whether in dry or liquid form, into which aniline enters as a component."

It has also been decreed in one part of Persia that any dyer found using aniline decoctions "should have his right hand cut off." This mandate has not, so far as is known, been enforced, but the severity of the penalty shows how much the Persian government dreads the deterioration of its most famous industrial art.

Through the entire existence of the native of the Orient-in his home life, in his spiritual life, in his social relations and at last at his death, for when he dies the Tuberlik or grave carpet is spread above his grave the rug plays a prominent part.

The sombre colored

funeral cloth shows the cypress, the widow and the myrtle in its design, and has been completed by the combined efforts of each member of the household, from the eldest to the youngest, each one of whom has tied some of the knots so that it may express a general sorrow. Here and there the sombreness is relieved by bits of bright color which typify a happy future life.

Sidney Churchill gives some interesting facts about the Turkoman girl, which shows what a valuable accomplishment carpet weaving is considered in that region. "Among the Turkomans," says Churchill, "a young girl costs her husband one hundred tomans; should her husband die or be killed, her second husband has to pay two hundred tomans to be allowed to marry her. On her third, three hundred tomans, increasing by one hundred tomans each time up to the tenth time. . . . The reason for this increase in the price paid for the privilege of mar

rying the girl is that she is supposed to have acquired greater experience as a housewife, and also increased skill as a weaver." Certainly it would appear that widows are the vogue in the East at present, a great improvement upon the old custom in certain parts of the East where it was etiquette for the bereaved lady to cast herself upon her deceased spouse's funeral pile. The former fashion insured extreme care and solicitude for the husband's health and comfort. The modern arrangement puts widowhood at a premium.

In the secrets of the eastern dye pots lies a great part of the unrivalled beauty of the oriental rug. The colors themselves are significant and form part of the cabalistic meaning of the inscriptions and designs. The unsurpassed old Persian red is said to be made from sheep's blood by a secret process— all of the eastern dye processes are secret, however, and a lasting and curiously beautiful vermilion is the result. Odd reds are also obtained from onion skins, beets, ivy berries, and other indigenous plants, in a manner unknown in the West. The blues are based on indigo and the rich browns are secured by the application of indigo over pure madder. The Persian berries produce wonderful yellows, and their yellows combined with indigo form. a number of greens.

A writer on rug making has broadly stated that the designs may be generally classed in this wise: Caucasian, Turkey, Turkoman, and Tartarin fabrics are geometrical; Persian and Indian are floral. The poems of nature have been represented by Caucasian and Turkestan designs, by geometrical figures,

while Anatolians have conventionalized the Persian flower and tree forms.

That Chinese art influenced Persian fancy in the sixteenth century, the famous "Royal Hunting Carpet" now the property of the Imperial Royal Austrian Court bears witness. This magnificent specimen of the loom is said to have been presented by Peter the Great of Russia to the Austrian Court, but this cannot be vouched for. This Persian Hunting Carpet, an illustration of which is here shown, was photographed from One of the plates of "Oriental Rugs," a volume published by the "Imperial and Royal Austrian Commercial Museum" by the order of the "Imperial and Royal Ministries of Commerce," the English edition of which was edited by Sir C. Purdon Clark. The "Hunting Carpet" is a textile picture of horsemen in full chase of deer and other small native animals, while winged gods do combat with lions and buffaloes. The dragons, and cloud bands and the line of mollusc shells in the border (the latter having the significance of immortality) are distinctly Chinese. The singular combination of Persian and Chinese art designs has produced a really wondrous fabric.

