"Handsome is that handsome does."
Once upon a time there raged in a certain city one of those fashionable epidemics which
occasionally attack our youthful population. It wasn't the music mania, nor gymnastic
convulsions, nor that wide-spread malady, croquet. Neither was it one of the new dances
which, like a tarantula-bite, set every one a twirling, nor stage madness, nor yet that
American lecturing influenza which yearly sweeps over the land. No, it was a new
disease called the Art fever, and it attacked the young women of the community with
great violence.
Nothing but time could cure it, and it ran its course to the dismay, amusement, or
edification of the beholders, for its victims did all manner of queer things in their
delirium. They begged potteries for clay, drove Italian plaster-corkers out of their wits
with unexecutable orders got neuralgia and rheumatism sketching perched on fences and
trees like artistic hens, and caused a rise in the price of bread, paper, and charcoal, by
their ardor in crayoning. They covered canvas with the expedition of scene-painters, had
classes, lectures, receptions, and exhibitions, made models of each other, and rendered
their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their conversation ceased to
be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French
sauce, refraction of the angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of
color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic disorder was visible;
some cast aside crinoline altogether, and stalked about with a severe simplicity of outline
worthy of Flaxman. Others flushed themselves with scarlet, that no landscape which they
adorned should be without some touch of Turner's favorite tint. Some were _blue_ in
every sense of the word, and the heads of all were adorned with classic braids, curls tied
Hebe-wise, or hair dressed a la hurricane.
It was found impossible to keep them safe at home, and, as the fever grew, these harmless
maniacs invaded the sacred retreats where artists of the other sex did congregate, startling
those anchorites with visions of large-eyed damsels bearing portfolios in hands delicately
begrimed with crayon, chalk, and clay, gliding through the corridors hitherto haunted
only by shabby paletots, shadowy hats, and cigar smoke. This irruption was borne with
manly fortitude, not to say cheerfulness, for studio doors stood hospitably open as the fair
invaders passed, and studies from life were generously offered them in glimpses of
picturesque gentlemen posed before easels, brooding over master-pieces in "a divine
despair," or attitudinizing upon couches as if exhausted by the soarings of genius.
An atmosphere of romance began to pervade the old buildings when the girls came, and
nature and art took turns. There were peepings and whisperings, much stifled laughter
and whisking in and out; not to mention the accidental rencontres, small services, and eye
telegrams, which somewhat lightened the severe studies of all parties.
