| SOME OF THE EXTRA-ARTISTIC ELEMENTS OF ESTHETIC EMOTION. |
By JOHN COTTON DANA,
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY,
NEWARK, N. J.
MY work in a library has brought me in contact with the art interests of a great many people. Most of these people have been of the average, well-to-do, clerical, commercial and professional classes in this country. Representatives of women's clubs and of art classes of all kinds have been common among them. Many had traveled or were making studies preparatory to visits to art centers abroad. The modern public library thinks the promotion of interest in art in its community is a proper part of its work. With this in view it buys expensive books on art and photographs of paintings, sculpture, architecture and other things in the field of art. The library's close connection with the schools also makes it easy for the librarian to keep in touch with their work in drawing, design and general art instruction. I have had unusually favorable opportunities to learn about the art interests and the esthetic perceptions of that very interesting class of American women, the public school teachers. From them and from supervisors of drawing in the schools I have learned something of the interests of children in pictures and of their capacity for esthetic cultivation. The libraries I have been connected with have made great use in the schools of illustrations and decorations found in certain periodicals; not only of pictures from art journals, but also of material published, not for its art interest, but for its illustrative interest. For students of design, collections have been made of head and tail-pieces and initials, from many sources. Designs for wood carving, embroidery, iron work and the like have been gathered and arranged. Illustrations have been collected—sometimes by the children themselves—and arranged by artists, by subjects, by methods of reproduction and by media used in the original. Collections have been made for story-telling purposes, and to illustrate history, geography and nature-study. Reproductions of famous paintings, sculptures and buildings have been gathered and classified. I speak of this by way of introduction; to explain my interest in the subject of art; and to give grounds for presuming to speak upon it. The collecting of these pictures, the purchase of art books and the encouraging their use have "naturally brought me into close touch with the very representative
