AN ARTIST'S WORK.
Isabel C. Barrows, in a deligtful little sketch descriptive of what she calls "An Artist's Work", in the Christian Union of Oct. 29th, gives a good idea of what Wilber Reaser has been doing during the past summer. The work is the village Rysoard, located near the city of Rotterdam in Holland. Fort Dodge people will read the concluding paragraph with interest:
"The village inn, that sits half in half out the river, and the confortable farm house of the neighborhood, open their doors willinghly to the sympathetic guild, and during the past summer they have been there by dozen - husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and even little children who have as yet known no other life than that of the atelier and the summer pianting-ground. Many Americans are among them, from New York, Boston, Chicago, and other cities. The scatter in September for their various Continental studios. Mr. Wilber Reaser, of California, still lingers, loth to tear himself away from scenes which since last April have furnished scores of charming studies to his facile and industrious brush. He catches the spirit of the place with wonderful success, and his sympathy with the life of the people is delightfully reprodiced in his peasant sketches. It is not strange that the fascination of such a place is attractive after the fever and hurry of San Francisco life - an air that, to artists, is pestilential. To rock idly in a boat beneath the high willows where stork's nest hides, to drift lazily past gardens where roses, asters, dahlias, and gilyflowers are all ablaze in the mellow autumn sunshine; to watch white-aproned little girls and white-capped mother scouring pots and pans, cans and kettles, till the round cheeks and blue eyers look back out of these homely utensils; to hear the gentle wind sigh through the sudhes of the Nile; to watch the sun sink in grandeur in golden clouds, and the purple twilight steal down through the willows and clothe all the land in royal colors - who could help feeling the artist's delight, though helpless to express the feeling? Happy those who can see it all and transfer to canvas the benefit of those who cannot come hithe".
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