The Philistine: a periodical for curious persons (Vol. II, No. 6)

Some years ago at College I read, on compulsion, a book on Rhetoric. Reasons were to me then as plenty as blackberries, and I recollect that on examination my answers given to this, that, and the other were so glib and trite, and my thesis so amusing, that I carried off a Prize.

But during the struggle for prizes that have a value as collateral, the Prize and the Rhetoric were forgotten. Yet Fate decreed it so, and one day last week I met a Harvard youth, whose ambition was Literature, and he was in the grinding turmoil of a Volume. He was studying on compulsion, with intent to work off a Condition, and the book he was reading with such violence was the Rhetoric of my College days. With a flush of pride it came to me that I was a Prizeman, and I offered, out of the goodness of my heart, to tutor the youth, so that after five lessons of an hour each he could grind the Condition to powder.

To prove my fitness, the young man put me through a slight quiz, and alas! all of the beautiful truths and facts of the Rhetoric had slipped me, save this alone: “The three requisites in correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.”

Every address that Professor Adams Sherman Hill, who wrote the Rhetoric, ever gave began with this formula. Mr. Barrett Wendell, Heir-Apparent to his ideas and Chair, does the same; and the Shock-headed Youth, who occupies the same relation to the professorship that the infant Duke of York does to the throne of England, always settles himself in his seat with his elbows on the table, coughs gently, and prefaces his lecture by saying to the admiring Freshmen: “Gentlemen, the three requisites in correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.” Professor Hill has in one book, by actual count, twenty-seven different propositions that he divides into three parts. I have forgotten them all save the one just named. This statement I never can forget. I hold it with a deathless grasp that defies the seasons and sorrows of time: for there are things burned so deep into one’s soul that the brand can never be removed; and should reason abdicate, I’ll gibber through the grates of my padded cell at each pitying passer-by, “The three requisites in correct writing are Clearness, Force, and Elegance.”

For years I have repeated this fetching formula on every possible occasion; and up to this date I have managed to drown the rising voice of conscience by the specious plea that a double standard of truth is justifiable in the present condition of society. In morals I have been a bimetalist.

But after reading On Compromise, by John Morley, I am convinced that this juggling with the Eternal Verities is what has kept the race in darkness these many cycles; and I now admit the truth which I have long withheld, that Professor Hill’s three Requisites are gross humbuggery. I boldly state that Professor Hill does not know what the “Requisites” are; and I am sure that I do not. In fact I am looking for them anxiously; and should I ever find them, I’ll do as Shakespeare did—keep them to myself. I say further that inasmuch as Professor Hill does not know them, the Heir-Apparent and the Shock-headed Youth in the rush-line for the Chair cannot possibly be expected to know: so none of us know.

Not only is Professor Hill’s formula rank error, but it is in direct opposition to truth. I bundle his crass creed with Dr. Hall’s Universal Self-Treatment, Professor Loisette’s Scheme of Mnemonics, and the Brown-Sequard Recipe for Perpetual Youth.

Professor Hill, with the help of his students, has compiled three books on Rhetoric; Mr. Barrett Wendell has published two. Students at Harvard are expected to buy these books. There are three thousand students at Harvard. These various books are practically one, for they all teach that “a parenthetical remark must be enclosed in parentheses, dashes or commas,” and that “every sentence should have at least one verb.” These things are explained to men who have had ten years of solid schooling in order to fit them for College. Professor Hill recommends Harvard students to buy “that well written work on Composition by Mr. Barrett Wendell,” and Mr. Wendell modestly says, on page 8, line 18, of his biggest well written work: “Professor Hill’s books are the most sensible treatment of the art of composition that I have yet found in print.” The last three chapters in Mr. Wendell’s well written work bear the following startling titles, respectively: Clearness, Force, and Elegance. Harvard Freshmen know Trigonometry, Physics and “one language beside English,” and various other things, but it is left for Professor Hill to sell them a book which explains that “a sentence may end either with a period, interrogation point or an exclamation mark!” Do you say that the public school system is to blame for such a condition? My answer is that if Harvard required her students to know the simple rules of Rhetoric before being admitted to the University, it would be done.

