PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. [Illustration: IN THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB. NEW YORK CITY THE CALL OF THE FLUTE. BY E. IRVING COUSE] “THE CALL OF THE FLUTE,” by E. Irving Couse, an idyl of Indian life, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.” E. IRVING COUSE Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course Scattered here and there throughout the Southwest in unfrequented valleys along the Rio Grande and on almost inaccessible mesa (may´-sah) tops, buried in the sandy and waterless Painted Desert, are found the villages and fields of a people whom the early Spaniards called Pueblos (pooeb´-lo), to distinguish them from their roving neighbors, the plains Indians, who had neither fields nor fixed abode of any kind. These peaceful, home-loving people lived in great houses which they occupied in common--terraced pyramids of sun-dried bricks--and which were both fortress and dwelling. It is among this interesting tribe of Indians that E. Irving Couse has spent much of his life. He is not a native of the Far West. He was born at Saginaw, Michigan, September 3, 1866, and went to New York for art study in the National Academy of Design. From there he went to Paris, and took a course in art in the Julian Academy and the School of Fine Arts, where his masters were the great French painter Bouguereau, T. Robert Fleury, Ferrier, and others. He returned to America and established his studio in New York City, where he soon made himself known. In the years from 1900 to 1902 he was elected to the American Water Color Society, the New York Water Color Club, and the National Academy of Design. About this time Mr. Couse’s interest became directed toward the life of the Great Southwest, and he made a trip there which so fascinated him that he continued for years to visit and study the race of the Pueblos. These were most interesting and impressionable years. He found a life new and full of fascination among the Pueblos of Taos (tah´-ose).