After breakfast we were taken in a motor to the James farm, nine miles distant from the town. Never have I seen more charming landscapes than those we passed upon this drive. An Englishman at Excelsior Springs told me that the landscapes reminded him of home, but to me they were not English, for they had none of that finished, gardenlike formality which one associates with the scenery of England. The country in that part of Missouri is hilly, and spring was just commencing when we were there, touching the feathery tips of the trees with a color so faint that it seemed like a light green mist. It was a warm, sunny day, and the breeze sweet with the smell of growing things. There was no haze, the air was clear, yet by some subtle quality in the light, colors, which elsewhere might have looked raw, were strangely softened and made to blend with one another. Blatant red barns, green houses, and the bright blue overalls worn by farm hands in the fields, did not jump out of the picture, but melted into it harmoniously, keeping us in a constant state of amazement and delight. "If you think it's pretty now," our guardians told us, "you ought to see it in the summer when the trees are at their best." Of course such landscapes must be fine in summer, but the beauty of summer is an obvious kind of beauty, like that of some splendid opulent woman in a rich evening gown. Summer seems to me to be a little bit too sure of her beauty, a little too well aware of its completeness. The beauty of very early spring is different; there is something frail about it; something timid and faltering, which makes me think of a young girl, delicate and sweet, who, knowing that she has not reached maturity, looks forward to her womanhood and remains unconscious of her present virgin loveliness. No, I am sure that I should never love that Missouri landscape as I loved it in the early spring, and I am sure that such a painter as W. Elmer Schofield would have loved it best as I saw it, and that Edward Redfield or Ernest Lawson would prefer to paint it in that aspect than in any other which it could assume. I should like to see them paint it, and I should also like to see their paintings shown to Kansas and Missouri.