Life — April 15, 1886 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> LIFE: Mr. Thomas Hovenden’s representation of two women in a doorway is laboriously unpleasant. The foreshortening of the face of the standing figure is too bad, even for an N, A. “An Earnest Effort,” however, in the West Room, painted by the same artist, is a charming little work, full of life and ex- pression. Mr. Percy Moran has a delightful picture in the North Gallery entitled “A Divided Attention.” It is exquisitely painted, very delicate, and charmingly treated. This painter is so far ahead of the average exhibitor in artistic feeling and knowledge of his art that his work seems almost out of place. “The Strike,” by Robert Koehler, has much in it that is good, and quite a strong suggestion of dramatic force. It lacks body and “ reality,” but as the same can be said of most of the pictures painted in this country, it holds its own fairly VANDYKE BROWN THINKS HE 1S BOUND TO COME OUT TOP OF THE HEAP SOONER OR LATER. IT TURNS OUT TO BE SOONER. ES, John Henry, an umpire might be called a man of judgment; but you'd better not let him hear you well. This is an unpatriotic statement, but we are prepared to stand by it. the head, base man! making any such jokes in his vicinity. He might bat you on ATALANTA IN THE SOUTH- END. A COLD WAVE, BY MAW DOW, Author of A Newport Aquarium,” “Sandy Rosario's Ranch.” etc. O, “tis sad to lose our baby so! But the consolation sweet is, He's gone where there ’s no more cerebro- Spiaal meningitis ! ATALANTA IN CALIFORNIA.—Swinburm CHAPTER 1, TALANTA RUYS- dale, Pug Dog, Papa and Maid.” HUS she wrote in the register of the St. James Hotel, Chester Park, Boston, Mass. No, my dear, she was not the six-days:go- as-you-please young lady of ancient mythology, but a modern girl of the ordinary type that grows in the valley of the shadow of Boston. In her early infancy she had been named after the Atlantic Monthly in the hope that some of the somnolence of that periodical might attach itself to the name, for at that time she was a dear, sweet little cherub, so fresh from heaven that she had to screech day and night without stopping, week in and week out. Her family called her ‘‘ Atty” for short, and in conse- quence strangers always thought they were Cockneys and meant to say ‘‘ Hattie,” which of course delighted them all extremely. She grew up to be rather a pretty girl, although she lacked animation ; but when she was angry she was really quite beautiful, and as she was in a rage a good part of the time, | bustle. | sutler in the Army of the Potomac, and among she might—by striking an average—be con- sidered really handsome. But to go back to the beginning. Atty was rather tired when they arrived at the St. James, for they had come out of town in a horse car, and she had sat all the way on the edge of the seat so as not to mash her new So while she is resting and unpacking | we will go back a bit and endeavor to explain matters a little.” Mr. Ruysdale, Atty’s father—she never bad any mother, by the way—had been a successful his other duties had officiated as agent for a cast-iron tombstone company, and had done a most thriving business. He was, however, a man of great culture, and his artistic instincts had been greatly offended by the crudity and ungracefulness of our common memorial slabs, and it struck him that here was an opening that would, if managed judgematically, prove an awfully good thing. He therefore took his daughter in hand as soon as she was able to walk and proceeded to educate her tastes and artistic instincts by trot- ting her about various flourishing cemeteries and impressing upon her the hideousness of all the mortuary emblems and suggesting all manner of improve- ments and new designs. Now Atty was really a genius, and she profited $0 well by her father’s sug- gestions that by the time she was twenty she could design such beautiful tombstones that you fairly wished yourself a corpse that you might have one waving over you. Orders began to pour in on her, and Papa Ruysdale chuckled with delight as he read his paper and smoked his ‘‘hackman's delight” in the enjoyment of the most elegant leisure, for he realized (it | that he now had a comfortable support insured to him, his only anxiety being that Atty might be idiot enough to fall in love and get married, and then he would have to scrabble round and earn his own living, an idea so terrible to contemplate that in order to keep out of all society and away from the haunts of all young men, he moved out to what is locally known as the South End—the Hub's social Gehenna—and there he selected the St. James Hotel as a residence, because its rear windows gave on the old “Neck” burying-ground, and this served to keep Atty’s mind upon her work, and at the same time gave her a certain esprit de corpse. ‘There is no use in fighting against bad luck, however, and it was not long before Atty be- came intimate with two exceedingly ineligible young men, who lived in the same hotel with her. One of these—a young French Can- adian, Robert Conflagration by name—had \ ey) | \ come down from Montreal to get vaccinated, but getting stranded, was only too glad to rent himself out to Atty as a model; and a capital one he made, too, for he was willing to comicbooks.com