Mr. Hill fills the Boylston Professorship of Literature and Oratory at Harvard University, but with all the many thousand students who have been under his care he has probably never given impulse to a single orator, nor materially assisted one man with literary ambition. The reason is that he is teaching things that should have been known to his pupils years before. There is a time to teach things as well as a way. Instead of arousing animation Professor Hill reduces it. So sympathy is made a weakling and imagination rendered wingless. I have examined many compositions written by Harvard students, and they average up about like the epistles of little girls who write letters to Santa Claus. The students are all right—fine intelligent young fellows—but the conditions under which they work are such that they are robbed of all spontaneity when they attempt to express themselves. Of course I know that a few Harvard men have succeeded in Oratory and Literature, for there are those so strong that even Cambridge cannot kill their personality, nor a Professor reduce to neutral salts their native vim.

The rules of Rhetoric should be taught to adolescence; then when the boy goes to college he has tools with which to work. “When did you learn your letters?” I asked a six-year-old youngster yesterday. “I allus know’d ’em,” was the reply. And the answer was wise, for the kindergarten methods teach the child to read, and he never knows when or how he acquired the knowledge. As a healthy man does not know he has a stomach, so he should write without knowing a single so-called rule. And as the Froebel methods are fast making their way in all departments of learning, I expect this will soon be so. But the colleges lag behind, and Harvard (very busy fighting “Co-Ed—”) still tries to make statues by clapping the material on the outside.

Professor Hill knows the futility of his methods, for in his last work he puts in several disclaimers to the effect that he “does not undertake to supply men with ideas.” That confession of weakness is pitiful. Professor Hill should surround his students with an atmosphere that makes thought possible. By liberating the imagination of his pupils ideas would come to them. But as fire will not burn without oxygen, so thought cannot exist in the presence of Mr. Barrett Wendell. Both he and his Superior are strong in way of supplying cold storage—that’s all.

In lecturing on Literature and Oratory these men sit at a desk. And often, becoming weary, they sprawl over the table like a devil-fish seeking its prey. This, I believe, is the usual Cambridge method. But there is one exception to this rule at Harvard, and that is Professor Kittredge, who being nervous and cannot sit still, paces the platform and shoots the lecture over his shoulder. When a student is called on to recite, Professor Kittredge often opens a box of withering sarcasm that acts like chlorine gas on the poor fellow who is trying to recite. But it makes the rest of the class grin like deaths-heads. Harvard knows no general plan for cultivating the imagination, inciting animation, or furthering ambition. All is suppression, fear; and this repression often finds vent in rowdyism outside of Harvard Yard. The seven youths who under Professor Hill mark the themes hunt only for errors and lapses. The tendency of this negation is intellectual torpor and spiritual death.

If any one should ask Mr. Barrett Wendell what he thought of the Herbartian idea of developing the God within, the Assistant Professor would first calmly light a cigarette, and after blowing the smoke through his nose, would fix on his presumptious interlocutor an Antarctic stare that would freeze him stiff.

And let me say right here that toward Harvard’s teachers I bear no malice. In showing Professor Hill’s books to be puerile and profitless, and in depositing the Heir-Apparent in the ragbag of oblivion, I have no sinister motive. And if from this time forward their names are a byword and a hissing, it is only because the Institution which they serve has stood in the way of Eternal Truth. These professors of rhetoric prospecting on the mountain side, thinking they had found the Final Word, builded tabernacles and rested—all forgetful of the avalanche.

“Clearness” is never found in literature of the first class. Clearness, according to the Professor, means a simplicity that makes the meaning plain to all others. But this is only pabulum for the sophomore intellect; and outside of Bryant & Stratton’s it has no legitimate place. The great writer is only clear to himself or those as great as he.

The masterpieces of Art are all cloud-capped. Few men indeed ever reach the summit: we watch them as they ascend and we lose them in the mists as they climb: sometimes they never come back to us, and even if they do, having been on the Mount of Transfiguration, they are no longer ours.

In all great literature there is this large, airy impersonal independence. The Mountain does not go to you: you may famish out there on the arid plain and your bones whiten amid the alkali in the glistening sun, but the majestic Mountain looks on imperturbable. The valleys are there, with the rich verdure, and the running brooks where the trout frolic, and the cool springs where wild game gathers, but what cares the Mountain for you! Ecclesiastes offers no premiums to readers, Shakespeare makes no appeal to club raisers, Emerson puts forth no hot endeavor for a million subscribers: all these can do without you.

Rich lodes run through this Mountain, and we continually delve and toil for treasure. And in spite of the pain and isolation and the privation that is incident, and the dangerous crevices that lie in wait, we secure a reward for our labor. Still we do not find the fabled “pockets” that we seek—it is always something else. From Columbus searching for a Northwest Passage to the rustic swain who follows with such fidelity the wake of a petticoat, all are the sport of Fate. We achieve, but die in ignorance of the extent to which we have benefitted the Race. And like the man who rode the hobby all his life, and whose friends discovered after he was dead that it was a real horse and had carried the man many long miles, so are we carried on steeds that are guided by an Unseen Hand.

