The Palace of Liberal Arts

Dear Cousins:

As we went in the door of the Liberal Arts father called our attention to the doorway, and also to the panel, representing the making of things which we use, and the figure of the lady with the spindle, and the man with the hammer.

These were made by Mr. Mahonri Young of Salt Lake City, Utah, and are meant to show that work is honorable and desirable.

All the ideas shown in this building are not more than ten years old, or if older they have been greatly improved in that time.

The telephone, for instance, has been so much improved that it is very much more practical. We were allowed to hear a telephone message from New York the other day, and shown movies of how they put the poles and wires over the mountains. It was like magic. Now comes along a machine, which we were shown in the Palace of Liberal Arts, which really is a wizardry sort of thing, as it takes your message if you telephone when your friend is out, and repeats it to him in your own voice when he returns. We know because we tried it. The man asked us to speak into the telephone, and then let us hold the machine to our ears and it spoke right back to us. We have always thought such a machine would be a help, especially if we wanted to stay at grandmother's for supper, and could not get mother on the 'phone.

Bookbinding appeals to us very much indeed, because it is so smooth and shows that one has taken pains with the work, and perhaps we shall become bookbinders. A lady had some beautiful leather bindings there, and she was most kind about explaining.

We thought we would like one of the dear little cameras that go in a hand-bag, and take little bits of pictures which afterward grow into big ones, but father said we must wait for that. So we went to see the apparatus for taking the "movies," and also looked at the lovely autochromes. It is too bad that they will not reprint in color, but before the next ten years of course they will.

We wonder if you have seen the new lawn sprinkler which jumps around from one place to another on the lawn. When we went home today we saw it at work out in the lawns, and we could scarcely believe our eyes. It sprinkled one place until it thought, apparently, that it was wet enough, and then it bobbed out of sight and came up about ten feet away, working like mad. Really if you did not know about it, it would make you think you were asleep and dreaming a fairy story.

Your loving cousins,

Jane and Ellen.