Camel

Students of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts have long lamented, over their bocks and tasses, the monotonous homeliness of the women which the institute employs as models. Dreary matrons, uncorseted and nude, do not excite the eye, the hand or the nerves, they complained. Recently they talked about having a strike. The revolt was quenched, but the dissatisfaction lived on. Last week some 20 students were given the exercise of sketching, in a classic pose, a pendulous woman well known to several generations of Beaux Artists. They worked busily. In half an hour the master called for the sketches, discovered 20 lifelike representations of a camel.

"I have posed in my day," the model said, "for Degas.* I guess I am good enough for a lot of infants like these...."

*This great painter, as everyone knows, died of old age in 1917.