All sublime Art is symbolistic. What is the message the great violinist brings you? Ah, you cannot impart it! Each must hear it for himself. The note that is “clear” to all is not Art. When Charles Lamb pointed to the row of ledgers in the office of the East India Company and said, “These are my works,” he was only joking; for he afterward explained that ledgers, indices, catalogues, directories, almanacs, reports, and briefs are not literature at all. These things inspire no poems; they give no glow.

The province of Art is not to present a specific message, but to impart a feeling. If we go home from the Lyceum hushed, treading on air, we have heard Oratory, even though we cannot recall a single sentence; and if we read a poem that brings the unbidden tears and makes the room seem a sacred chancel, we have read Literature. The Master has imparted to our spirits a tithe of his own sublimity of soul.

For the good old ladies who prick the Bible for a message I have a profound sympathy: the Sacred Page fits man’s every mood, and this is why it is immortal. That which is clear is ephemeral. Symbolism requires interpreters, and lo! colleges spring up with no other intent than to train men to explain a Book; for the Saviours of the world all speak in parables. They see the significance of Things and voice a various language. The interpreter makes the symbolist immortal, and the symbolist makes the fame of the interpreter. If Turner had been “clear,” Ruskin might still be Assistant Professor. All Holy Writ from Moses to Whitman is mystical. The writer has breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, that impalpable, elusive Something which we forever seek and which forever escapes us.

Of course, I would not have a writer endeavor to be mystical—this would be positively base; but I would have each man who feels that he has something to say express himself in his own way, without let, hindrance, or injunction from writers on rhetoric, who having never produced anything to speak of themselves, yet are willing for jingling coin to show others how.

“What do you do when you are preaching and can’t think of anything to say?” asked a Fledgeling of his pastor.

“I just holler,” was the answer of the experienced Exhorter.

With half a million preachers in the United States, with families to keep on an average salary of five hundred dollars, I do not blame them for “hollerin’;” neither do I censure editors who have to fill three columns each day if they often “holler;” as an economist I might advise a man to “holler,” but as a lover of literature I cannot conscientiously do so.

I have a clerical friend who, being much before the public, is often called upon unexpectedly to reduce moral calculi. Being a man of force, and not a man of power, he never says, “I do not know,” but always boldly faces the problem after this manner: “My friends, this subject naturally divides itself under three heads: firstly,”... Here he states some general commonplace for the first head, and casts about in his mind for the other two; having secured them, he launches forth with much emphasis on some other theme and carries all before him. His swashing and marshal manner makes him everywhere a great success; he is considered one of the most powerful men in his denomination.

And I am fully convinced that a painstaking show of system is one of the first essentials in making a favorable impression. We are like the Hebrew salesman who called on a firm who occupied a sixth floor and who, on starting to show his samples, was promptly kicked down stairs; having arrived at the first landing a second man took him in hand and kicked him one flight further; this was continued until his battered form reached the sidewalk, when he picked himself up and admiringly exclaimed, “Mein Gott! vot a system!” So when a rhetorician flashes his “heads” and “divisions” and syllogisms and analyses and figures (that do not lie) upon us, we are so lost in bedazzled admiration that we can only lift up our hands and say, “My God! what a system!”

Good work never comes from the effort to be “clear” or “forceful” or “elegant.” Clear to whom, forsooth? and as for force, it has no more place in letters than has speed.

Power in Art there surely is, but power is quite a different thing from force. Power is that quality by which change is wrought; it means potentiality, potency. The artist uses only a fraction of his power, and works his changes by the powder that he never explodes; while force means movement, action, exertion, violence, compulsion.

Literature is largely the result of feeling. The “hustler” is a man of force; very, very seldom is he a man of power; still rarer is it that he is a man of feeling. The very idea of force precludes tender sensibility and delicate emotion. If I should write on a scrap of paper, “Hate is death, but love is life,” and drop the slip into the street, there might be power in the words, but surely there is no force.

And as for elegance, let him who attempts it leave all hope behind; he is already damned. The elegance of an act must spring unconsciously from the gracious soul within. There is no formula.

