ENVIRONMENT

ENVIRONMENT

What a person intentionaly surounds themselves with is part of the character description.

What a man surrounds himself with, what he deliberately has about him, must tell not a little concerning his char¬acter. For in his office, his room, his home, a man will as far as possible have the things that interest him, the things that typify what he is living for.

Books, pictures, papers, magazines, ornaments, hangings, bric-a-brac, casts, collections, pets,— all are results of choice, and help to make known a man ’ s tastes and to tell the inner workings of his mind.

To find on the walls of an office photographs of sailboats, of birchbark canoes, of a great "war canoe," of strings of fish, of a prostrate stag, of a club house, of many parties of campers, while from one corner a gun peeps forth and from another a bundle of rods, and from over a door the antlered head of a big moose looks down,—to see all these things is to know without thought much of the character of the owner of the office. In like manner another en thusiast is known by his several cameras, his unnumbered blue-prints, platinotypes, albums, bromide prints, and photo graphic magazines and literature. So with the lover of athletics: his home is littered with foils, masks, boxing- gloves, punching-bags, dumb bells, baseball guides, exercising machines, golf sticks, and everything else of like nature that his purse is long enough to buy. The same holds true with the musician, the litterateur, the painter, the theologian, the inventor, the politician; each surrounds himself with the things he loves.

Of course one ’ s income will often not permit what the heart is hungering and thirsting to have. But a master passion will assert itself. An eminent scholar takes home to dine with him a famous foreigner. They sit down to potatoes, with salt, and a loaf of bread, the host explaining that in order to maintain his unrivaled library he is forced to forego all but the sternest necessities of life. It may be only a trifle, but a man will have about him whatever he can afford that satisfies the cravings of his soul. How well do I remember my friend ’ s enraptured expression when, in his bare room in a cheap part of London, he uncovered for me a picture, the work of one of the masters of the long ago. Many a meal he had done without in order that it might hang in his half-furnished room. In like manner do I re¬call the student friend, dependent upon his own resources, who came home from Europe with an uncut first edition of John Donne ’ s poems under his arm, a volume that had cost him thirty guineas in a London bookshop. He could not resist it; he wore his old clothes and came home second- cabin that he might own it. So do I remember the gentle¬man with whom I talked in the railway car. Our train had stopped so that we were just opposite a tumble-down house in the open country. I asked him how he would like to live in such a place. He replied:

"I would n ’ t live in such a place."

"But misfortune might compel you."

"No, sir; it could n ’ t. No circumstances could force me to live in such a place. I ’ d borrow a hammer and pick up nails enough to fix those tottering steps and to put that gate in order. I ’ d beg some morning-glory seed and cover that weather-beaten porch; I ’ d have some old-fashioned flowers

in that garden. I ’ d pick up those tin cans and broken bottles and untidy market baskets. No, sir; you could n ’ t keep me in any such place as that. I ’ d have some blossoms such as my mother had and some grass, if I could n ’ t have anything else. I spent my boyhood in a house that cost no more than that one, and my mother had very little money; but our house did n ’ t look like that."

In his own home are just the furnishings one would expect to find.

So universal a principle of course has not been over¬looked by the literary artist. Often he takes his readers into the homes of his men and women in order that he may thus make known the character of those men and women. An effective illustration may be quoted from "The Anti¬quary," by Sir Walter Scott:

It was some time before Lovel could, through the thick at¬mosphere, perceive in what sort of den his friend had constructed his retreat. It was a lofty room of middling size, obscurely lighted by high, narrow, latticed windows. One end was entirely occupied by book-shelves, greatly too limited in space for the number of volumes placed upon them, which were, therefore, drawn up in ranks of two or three files deep, while numberless others littered the floor and the tables, amid a chaos of maps, engravings, scraps of parchment, bundles of papers, pieces of old armor, swords, dirks, helmets, and Highland targets. Behind Mr. Oldbuck ’ s seat (which was an ancient leathern-covered easy chair, worn smooth by constant use), was a huge oaken cabinet decorated at each corner with Dutch cherubs, having their little duck-wings displayed, and great jolter-headed visages placed between them. The top of this cabinet was covered with busts and Roman lamps and pater, intermingled with one or two bronze figures. The walls of the apartment were partly clothed with grim old tapestry. . . . The rest of the room was panelled, or wainscoted, with black oak, against which hung two or three portraits in armor,. . . and as many in tie-wigs and laced coats. . . . A large old-fashioned oaken table was covered with a profusion of papers, parchments, books, nondescript trinkets and gewgaws, which seemed to have little to recommend them besides rust and the antiquity which it indicates. In the midst of this wreck of ancient books and uten¬sils,. . . sat a large black cat,. . . the tutelar demon of the apartment. The floor, as well as the table and chairs, was over¬flowed by the same. . . miscellaneous trumpery, where it would have been as impossible to find any individual article wanted, as to put it to any use when discovered.

Amid this medley it was no easy matter to find one ’ s way to a chair without stumbling over a prostrate folio, or the still more awkward mischance of overturning some piece of Roman or ancient British pottery. And, when the chair was attained, it had to be disencumbered, with a careful hand, of engravings. . . and of antique spurs and buckles.

And the happy father, keeping his hat on his head and carrying his little girl, showed me all over his establishment—the dining- room brightened by light bits of faience, the study abounding in books, with its window opening out on the green turf, so that a puff of wind had strewn with rose-leaves the printer ’ s proofs which were scattered on the table.—Francois ''Coppee in "A Vol¬untary Death." ''1

In furtherance of my design [ to achieve a novel ], and as if to leave me no pretext for not fulfilling it, there was in the rear of the house the most delightful little nook of a study that ever afforded its snug seclusion to a scholar. It was here that Emersonwrote " Nature "; for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and Paphian sunset and moon¬rise from the summit of our eastern hill. When I first saw the room, its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan minis¬ters that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or at least like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with the Devil that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages. They had all vanished now; a cheerful coat of paint and golden-tinted paper-hangings lighted up the small apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree that swept against the overhanging eaves attempered the cheery western sunshine. In place of the grim prints there was the sweet and lovely head of one of Raphael ’ s Madonnas, and two pleasant little pictures of the Lake of Como. The only other decorations were a purple vase of flowers, always fresh, and a bronze one containing graceful ferns. My books (few, and by no means choice; for they were chiefly such waifs as chance had thrown in my way) stood in order about the room, seldom to be disturbed.—Nathaniel Haw 

thorne in "Mosses from an Old Manse."

It is a cozy little den, and rests you to sit in it. The walls are lined with shelves, laden with books. The tables are covered with French, English, and German magazines, pamphlets and papers. A student ’ s lamp, a few rare etchings, some choice bits of porcelain, and three or four easy chairs complete the interior.—F. Hopkinson Smith in "A Water-Logged Town in Holland."

We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck me at once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None of your feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout volumes in calf and vellum lined three sides; books sprawled or hunched themselves on chairs and tables; books diffused the pleasant odor of printer ’ s ink and bindings;. . . And in one corner, book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.

This I hailed with a squeal of delight. ’ Want to strum?" inquired my friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the world— his eyes were already straying towards another corner, where bits of writing-table peeped out from under a sort of Alpine system of book and foolscap.

"Oh, but may I?" I asked in doubt. "At home I ’ m not allowed to—only beastly exercises!"

"Well, you can strum here, at all events," he replied; and. . . he made his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to theirresistible writing-table. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an absorption almost passionate.—Kenneth ''Grahame in "The Golden Age." ’ ''

EIN FORSTERHEIM

After the Painting by Ludwig Knaus