We Ask You!

JIM is a nice boy with a strong natural urge toward the arts — one of that large appreciative class happy in the artistic temperament, if sometimes puzzled by its sterility. However, he is conscientious and faithful, and had been much excited at getting a position with Kueller and Company, the art dealers, evidently regarding it as having large potential possibilities. But he had lost his job.

‘I opened the window and the air blew in on their exhibition of modern art,’ he said ruefully.

It seems that the dealers had arranged the show of the season, a traveling collection of modern-school French painting, and at the same time had complacently offered part of the gallery for an exhibition of the work of the younger children of the public schools of the city. The whole thing had been a great success. Everyone had come to look. The papers had spoken with proper discernment of the powerful, if provocative, work of the contemporary masters, and of the amusing, naive work of the kiddies.

But one day Jim left a window open, and with one pull of wind the pleasant entente was over: the great and the little fell foul of each other as sketches and labels were strewn about. The works of the Modem French School and of the Harding Grammar School were inextricably mixed. Of course, Jim said, it seemed an easy task to sort them, and the sorting went smoothly enough until the first breath of suspicion cast its doubt over two sketches of nudes. One was known to be ‘A Study, ‘ by Rodin, and one was known to be ‘Seen at the Beach,’ by Minnie Schultz. They were alarmingly alike. The clerks took sides as to which was which of the extraordinary females, each merely outlined in pencil and with only a couple of washes — from Minnie and Auguste, not the ocean.

The confusion was increased when no less an authority than Mr. Kueller himself picked out as the Rodin the one the others were all finally agreed was a Schultz. Then the old man snatched away and hung carefully in the centre of the south wall, with the gilt label ‘Cezanne,’ the picture of a green girl, with one eye, leading a bale of hay, which young Mr. Kueller told Jim to hang on the school wall with the label, ‘Mabel Hascam, aged nine years.’ During this straightening-out process, although the doors were closed, a small child managed to leak in somehow and, pointing to the picture labeled ‘South Sea Islander — Gauguin,’ took what he was sucking from his mouth and lisped stolidly, ‘I done that — it’s Pocahontas and the Indians.’ Jim said that Kueller, distraught as he was, would have strangled the child if there had n’t been witnesses.

‘The fruit pieces,’ said Jim, ‘were the Worst. There were four almost alike. Matisse and Van Googh had done two — we knew that — and Annie Bloomfield and Ed Jigger had done two, we were quite sure. The big one, with the butterfly on the banana, Mr. Kueller said he could see by the breadth of treatment, and the nice feeling for tactile values, had come from the brooding brush of Matisse, but Ed Saunders, the janitor, said flatly that it had had “Annie Bloomfield, Class III" on it when it came.

‘Well, things calmed down after a while and got straightened out pretty well — though they insisted on calling the picture of the old brick high school “Cadiz Bay — Picasso” — and would ‘a’ been all right if they had n’t sold the “Study by Rodin” to Mr. Hoffer, president of the Kiwanis Club, for $5000.’

‘Why, was n’t it a Rodin?’

‘It was not — it was a Minnie Schultz.’

‘ Did Ed Hoffer discover it ? ‘

‘No — but old man Schultz did. And when he found they’d sold Minnie’s picture for $5000 he naturally wanted to know where he — and Minnie — came in, and he sued ‘em, and when Ed Hoffer found out he ‘d paid $5000 for a Schultz, he sued ‘em.’

‘He didn’t know before that he’d got a second-class article?’

‘Oh, it was n’t second-class — Minnie was in the First Class, all right. As for me, who opened the windows and caused all the trouble, they fired me.’

‘They didn’t believe in letting a breath of fresh air in on modern art?'

‘No, sir, and you can’t blame ‘em. I leave it to you — if the labels get mixed, how’s anybody going to tell?’