In letters, “clearness” should be left to the maker of directories, “force” to the auctioneer, and “elegance” to the young man who presides at the button counter. Were I an instructor in a Commercial College, I might advise that in business correspondence there should be clearness and force and elegance; but if I were a Professor of Literature and Oratory, I would not smother inspiration in a formula. I would say, Cultivate the heart and intellect, and allow nature to do the rest. For while it is still a mooted question whether a man’s offspring after the flesh are heirs to his mental and spiritual qualities, it is very sure that the children of his brain are partakers in whatsoever virtue that his soul possesses.

The teacher who teaches best is not he who insists on our memorizing rules, but he who produces in the pupil a pleasurable animation. We learn only in times of joy and in times of grief. The teacher who can give his pupils pleasure in their work shall be crowned with laurel, but grief—grief is the unwelcome gift of the gods alone!

Let the writer have a clear conception and then express it so it is at the moment clear to his Other-Self—that Self that looks on over the shoulder of every man, endorsing or censuring his every act and thought and deed. The highest reward of good work consists in the approbation of this Other-Self, and in that alone; even though the world flouts it all, you have not failed. “I know what pleasure is,” said Stevenson, “for I have done good work.”

Elbert Hubbard.

Ah! I am late this morning. I can feel in the air the vibration of the third hour. Attius! Attius! I suppose he thinks that having lain so long, I may as well wait till tomorrow. Ah! Attius, have you, too, overslept yourself? No more dinners with Maecenas: we are getting too old for them. It is the third hour; I will rise. But first request Livia Augusta to favor me with her presence. Dear old Attius! that little trick of telling him the hour never fails. Now for my daily bargain with the august.

Madam, good morning; leave us, Attius. And how is the irreproachable? Judging from her roses, better than her lacy deputy. I spare you the econium of Maecenas’ wine. I saw last night a girl named Candidia; do you know who she is? Oh, the old senator’s daughter? Not much like him; I should have said our late friend, Mark Antony, was a friend of the family. You know that? I thought she had a trick of him, and I don’t often make that sort of mistake. She’s a very fine young woman, the white Cantonia. I suppose you know all about her; is she desirous of influence at Court? H’m! Thanks; I trust you to awake her to the legitimate ambition of a Roman beauty. I wish, Incomparable, you’d find a Maecenas to renasce Roman women. When Candidia stands up you can see she is standing on her legs, and, except a certain perennial of mine, I can’t say as much for any woman else in Rome. Will you see about it? Thanks, kindest of Junos.

Now, another matter. You must see by now, Livia, that it’s impossible for me to let Tiberius go on any longer as he’s doing. You must let me send him away. Yes, yes; I know all you’ve done for me, but it doesn’t justify your son in studied insolence. After all I’m supposed to be Proconsul and Pontiff and Augustus, and all that, and I can’t let him do it. Claudian pride? Well, I can only say that there’s no vacancy for Claudian pride in Rome just at present. Eh? What has Candidia to do with Tiberius? Oh, I see; you want to bargain. Very well, Candidia for Tiberius—only on these conditions. First, you must talk to him seriously about his demeanor—not as coming from me, you understand. Secondly, I put him on the list for foreign service. Oh, yes, you can make your mind easy. He shall have a big war, and a triumph, and all the fandangles. Also, I’ll throw in Agrippa; he shall go abroad and have no triumph, and I’ll try to keep Julia quiet. I’m a generous Jove—eh, Junicula? Give me a kiss, old wench. We’ve had some battering times together, eh? And if I’m not mistaken you’ve still something to hold your back straight on, eh? Eh? Eh? Adieu, my Empress. Send in Cleobulus, will you? And don’t forget Candidia—H’m.

My excellent spouse was pleased with my little attentions. Also she was pleased with the idea of her Tiberius in high command; she doesn’t yet understand the value of interior lines in politics, my Augusta. I suppose she foresees her Tiberius crossing the Rubicon while we all sit tremulous in East Aurora—ha, ha! And yet she’s seen the Praetorians at drill every day these many years. Naturalists have greatly neglected women.

Now, Cleobulus, my wig and my eye-brightening stuff. I always assume you don’t give away these secrets of the toilet, Cleobulus. If you do, the next wig will be the scalp of one Cleobulus, mysteriously disappeared. Now the gown. Not that, you nincompoop of genius. How often must I tell you I’m only plain Proconsul? That will do: now announce me at the levee. I wonder who’s here today. I’m glad the Roman Senators haven’t the political insight of that hair-dresser.

Attius, precede me into the ante-chamber, while I have a look at the company. Gods, what an air the rogue has with him, and how very right he is, considering the way they grovel to him. A poor set of curs, I’m afraid, these nobles at Rome; yet I’m afraid I like them.

