128 in a light-brown tint relieved by white lights. The effect invests the towering business buildings of New York with an appeal to the imagination that is distinctly and delightfully personal in its presentation. Lewis has been particularly identified with the art of the bookplate, to the designing and engraving of which W. F. Hopson has brought the finished mastery of the practiced engraver on both wood and copper. Hopson exhibits that combination of variety in treatment with dignity and restraint in expression which produces the happiest results in these marks of bibliophilic proprietorship. In contrast to this art of the small there is the opposite, as to size, in the field of the print, the poster. It was once, before the more ambitious efforts of lithography, wholly the province of the wood-cutter, though a product, then, of rough and ready effects. The materials used may have seemed unpromising: wood-carver's tools ground down. to the length of a boxwood-graver, the blade being grooved to prevent splitting in the wood, and very soft basswood, quite free from knots. Yet James Britton employed them with bold and broad effect in several vigorously drawn posters for the Connecticut League of Art Students, for a studio concert, etc. They bring us back to the old truth, that the artist who really has something to say will find his own way of saying it, and will win the medium to his style. All this is not so very much, quantitatively. Its significance lies in the effort to use this oldest of the reproductive media as a painterart. Yet it is simply one of the forms of graphic art which offer by-paths for incursions which are not undertaken too often by American artists. The present gratifying revival of painter-etching in the United States is expressed almost entirely in the activity of those who make a specialty of etching; the painter who etches occasionally is rare indeed. Lithography is almost entirely neglected. Abroad in France, England, Germany, and Austriaone finds much more active utilization of such possibilities on the part of artists, who turn from canvas or modelling clay to the etching plate, the lithographic stone, or the wood block (not to speak of forms of applied art such as interior decoration or the designing of furniture -or advertisements), bringing the personal note which forms the value and attraction of such efforts to clothe the objects of vision in various artistic forms. Such occasional changes of activity must provide a veritable safetyvalve, an opportunity for the "other view," a chance of escape from the "usual thing" when that threatens to become too much a matter FRANK WEITENKAMPF. of manner, a road of return to the artist's own self. A bit of Old New York. Drawn and engraved by R. Ruzicka. Drawn by Fred Pegram. "THE OLD KING SAW HIM TOO, AND REINED UP AND CALLED SECURE THAT FELLOW!"' -"The Queens of Arcady," page 221. T CAPTAIN BLAISE By James B. Connolly ILLUSTRATIONS BY N. C. WYETH 'WO years now since Mr. Villard had come home, and not a soul on the plantation but believed that at last the new master had given up his mysterious voyages and was home to stay. But one day I had business in Savannah, and while there, hearing that the bark Nereid was in from the West African coast, I strolled down to the river front; and presently I was approached and addressed by the master of the Nereid, a seaman-like and rather shrewd-looking man who had a message for Mr. Villard, he said from the West Coast. "I am charged to ask him to pass the word to Captain Blaise," said the Nereid's master, "that an old friend of his lies low of fever into Momba. Captain Blaise would know who. We were putting out of Momba lagoon and I was standing by the rail, when a nigger came paddling up and whis VOL. L.-II pered it. Like a breath of night air it was. 'Tell Marster Carpt'n that Ubbo bring the word,' said the nigger, and like another breath of wind he passed on. No more than that. A short, very stout, and very black nigger. And I was to pass the word to Mr. Villard, a gentleman of estate near Savannah, Ga., and if you, sir, will attend to that, my part's done." After my dinner in town was through with, I rode hard; but it was late night by the time I reached the manor-house. I found him sitting out under the moon, smoking a cheroot as usual, and he continued to smoke immovably for some minutes after I had delivered the message; but by and by he stood up and took to pacing the veranda, and presently, after his fashion, to speak his thoughts aloud. "A hundred thousand acres and a thousand slaves, good, bad, and indifferentCopyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. surely a man does owe a little something to his manorial duties. At least, so all my highly respectable and well-established neighbors tell me. What do you say, Guy?" "I never gave much thought to the matter, sir." "No? Well, doubtless you will-some day. But d'y' remember Kingston Harbor, where the black boys dive through the green waters for the silver sixpenny pieces, and Kingston port, where the white roads and the white walls throw back the tropic sun so that it seems twice as hot as it really is-Kingston, Guy-in Jamaica, where the sun sets like a blood-orange salad in a purple dish? D'y' remember, Guy, and the day we were lying into Kingston in the Bess and the word came that my uncle was dead Aye, you do; but don't you remember how he used to rail against me? To be sure you were too young. And yet a good old uncle, who gave me never a mild word in his life but left me his all at death." "And why shouldn't he, sir?" "Why not? Aye, that is so. Why not? And yet he could have left it to anybodyto you, say." "Why to me? Who am I?" "What? Who are you? He ceased his pacing. "That is so, Guy-who are you? You with the strange, quick blood writ so plain in your countenance that there "Isn't it good blood, sir?” "Aye, Guy, be sure it is good blood. But often have I thought how he would have stormed if-" He gazed curiously "Aye, if—but no matter." He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond. The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when it was in full flood, as now, it brought the smell of the sea strongly with it. "No matter that now, Guy. A good old soul, my uncle, d' y' see; but the blood was everything to him. And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it: that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit. 'I'll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate. His own words. So this fair "I've waited long for you to tell me even that. Won't you tell me more, sir?" "Enough for now. But whatever my uncle thought or wished, here, Guy, is an estate to your hand to enjoy. What d'y' say, eh, to the life of a Southern gentleman on his plantation? A hundred thousand acres, a thousand slaves, a stable of the horses you love so, upland and river bottom to hunt, dancing, riding, balls, the city in winter. Is not that something better than the hard, uncertain sea, Guy?" He had paused for my answer, but I made none. He was standing motionless, except for the backward toss of his head and the deep inhalation, three or four times, of the briny air from the flooding river. There was disappointment in his voice when he took up the talk again. "Oh, Guy, between us two what a difference! I was born ashore, you at sea, and yet 'It's you for the back of a charging barb, In a lower voice he repeated the couplet, and was plainly vastly pleased with it. "Faith, and I wonder is that my own, or something I read somewhere. Something of the lilt of a Scotch strathspey to 't, shouldn't you say? You know more of such things. What d' y' say-shall I claim that for my own, Guy?" "You do, sir, and it's not Homer, nor Dante, nor Keats who will rise up to accuse you of plagiarism." "Bah! You would no more allow me the merit of a poetic vein than"Poetry, sir?" "Poetry why not?" and suddenly bending sidewise and forward, he essayed to obtain a fuller view of my face. And it is true that I was thinking of anything but poetry. His face darkened as he gazed. "A hundred estates and plantations were nothing to me against-"he burst out passionately, |