On no one class of visitor does Paris lay her spell more heavily than on the American art student. For, no matter where he has studied at home, or under what master, he finds when he reaches Paris so much that is new and beautiful and full of inspiration that he becomes as intolerant as are all recent converts, and so happy in his chosen profession that he looks upon everything else than art with impatience and contempt. As art is something about which there are many opinions, he too often passes rapidly on to the stage when he can see nothing to admire in any work save that which the master that he worships declares to be true, and he scorns every other form of expression and every other school and every other artist. You almost envy the young man his certainty of mind and the unquestionableness of his opinion. He will take you through the Salon at a quick step, demolishing whole walls of pictures as he goes with a sweeping gesture of the hand, and will finally bring you breathless before a little picture, or a group of them, which, so he informs you, are the only ones in the exhibition worthy of consideration. And on the day following a young disciple of another school will escort you through the same rooms, and regard with pitying contempt the pictures which your friend of the day before has left standing, and will pick out somewhere near the roof a strange monstrosity, beneath which he will stand with bowed head, and upon which he will comment in a whisper. It is an amusing pose, and most bewildering to a philistine like myself when he finds all the artists whom he had venerated denounced as photographers and decorators, or story-tellers and illustrators. I used to be quite ashamed of the ignorance which had left me so long unenlightened as to what was true and beautiful.