Hence the memorable Art Museum, the fame of which to this day will
revive, when there is a meeting of the solid and gray-haired matrons who
were the light-footed girls of the Alliance, and the talk falls on the
old times.
The art collection would give its admirers shivers to-day, but it
excited only happy complacency then. The mood of the hour was not
critical. The homes of the Fairport gentry held innumerable oil copies
of the great masters of different degrees of merit, which they loaned
secure of welcome; with them came family treasures so long held in
reverence that their artistic value (coldly considered) had been lost to
comparison, and the gems of accomplished amateurs who painted flowers on
china cups, or of rising young artists who had not as yet risen beyond
the circle of trusting friends in town.
In general, the donors' expectation of gratitude was justified, but even
so early as 1881 there were limits to artistic credulity; and some
offerings drove the club president, Miss Claudia Loraine, and the club
secretary, Miss Emma Hopkins, to "the coal hold.
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