One day when the lion was asleep a caravan of merchants came along and stole the ass. The poor ashamed lion hung his head before the saint, and Jerome thought he had killed and eaten the ass. To punish him St. Jerome had him do the work of the ass and bring the wood from the forest. One day some time afterward the lion saw the ass coming down the road leading a caravan of camels. The Arabs often have an ass lead the camels. The lion knew that it was the stolen ass, so he led the caravan into the convent grounds. The merchant found that he was caught. St. Jerome was very glad to find that his lion was honest and true. Whenever you see a picture of a saint with a lion you must remember that it is St. Jerome, the great Latin scholar.

THE WOOD GATHERERS

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875)

The picture of "The Wood Gatherers" is very precious to us. It is the last picture Corot signed after he was confined to the bed, a few days before he died.

A curious story is told of Corot's painting this picture. He had an old study of another artist's of a landscape with St. Jerome at prayer: you remember I told you the story of St. Jerome and his lion. Corot took the study and made a number of sketches of it. Somehow his landscape would not fit St. Jerome, so he painted a man on horseback and a dog going off into the woods. Then in the place of St. Jerome praying he put a woman gathering bits of wood and another woman with a bundle of fagots under her arm. Now the picture must have another name and he called it "The Wood Gatherers." When you go to Washington, you must not fail to see this picture in the Corcoran Art Gallery.

AURORA

GUIDO RENI (1575-1642)

Hyperion had three wonderful children, Apollo, the god of the sun, Selene, the goddess of the moon, and Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. When Aurora appears her sister, Selene (the moon), fades and night rolls back like a curtain. Now let us look at this masterpiece by Guido Reni carefully that we may know how wonderful is the coming of day.

Aurora, in a filmy white robe, is dropping flowers in the path of Apollo (the sun) as he drives his dun-colored horses above the sleeping Earth. The Horae (the hours), a gliding, dancing group of lovely beings, accompany the brilliant god. Each hour is clothed in garments of a special tint of the great light of day, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet. The golden-hued Apollo sits supreme in his chariot of the sun.

The fresco--fresco means painted on fresh plaster--is on the ceiling of the Rospigliosi Palace, Rome. The painting is as brilliant in color to-day as it was when painted three hundred and fifty years ago.

Aurora, like most of the gods and goddesses, fell in love with a mortal. She asked Zeus to make her husband immortal but she forgot to ask that he should never grow old. And, fickle woman that she was! when he became gray and infirm, she deserted him and, to put a stop to his groans, she turned him into a grasshopper.

Her son, Memnon, was made king of the Ethiopians, and in the war of Troy he was overcome by Achilles. When Aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the Winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in Asia Minor. In the evening the mother and the Hours and the Pleiades came to weep over her dead son. Poor Aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass at early dawn.

THE SINGING BOYS

FRANS HALS (1584?-1666)

These jolly singers are Dutch boys. They are singing on the street or in some back yard just as singers do to-day, though they lived nearly three hundred years ago.

Hals was such a rapid painter that he could make a picture while you wait. The story is told that one time young Van Dyck, the Flemish painter who painted "Baby Stuart," went to see Hals in Amsterdam when Hals was an old man. Van Dyck did not tell the old artist that he was Van Dyck but simply asked him to paint his portrait, knowing what a rapid painter Hals was. In an hour the picture was done. Van Dyck remarked, as he looked at the portrait:

"That seems easy; I believe I could do it."

Hals thought he would have some fun, so he told the young stranger that he would sit for him just one hour.

Van Dyck set his easel where Hals could not see him work and began to paint. At the end of an hour he said:

"Your picture is finished, sir."

Hals, ready to laugh at the daub, looked at the portrait and the laugh went out of his face. He then looked at Van Dyck, and cried out:

"You must be either Van Dyck or a wizard!"

You see, Hals had heard of Van Dyck and his rapid work, and knew that only a master painter could make the splendid portrait in an hour.

ST. BARBARA

JACOPO PALMA IL VECCHIO (1480?-1528)

St. Barbara, born A. D. 303, was a very beautiful girl. Her father, an eastern nobleman, loved her so much and was so afraid something might happen to her that he built a very wonderful tower for her home and shut her up in it. And in that tower she studied the stars. Night after night she looked at the heavenly bodies until she knew more about the sun and the moon and the stars than any of the learned men. But as she studied the shining bodies she decided that worshiping idols, made of wood and stone, as her father did, was wrong. Finally she learned about the Savior, and to show her faith in Christianity she had some workmen who were making repairs on her tower put in three windows. When her father came as usual to visit her, he asked in surprise what the three windows were for. She replied:

"Know, my father, that through three windows doth the soul receive light, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: and the three are one."

Her father was very angry when he found she had learned about the Savior and had become a Christian. He condemned her to death and at last took her out on a hill and killed her, but he, too, was struck dead. St. Barbara is always represented with a tower that has three windows in it.

Palma Vecchio painted this picture for some Venetian soldiers nearly four hundred years ago. When the Germans bombarded Venice (1918) the Venetians took the picture from the church to a place of safety. Scarcely a week had passed before a bomb broke through the roof of the church tearing everything before it at the exact spot where the picture had hung. But "St. Barbara," one of the great pictures of the world, was safe.

CHARLES I AND HIS HORSE

SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (1599-1641)

The horse in this picture of Charles I is probably the one Rubens gave to Van Dyck. It is said that Rubens gave it as a present after Van Dyck had painted a portrait of Helena Fourment, the master's second wife, and presented it to him. Van Dyck was twenty-two years younger than Rubens. You will remember that he was the master painter's favorite pupil. Having Rubens as a teacher did not make the pupil a great painter. Van Dyck was never more than a prince; just an heir to the throne. Rubens was a king and sat on the throne.

The story is told that once Rubens was away from his private studio when the students bribed the servant to open the door for them. They stole into the master's studio to see "The Descent from the Cross," which he was then painting. By some mishap the culprits rubbed against the wet paint and spoiled that part of the picture. Of course they were terrified at the damage done. They finally decided that Van Dyck was the one to repair the spot. The work was so well done that they hoped Rubens would not see the repairs. But the first thing that caught the eye of the master was that particular spot. He at once sent for the students and asked who had worked on his picture. Van Dyck stepped out from the others and frankly confessed that he was the culprit. Rubens was so pleased with his frankness and also at the skill of the work that he forgave them all.

King Charles I invited Van Dyck to come to England, and then he knighted him and gave him a pension for life. The hundreds of pictures of the royal family and court people of England left by Van Dyck show us how rapidly he could paint, for the artist died when he was only forty-two years old.

THE GALE

WINSLOW HOMER (1836-1910)

Winslow Homer lived in Maine, where he heard the roar of mighty waters beating the rocks all day and all night. Some days the ocean grew so angry because the winds whirled its waters about in such a cruel manner that it would fling itself upon the sands and rocks as though to tear everything to pieces. The waves would raise up like furious horses champing their bits and foaming at the mouth. Somehow these angry waves could never go beyond a certain point, and the mother carrying her baby along the coast knows just the point at which the waves must stop. Let us clap our hands and shout with joy that old ocean cannot hurt that mother and her baby. Fill your lungs full of that glorious breeze whipping their hair and clothes. Open your eyes wide like the baby and let the salt air polish them until they sparkle like diamonds as the baby's do.

Winslow Homer loved old ocean, and so do we! Let us love his pictures of old ocean for he has taught us that that mighty power is under a greater Power.