There is another remarkable antique Persian carpet which holds a special interest because of its inscription, which tells him who can read the woven words that it was made by "Maksoud of Koshan, the Slave of the Holy Place," in the year 1535. This carpet, which is known as the "Andebil Carpet" is owned by the South Kensington Museum, London, and was bought for $12,500. There are thirty-two million, five hundred thousand knots

Another rug of great interest is one now in the Imperial Royal Commercial Museum of Vienna, the main scheme of which in the centre and border consists of Arabic inscriptions. In the centre is a cross and all the other space is covered with arabesques, creepers, cup and palmette. At the four ends of the "cross-beams" twice upwards, twice downwards, runs the inscription which Professor Wahrmund says, means: "God is the greatest! He is great!" is great!" The inscription filling the rest of the centre consists of the ninety-nine names of Allah, partly in the form of a petition written upwards and downwards. Around the long sides and the narrow ends are inscriptions from the Koran, beginning:-"Allah! No God exists. besides thee, the Living, the Eternal!" Professor Wahrmund says the meandering lines seen in the yellow facings signify the sacramental form of faith and mission of Mahomet.

The strong resemblance between Arabic characters and geometric figures makes the deciphering of these prayer rugs a matter of extreme difficulty. This rug was found in a mosque at Aleppo, and may be classed as a product of Asia Minor, woven probably from a Persian design.

The art of rug weaving, though it belongs in the East, where in the sixteenth century it reached the climax of its development, may however find a new outlet in another hemisphere! Products of the loom.

have always attained their highest excellence in agricultural rather than commercial centres. This may be because the great harmony of nature can be best comprehended in open stretches of forest, vale or plain, or desert or in mountainous districts where lights and shadows are forever forming varying effects. In such environments life is more contemplative. In the still spaces imagination and thought begin their utterance.

Why cannot the loom and brain be put again to artistic uses here among us? In New England there has been an effort made to revive vegetable dyes and carpet making. In Donegal, Ireland, a Scotch firm has succeeded in establishing a local industry which employs hundreds of bare-footed girls, who like the nomad tribes of mountainous Arabia and Turkey, carry their portable looms with them and out on the hillsides weave floor fabrics, as they tend their grazing flocks. In certain parts of our "great West" we have ideal climatic conditions for such an enterprise. Near the great sheep centres the rug and carpet making might become a lucrative business, the ranchmen and weavers finding mutual advantage in an interchange, while a means of livelihood peculiarly adapted to female labor might bring about the much desired feminine colonization in the vast regions where a woman's face is a rarity. In localities unfitted for agriculture and close to commercial centres, such an experiment is likely to fail, but in our great agricultural and sheep-raising sections it might gradually become a profitable manufacture. But there is still another way in which hand woven rugs and carpets might be

come an American industry under government control in a certain sense. I mean the establishment of jail manufactories. At a small outlay apprentices could learn this industrial art, and in the mastering of an industrial art in which individuality is the keynote, what growth of inward harmony might be stimulated in the weaver?

Sir C. Purdon Clark says that only in the jail manufactories in the East, where the commission for a rare design of carpet is given, are the best results obtained. No mercenary motives nor undue haste nor intermittent effort retards the completion of the work, and meantime the sombre tone of prison life and prison work is touched with color. Under the hands of the rug weaver, the flowers, the vines, the trees he knew and loved bloom again and a new freshness comes to his heart and soul. If such a convict industry were established in America, the result might show not only practical profit to the government but spiritual benefit to the pris

oners.

There is much that is beautiful in our country. Who knows but that some day in the future an American weaver might stand before an American inventor and say as he points to the fabric on his loom: "O Inventor of great machines, I passed through the forest and saw the sunshine through the tender green leaves and heard the songs of birds, and I put them into my carpet with love and thankfulness in my heart for them. And therefore is my work, O maker of machines, greater than thine because that I deprive not my fellow man of the right to work out from his soul the thought that is in him!"

"G

ENERAL Grant he says to me, says he 'Pete,' says he, 'what's your notion o', layin' our breast works skew-anglin'like along the bank o' the river? I tell you, Pete,' says he―"

The speaker stopped, conscious that neither of his companions was listening. Twisting himself about on the bench, where he was sitting in the shade of a half-grown box elder, he saw what his interest in his own narrative had prevented his noticing that the electric car from Ballard had pulled in at the Soldiers' Home station. The passengers were alighting, and mixing with the blue-coated crowd on the platform. Comrade Claflin forgot for a space his detailed account of the way in which he and Grant had put down the Rebellion, and gaped open-mouthed at the same figure that had arrested the attention of his auditors.

