“Probably. The men who work there now are descendants, sometimes in the third or fourth generation, of the early workers. They hold their positions for life and although their pay is not large they also have each a cottage and piece of land on the grounds of the factory.”
As the U. S. C. ascended the great stair-way they passed numerous impressive busts and stopped to look at all of them. Most of the men were famous Americans, whose names were already familiar to the young people.
“Now,” said Miss Graham, as they reached the head of the stairs, “later on we can choose the kind of thing we would like especially to see, but first I want to show you two or three pictures and we can talk a little about them. Then perhaps we will enjoy better the pictures we see afterwards.”
“I am sure we shall,” answered Roger, politely, although his heart was yearning for the Riggs collection of armor.
Miss Daisy read his mind.
“I know you want to see the Riggs armor most of all,” she said, “and Margaret and James have been talking a lot about the Morgan collection and the Ethels told me on the way in that they had seen in the Sunday papers reproductions of some of the pictures in the Altman collections and they want to see the originals. We can see all those later on, but first we will look for a minute at a very famous picture by a Frenchwoman, Rosa Bonheur.”
“Oh, I remember about her,” said Helen. “She used to wear men’s clothes when she was working in her studio. She said skirts bothered her.”
“I should think they would,” said James. “I remember about her, too. She made a specialty of animals and sometimes she had lions and other wild animals from some Zoo, and let them wander about. She needed to be dressed so she could skip lively if they made any demonstration!”
“Those are huge horses, aren’t they,” said Ethel Blue, as they stood before the “Horse Fair.”
“They look as if they were ‘feeling gayly,’ as the North Carolina mountaineers say,” quoted Dorothy.