“I am glad,” he said, “if I can encourage anyone to hard work, for surely that is the chief aid to success in any career. The young person who believes that an artist’s life is a bed of roses, and that he needs only to ply the brush a few hours each day, is mistaken. He must be scholarly by nature, must have a wide and minute acquaintance with art, and must never consider that he has learned it all if he hopes for lasting fame. I might add that he must also have earnest convictions regarding his work, and the courage to carry them out. Given these qualifications, combined with talent, of course, any person should succeed as well in the field of art as in any other profession, providing he is willing to give a reasonable time to study and preparation. Although the world may call him master, the true artist will never regard himself as other than a student.” XXX A School Girl, Not Afraid of Drudgery, Becomes America’s Foremost Woman Illustrator. IN the heart of Philadelphia’s great business quarter, on lower Chestnut street, there stands a five-story, red brick building which is about as reserved looking as Philadelphia business structures can be, and before which, in the street below, the tide of traffic rumbles and clatters and clangs from early morning until night. It doesn’t look much like a place where a person could be free enough from noise and other distractions to exercise a fine artistic taste. Yet it was here, I was informed, that Alice Barber Stephens had her studio, and to this I was bound. Mrs. Stephens takes rank with A. B. Frost, Howard Pyle, A. B. Wenzell, C. D. Gibson and others, and there are those who put her before several of these. I remember looking over a book of her drawings, published by some New York house, entitled “The American Woman in the Home,” and admiring exceedingly the gentle, refined appearance of the mothers, the excellent sedateness and sympathetic beauty of the young married daughters, and the quiet modesty of the girls in these pictures. You would say, looking at these drawings, “Here is a plain, commonplace, genuine person, who illustrates.” She has swept, sewed, performed the duty that lay nearest. You can see it in the sketches. She paints because she likes to, and as well as she can. She has no thought of immortality, nor imagines that she will be hailed as a marvel, but simply believes it is well and interesting to do good work. Considering these things, I made my way one afternoon up several flights of stairs,—artists must have the sky-light, you know,—to a door labeled A. B. Stephens, which was opened by a tall, slender, reserved-looking woman, who smiled as she admitted that she was Alice Barber Stephens. After a sentence or two of explanation, an invitation was extended to enter. ART IGNORES NOISE.