Art is a contagious business. Perfectly normal and marvelously wholesome-minded people are as likely to succumb to it as anybody else. It is significant that the Purity League meeting in the city a few weeks ago discussed the dangers which lay in exposing even decent, law-abiding people to art, any kind of art.
The insidious influence of art cannot, as a matter of fact, be exaggerated. I personally know of a number of very fine and highly respected citizens who have been lured away from their very business by art.
However, this is no place to sound the alarm. I will some day talk on the subject before the Rotary Club. To return to Louis and Mike. After Mike writes the vital information down in a book Louis carts the canvas over to a truck and it is ready for the jury room.
When they started on the job Louis and Mike were frankly indifferent. They might just as well have been unwrapping herring cases. And they were exceedingly efficient. They unwrapped them and catalogued them as fast as they came.
In three days, however, the workmanlike morale with which Louis and Mike started on the job has been undermined. They have grown more leisurely. They no longer bundle the pictures around like herring cases. Instead they look at them, try them this way and that way until they find out which way is right side up. Then they pass judgment.
Louis unwraps them. I was standing by in the basement with Bert Elliott, who has submitted a modernistic picture of Michigan Avenue, the Wrigley Building and the sky, called "Up, Straight and Across."
"'The Home of the Muskrat,'" Louis called. Mike wrote it down. "Wanna look at it, Mike?"
"Yeah, let's see." Time out for critical inspection. "Say, this guy never saw a muskrat house. That ain't the way."
"'Isle of Dreams,'" called Louis. "Hm! You can't tell which is right side up. I guess it goes like this."
"No. The other," said Mike. "Try it on its side. There, I told you so.
'Isle of Dreams.' I don't see no isle."