"The Widder Phelps, ain't it?" he murmured in a tone from which he studiously attempted to exclude his admiration. "So she's a-gettin' back, eh?"

tion platform as one after another of the veterans who had been loafing about pressed forward to shake hands with her. The pink, cheerful face under the gray puffs of hair sufficiently explained the widow's popularity. Her generous form was resplendent in a black satin gown, whose glittering jet trimmings dazzled the eyes of the three old men under the box elder. The gloom of her black hat was tempered by a lavender rose on the crown and a white one under the brim.

"Swell get-up she's a-wearin'," ventured Comrade Stringer, pretending to whittle on the pine stick he was holding, but never taking his eyes from the widow.

"Pike left consid'able of a life insurance," murmured Elias Eldredge thoughtfully, still gazing toward the station. "His son was a-keepin' of it up for him. I s'pose he divided with his ma."

Comrade Eldredge's ambiguous. remark was received in silence but by no means lost upon his listeners. The Widow Phelps had by this time concluded her greetings, and was

The Widow Phelps was holding an impromptu reception at the sta

followed by a half dozen grizzled admirers.

The three old men on the rus

tic benches remained several moments in ruminative silence. Orson Stringer was the first to speak.

"Four months, ain't it, come next week?" he said softly, counting on his fingers.

"Jest about," assented Comrade Eldredge, shifting his large bulk on the bench. "Jest about."

All three glanced across the smooth green lawn of the Old Men's building at the white headstones and little fluttering flags of the Soldiers' Home cemetery.

"Pike was a good fellow," murmured Orson Stringer in a subdued voice, "an' he fit well in the Rebellion."

Comrade Claflin moved impatiently. "Well, as I was a-sayin'," he broke in, settling his cane more firmly between his knees, "Grant he says to me, says he"-and the story proceeded, unrestricted, to the end. There was, however, as the tale drew its slow length out, a perceptible abstraction in the faces of the two who listened, as well as of him who spoke.

Comrades Claflin, Stringer and Eldredge formed one of fifty little groups and cliques that had evolved themselves in the Old Men's building. In fine weather the three old cronies occupied their favorite benches, where a good view of passing traffic could be obtained; in stormy times they took possession of a certain nook, jealously guarded from intruders, near the big fireplace in the Assembly Hall. All were widowers of some years' standing who had turned their little property relatives and sought the refuge of the Soldiers' Home, content in the comfort of their quarters and the affluence

over to

which their pensions afforded, tolet the busy world roll on without them.

Orson Stringer and Elias Eldredge represented, perhaps, the opposite poles of human construction. Stringer was small and bent and shrivelled, with a tangled gray beard that hung down to his breast, and "saved," as he put it, "a mighty sight o' good coin in neckties." He walked with a queer, jerky limpthe souvenir of a hot skirmish on the borders of a southern plantation. He was a lively little man in spite of his infirmity, and on G. A. R. days there was no one who marched more briskly in the parade, or who looked about him with a brighter eye to catch the reverential glances of the crowd.

Elias Eldredge was a foot taller than Comrade Stringer, broad of shoulder, great of girth, firm of limb, looking a decade younger than the sixty-two years that he confessed to. His wide, ruddy face was clean-shaven, and his dull blue eyes held an infantile seriousness that his slow speech never belied. He was given to performing on the guitar, accompanying himself cheerfully, whenever pressed to do so, in a voice profoundly admired by his associates and apparently not less. by himself.

Peter Claflin was a nondescript old man with a short, scrubby white beard and gentle, wrinkled countenance. He was of a friendly disposition, but spoke little, except

when his more or less accurate memories of the Rebellion moved him to unexpected lengths of loquacity.

On the particular June morning when the Widow Phelps reappeared at the Home after a three months'