Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1910 — IN SEARCH OF CULTURE. [ARTICLE]

IN SEARCH OF CULTURE.

Librarians and their assistants In public libraries havejnsny experiences of the kind described by an anonymous writer in the Boston Transcript. She herself is employed in a public library, and was busy one day composing a note, when a woman, who may be known as Mrs. Smith, sailed up to her desk. Mrs. Smith moved amid a rustle of silks, and her hat loomed on the horizon like a child’s old fashioned bathtub. Before beginning she saw Dr. Pierce in his office—the door was opeq. I think he saw her, and that he would have retreated into the wardrobe, but he was too late. She bore down on him, with one hand outstretched, the other clutching a mass of flapping papers. I could hear her distinctly—indeed, so could everybody in that part of the building. “Dr. Pierce? Oh, how do you do? I have never met you before, but I know Mrs. Pierce. And .4 have used the library for years. I often got books here when~old Mr. Akers was librarian, but I was quite a girl then, and I guess I never read much but ' fairy books. I almost always ask for Miss Anderson when I come here; she is lovely—a perfect treasure —and takes such pains. But they say she’s away on her vacation, and so is Miss Hardy, in the reading room. "Now, I’m going to read a paper next Monday afternoon before the Twenty Minute Culture Club; it’s the first meeting of the season, and at my house. Here’s the title: ’ltalian Painters of Clnquecento.’ “I can’t for the life of me find where Clnquecento is, and I’ve looked through all the gazetteers and geographies you’ve got. Mrs. Brooks gave me the names of a lot of painters, but I don’t believe she knows much about them or where they came from. "First there. is /Vassery’s ’Lives of the Painters;’ then there is this Carlo Dolce far Nlente, who lived tn 1497, and painted frescos for the Basilica of | San Raphael, whoever he may be. And ’ I know I’ve read an article somewhere about Bambino; I wish you would let me take some book about him. Oh, yes, I remember; he was a monk who fell in love with some nun he wa( painting, and instead of eloping with her, retired to a convent and wrote sonnets about her all the rest of his life. The Italians are such an artistic race, and their art is so mingled with love affairs! “There was some one, -I remember— I think it was Ponte Vecchio, but I am not sure—who painted ,a lady’s portrait, and had musicians playing all the time so her husband wouldn’t hear him make love to her. Oh, I remember it all! You recall it, don’t

you, Doctor Pierce? There is a picture, I saw It not long ago, that shows him meeting her, and he has his hand on his heart. When he died he left all these sonnets to his friend, Vita Nouva, and made him swear to bury them all In the lady’s coffin, and he did, and they weren’t dug up for a hundred years, and then nobody could read what they were about because they were all written in cipher. Then they were published In the Golden Book of Venice, and every year they made the doge jump into the sea. “And I want to get a bqok about Andrea del Sarto because it struck me that Sarto was the name of the present pope, and it would be interesting to see if they are related. And I wonder-—” "■