painted at a stroke. They have extraordinary truth, extraordinary character. He painted much on the Hudson and on the East River, sometimes embracing bridges, docks, and the types frequenting the latter in his vision, and occasionally he touched life in the humbler streets between, as in the memorable "CliffDwellers" of 1913, with its frowsy tenements and the teeming hordes at their base. He made himself in some sort a laureate of the city. Since he did not poetize his themes I am tempted to say that he gave us painted prose, but that antithesis is only fair when you qualify it with the statement that his was an art raising facts to a higher power. There

things which critics talk about while artists leave them to take care of themselves. Perhaps he was the more diverted because he knew that I didn't very often find it in his own work. But if I ever found it there it was in his landscapes. In the several studies that he made of a ship's ribs set up upon the shore, he had a positively impressive way of massing hill and sky behind the embryo craft. Then there come back to my mind two or three scenes, "A Wet Night," "Spring-Gramercy Park," and "A Day in June," in which the "natural magic," the sense of trees and of mysterious light, evoked a feeling that some one almost romantic had passed that way. Yes, he could have had charm

tion, and it is with that really noble and beautiful picture in mind that I most poignantly regret his early taking-off. It is enkindling to think of what the painter of the "Edith Cavell" might have done with higherected themes if the gods had only been kind. He wouldn't have passed lightly from triumph to triumph. "The Crucifixion," painted in 1923, is a lamentably stagey affair, mechanically built up, and as melodramatic in sentiment as it is artificial in attitudes and gestures. The "Two Women," belonging to the

trator's faculty of observation and a good deal of the illustrator's instinct. for the telling action.

Of design in the high inventive sense he gave no sign for a long time. It did not concern him when he was moving up and down his American world, on the lookout for the arresting "slice of life." But it drew his imagination after a while, and it holds in a firm unity the drama of his "Edith Cavell." By that time, 1918, Hambidge or no Hambidge, he had gained in structural composi

An Early Nude.

From the painting by George Bellows, 1906.

believe that with maturing powers he would have dealt with them in the grand style. The years would have brought him other things, too, in all probability-a

show, he could draw superbly. His touch as a painter was swift and certain, carrying a decisively individualized accent. His technical equipment made the firmest foundation for that which he had chiefly to give to the world, the eloquence of truth. His work has enduring reality, and it is American to the core. No man of his time has a stronger claim upon remembrance in the annals of American art.

PERHA

The Spirit of Confidence

DERHAPS the most impressive fact, to any one who scans the financial horizon at this beginning of the autumn season, is the confidence with which the financial and industrial position is generally regarded in America, as contrasted with the attitude taken in other countries. This contrast is the more interesting because the European markets, in particular, have at least one tangible ground of encouragement which is lacking in the United States. The relative position occupied last year by Europe and this country in production of grain, for instance-which had much to do with the aggravated depression of 1924 in the foreign countries and the rapid economic betterment in our own-has been strikingly reversed; whereas last year's wheat harvest in the United States increased 10 per cent in quantity over the year before and Europe's decreased 21 per cent, compelling the foreign markets to buy almost unexampled quantities of our grain at the highest prices since the "deflation period" began, the end-of-summer forecast of this year's results now indicates decrease in the United States of 22 per cent from the harvest of 1924, and increase of something like 30 per cent in Europe. Nevertheless, the American markets have displayed an enthusiasm over our own financial situation far surpassing anything that was exhibited a year ago.

Despite the continuing spirit of hopefulness in our markets, judgment as to the character and scope of such business recovery as should mark the autumn season

has continued to differ somewhat widely. Even at the end of summer, the state of trade continued to show the singular contradictions and inconsistencies which had been visible throughout the season. When the stock market was reaching its altitudes in 1919 and 1916, a similar movement of rapid expansion, not unmixed with outright speculation, could be perceived in the country's trade. Prices of goods were rising rapidly; in 1919 they had advanced on the average 12 per cent in a few months, and were destined to go much higher; in the autumn of 1916 they had risen no less than 23 per cent above the low point of the year, and 35 per cent above 1915. But last summer's prices for commodities in general had risen only 2 or 3 per cent above the low point of the year, and stood only 5 per cent higher than at the coming of last autumn, and even this advance had occurred wholly in products of the farms. In other branches of industry, average prices were actually lower than in 1924.