Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New

"This brings you under Venus, Mercury and Mars. These three planets were in conjunction at the time of your birth. You were born when the sign was wrong, and you have had more or less trouble ever since. Had you been born when the sign was in the head or the heart, instead of the feet, you would not have spread out over the ground so much.

"Your health is very good, as is the health of those generally who are born under the same auspices that you were. People who are born under the reign of the crab are apt to be cancerous. You, however, have great lung power and wonderful gastric possibilities. Yet, at times, you would be very easily upset. A strong cyclone that would unroof a courthouse or tip over a through train would also upset you, in spite of your broad firm feet, if the wind got behind one of your ears.

"You will be married early and you will be very happy, though your wife will not enjoy herself very much. Your wife will be much happier during her second marriage.

"You will prosper better in business matters without forming any partnerships. Do not go into partnership with a small, dark man, who has neuralgia and a fine yacht. He has abundant means, but he will go through you like an electric shock.

"Tuesdays and Saturdays will be your most fortunate days on which to borrow money of men with light hair. Mondays and Thursdays will be your best days for approaching dark men.

"Look out for a low-sot man accompanied by an office cat, both of whom are engaged in the newspaper business. He is crafty and bald-headed on his father's side. He prints the only paper that contains the full text of his speeches at testimonials and dinners given to other people. Do not loan him money on any account.

"You would succeed well as a musician or an inventor, but you would not do well as a poet. You have all the keen sensibility and strong passion of a poet, but you haven't the hair. Do not try poesy.

"In the future I see you very prosperous You are on the lecture platform speaking. Large crowds of people are jostling each other at the box-office and trying to get their money back.

"Then I see you riding behind a flexible horse that must have cost a large sum of money. You are smoking a cigar that has never been in use before. Then Venus bisects the orbit of Mars, and I see you going home with your head tied up in the lap-robe, you and your spirited horse in the same ambulance."

"But do you see anything for me in the future, Mme. La Foy?" I asked, taking my feet off the table, the better to watch her features; "anything that would seem to indicate political preferment, a reward for past services to my country, as it were?"

"No, not clearly. But wait a moment. Your horoscope begins to get a little more intelligent. I see you at the door of the Senate Chamber. You are counting over your money and looking sadly at a schedule of prices. Then you turn sorrowfully away, and decide to buy a seat in the House instead. Many years after I see you in the Senate. You are there day after day attending to your duties. You are there early, before any one else, and I see you pacing back and forth, up and down the aisles, sweeping out the Senate Chamber and dusting off the seats and rejuvenating the cuspidors."

"Does this horoscope which you are using this season give you any idea as to whether money matters will be scarce with me next week or otherwise, and if so, what I had better do about it?"

"Towards the last of the week you will experience considerable monetary prostration; but just as you have become despondent, at the very tail end of the week, the horizon will clear up and a slight, dark gentleman, with wide trousers, who is a total stranger to you, will loan you quite a sum of money, with the understanding that it is to be repaid on Monday."

"Then you would not advise me to go to Coney Island until the week after next?"

"Certainly not."

"Would it be etiquette in dancing a quadrille to swing a young person of the opposite sex twice round at a select party when you are but slightly acquainted, but feel quite confident that her partner is unarmed?"

"Yes."

"Does your horoscope tell a person what to do with raspberry jelly that will not jell?"

"No, not at the present prices."

"So you predict an early marriage, with threatening weather and strong prevailing easterly winds along the Gulf States?"

"Yes, sir."

"And is there no way that this early marriage may be evaded?"

"No, not unless you put it off till later in life."

"Thank you," I said, rising and looking out the window over a broad sweep of undulating alley and wind-swept roofing; "and now, how much are you out on this?"

"Sir!"

"What's the damage?"

"Oh, one dollar."

"But don't you advertise to read the past, present and future for fifty cents?"

"Well, that is where a person has had other information before in his life and has some knowledge to begin with; but where I fill up a vacant mind entirely, and store it with facts of all kinds, and stock it up so that it can do business for itself, I charge a dollar. I cannot thoroughly relit and refurnish a mental tenement from the ground up for fifty cents."

I do not think we have as good "Astrologists" now as we used to have. Astrologists cannot crawl under the tent and pry into the future as they could three or four thousand years ago.

INGRATITUDE OF THE HUMAN HEART

When I was a child I was different from other boys in many respects. I was always looking about to see what good I could do. I am that way yet. If my little brother wanted to go in swimming contrary to orders, I was not strong enough to prevent him, but I would go in with him and save him from a watery grave. I went in the water thousands of times that way, and as a result he is alive to-day. But he is ungrateful. He hardly ever mentions it now, but he remembers the Gordian knots that I tied in his shirts. He speaks of them frequently.

CHESTNUT-BURR V – CONCERNING THE FRENCH MASTERPIECES AT THE ACADEMY OF DESIGN

Taking The World artist with me in order to know fully what I was talking about, I visited the Academy of Design a day or two ago for the purpose of witnessing some of the pictures from Paris which are now on exhibition there. Many of these pictures are large and beautiful, while others are small and ornery. At the head of the stairs is a smallish picture, with a good, heavy frame and greenish foreground. It is not on the catalogue, so I will try to describe it briefly. About half way between the foreground and middle distance there is a cream-colored perspective, while above this there is a rag-carpet sky, with lumps on it.

