. Opening the door art had made to
shut in the flowers of a lovely family I brought out the golden-haired
girl.

Taking off the sun-bonnet of art, that the good-night kisses of the
sinking sun might enrich her rosy cheeks and golden tresses, I sent
her strolling down the winding walk hedged in by hawthorn and hyacinth
to the water's brink. Here I gave her a cushion of blue-grass, and
with the rising moon pouring its shimmering sheen upon the ripples at
her feet, I sent her voice floating away on the evening air singing:
"Roll on silver moon, guide the traveler on his way." Here the
audience cheered, the judge smiled and I felt encouraged.

With but two minutes left I had the shapely fingers of nature, take
out the hair-pins of art and the golden tresses fall about the snowy
neck of nature. Then came the untying of the shoe-strings of art; off
came the shoes and stockings of art, and the pretty feet of nature
were dipping in the limpid stream. I said, "Judge, the question is,
which is the more attractive, the works of nature or the works of art?
With my father's picture of steam engines, stage coaches, reapers,
binders, m