Interior Decorating

Modern efficiency has given substantial blackboards, trim cabinets with brass locks, skylights and shrewd ventilating systems to the classrooms of U. S. public schools. But the "art objects" on the walls have changed little since the days of slates and coal stoves. Pupils are still schooled among lithographs of George Washington crossing the Delaware, paintings of cows and baskets of fruit, cheap etchings of Longfellow and Lincoln, etc.

The artistic sensibilities of Joseph Esposito, 14-year-old Italian of the Dore Elementary School in Chicago, were upset in his classroom by a chromo of George Washington. So he saved $85 by selling ice cream, privately commissioned an artist to copy the Stuart portrait of Washington which he had seen in the Chicago Art Institute. Last week he presented the oil painting to his school. He is behind in his studies, but he has given boards of education, throughout the land, something on which to ponder.