"And is there no way of removing these large lumps of paint, so as to give the picture an even appearance?" I asked Mr. McDougall.

"Oh, no; they don't want to do that," he said; "that is the impasto method of putting on the colors, which brings out the salient features of the painting."

So this imposture method, it seems, is really gaining ground, and this picture, with the soldier-overcoat sky and green chenille grass and gargetty distance, would no doubt be worth in Paris thirteen or fourteen dollars.

No. 84 is a picture by Charles Durand, entitled "A Country Woman in Champagne." I was bitterly disappointed in this picture, for though the woman seems to be in good spirits the artist has utterly failed to grapple fully with his subject, and without the catalogue in his hand I would defy the most brilliant connoisseur to say definitely whether or not she is under the influence of liquor.

We next walk around to No. 168, a picture by Camille Pissaro.

M. Pissaro has ten pictures in the Academy, but this one is the best. It is made by the squirt system of painting, graining and kalsomining, which is now becoming so a la mode and rouge et noir. The artist tells me that the colors are carefully arranged in a tin pail and applied to the canvas by means of a squirt gun or Rembrandt stomach pump. This gives the painting a beautiful yet dappled appearance, which could not be obtained with a brush.

This picture is worth three dollars of any man's money for the frame is worth two dollars, and there is at least a dollar's worth of paint on the picture that is just as good as ever. The artist has handled the feet in a masterly manner, bringing them out so that they hang over the frame like a thing of life. If I could paint feet as M. Pissaro does I would not spend my life striping buggies in a close room among coarse men with putty on their pantaloons, but I would burst forth from my humble surroundings, and I would attract the attention of the whole great world of art with my massive and heroic feet. Then from this I would gradually get so that I could make pictures that would resemble people. There is no reason why M. Pissaro should not do well in that way, for he has painted No. 171, "A woman at a Well," in which the most unkempt and uncultivated peasant can at once distinguish which is the woman and which is the well. He is also the author of "Spring," a squirt study with a blue rash, which has broken out where the sky ought to be.

No. 136 is the "Execution of Maximilian," by Edouard Manet, a foreign artist. The scene is laid at the base of an old Mexican slaughter-house. In the foreground may be seen the rear of the Mexican army with its wealth of tournure and cute little gored panties. All Mexican troops have their trousers gored at the hips. Sometimes they also have them gored at the bull-fights which take place there. In the contiguous distance Maximilian maybe seen, wearing the hat which has evidently infuriated the Mexican populace. The artist says that Maximilian objects to being shot, but I pretend not to hear him, and he repeats the remark, so I have to say "Very good, very good," and then we pass on to No. 60, which is entitled "Dreams," by Prévis de Chavannes.

In this picture a weary man, who has worn himself out sleeping in haystacks and trying to solve the labor problem, so that the great curse of industry may be wiped out and the wealthy man made to pay the taxes while the poor man assists in sharing the burden of dividends, is lying on the ground with a pleasant smile on his face. He is asleep, with his mouth slightly ajar, showing how his teeth are fastened in their places. He is smiling in his slumber, and there is hay in his whiskers. Three decalcomanie angels are seen fastened to the sky in the form of a tableau. One is scattering cookies in his pathway, while the second has a laurel wreath which is offered at a great reduction, as the owner is about to leave the city for the summer. These are the new style of wingless angels recently introduced into art and now becoming very popular.

M. Chavannes is also the mechanic who constructed a picture numbered 61 and called the "Poor Fisherman." The history of this little picture is full of pathos. The scene is laid in Newark Bay, N. J. A poor fisherman and his children go out to spend the day, taking their lunch with them.

"O papa, let us take two or three cucumbers with our lunch," says one of the children, in glee.

"Very well, my child," exclaims the father, with ill-concealed delight, "Go down to the market and get one for each of us."

The artist has chosen to make his study of the fisherman a short time after lunch. The father is engaged in regretting something which it is now too late to recall. Cholera infantum has overtaken the younger child and the other is gathering lobelia for her father. The picture is wonderful in its conception ana execution. One can see that he is a poor fisherman, for he has not caught any fish, and the great agony he feels is depicted in his face and the altitude of his hair. The picture might have been called a battle piece or a French interior, with equal propriety.

Manet has several bright and cheery bits of color, among them No. 147, "Spring at Giverny," which might be called Fourth of July in a Roman candle factory without misleading the thoughtful art-student.

No. 150, "Meadows at Giverny," by the same man, is a study in connecting the foreground and background of an oil painting by means of purple hay and dark-blue bunches of boneset in such a way as to deceive the eye.

I have always bitterly regretted that while I was abroad I did not go to Giverny and see the purple hay and navy-blue tansy and water cress which grow there in such great abundance. How often we go hurrying through a country, seeing the old and well-worn features shown us by the professional guides and tourists, forgetting or overlooking more important matters, like a scene in France, No. 142, entitled "Women Bathing." I presume I was within three-quarters of a mile of this view and yet came home without knowing anything about it.