He made not a few protests to his friends, and gently
represented himself as a martyr to his devotion to the cause of art
from having accepted the place he held.
When one considered, however, the way in which committees upon art
matters are made up at City Hall, it becomes evident that the wonder
was not that the present body was no better, but that it should be so
good. The truth was that the choice of Hubbard and Calvin had been
considered a great concession to the unreasonable prejudices of the
self-appointed arbitrators of art affairs in town. A short time before,
a committee consisting of a butcher, a furniture dealer and a North End
ward politician, had been sent to New York on a matter connected with a
public monument, and their action had been so egregiously absurd as to
bring down upon their heads and upon the heads of those who appointed
them such a torrent of ridicule that even the tough hide of City Hall
could not withstand it. It was felt that the public was more alive on
art matters than had been suspected; and when a South Boston liquor-
dealer manifested a singular but unmistakable desire to be appointed on
the _America_ committee, he had been promptly suppressed with the
information that this was to be "a regular bang-up, silver-top
committee," and was forced to soothe his disappointed ambition with
such consolation as lay in the promise that next time he should be
counted in.
Pages:
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111