Good day, gentlemen, I fear I have ill repaid this courteous attention by keeping you so long awaiting. Ah, Isauricus, my dear old friend, this is too kind. Too kind; it is I that should be calling on you; you must not expose yourself to this morning air; all Rome is waiting for your speech on this new Land Bill or Agrippa’s. By the way, Egnatius, I do not think you have yet taken the public into confidence as to your attitude? You reserve it? Ha! I am not sure you are right, if I may say so. One loses a great part of one’s due influence, I always think, unless one gives an opinion time to percolate, as one might say. I have told Agrippa frankly all along that I shall oppose him on the municipal clauses. What says Piso? Opposed to the whole scheme; you will speak, of course?

Aha, good day, Iulus. What says Iulus on the question of the hour? An excellent measure all around! So—well, it should be an interesting debate, and personally I am still open to be convinced. And here is the author of all the trouble, himself. How do you do, Agrippa? Eh? A word in private; by all means, old man. Want to go away? No, no, dear fellow, we want you here. Pannonia and Germany? Nonsense, you’re losing your nerve. Why, we settled the Pannonians years ago. Well, we’ll think it over.

Good morning, Maecenas; survived your own wine, I see! Amusing fellow, that little Horace of yours. Underbred? No, I didn’t notice it. I tell you what, though, if I were that man I wouldn’t stand the way you treat him for five minutes, good as your dinners are. However, that’s his affair. Been here long? I’m beginning to agree with you about Iulus. See me before dinner.

Well, gentlemen, I thank you once more for the high honor you have paid me. I am afraid you spoil me with your indulgence, for I am now about to ask to be excused. You have put me in an important public position, and I am anxious not to disappoint you. Adieu, my friends.

H’m. To-day’s hypocrisy over. Not that it is, though, for I have to play the hypocrite one way and another every minute of my life. I’m beginning to think it’s a mistake to be a tyrant. It’s exciting enough when you have to fight for it; but when you’ve got it, decidedly a bore. And unluckily the posing isn’t the worst of it; the worst of it is that you have to suppress so many good fellows. Now I know Egnatius is guilty of the impiety of not seeing why he should do what I please any more than I should do what he pleases. I must get rid of him; I can’t help myself. Such a witty, astute fellow, too, and what a boxer! Iulus I must get rid of, too. I fancy Maecenas has got his own reasons for wanting Iulus out of the way; still he is his father’s son, and never quite safe. A man I’ve known since they first put me into the long gown. No, I sha’n’t get rid of Iulus; he can go to Gyarus if Maecenas likes. No, dam it, why Gyarus? He won’t do any harm at Rhodes, and at least he can get a dinner there. Poor old Iulus! And poor old Agrippa! I suppose he wants to go away because, he can’t stand Julia any more. I should never mind that sort of scandal myself, but some do. Perhaps I was to blame in giving him Julia at all, knowing her character. But she had to marry somebody and that somebody could be none else than Agrippa. Such is statesmanship! Now the poor old boy wants to go back to his soldiers. But I can’t do it. Once he gets to Pannonia, he’d forget his obedience—and he is most astonishingly obedient—and go for the chiefs. His loyalty’s splendid, but I can’t trust even it, when the old war-horse sees the enemy in front of him. And the worst of it is that the chiefs ought to be smashed this summer, and no man in the world could do it as well as Agrippa. It would be all over in a month. But Pannonia’s got to be nursed, for Pannonia’s to be a big thing, and Tiberius is to get his triumph for it, sulky dog. Yet he’s got the stuff in him, too. I suppose I’d better make up some reason to send Agrippa to Gaul again: Livia can’t object to him there. After all, the real devil of it isn’t being a tyrant, but being a married tyrant. There isn’t an easier or pleasanter thing in the whole world than to go on as I’m doing now, and keep my place to the end, and my friends into the bargain. It’s this cursed dynasty business, and that cursed woman—though she’s behaved a deuced deal better to me than I deserved. But why in the name of all the gods at once must I turn out my oldest friend to die miserable in Gaul? Why, to make the way easy for a moody young prig that I dislike—and who hates me. What do I get for it all? Candidia! That’s what it comes to, when you work it out. I’m monarch of the world, and the gain of it is that I have unequaled chances of making a ridiculous goddam goat of myself. I wish to Heaven I’d had my uncle’s pluck: then I should have been cut to pieces ten years ago. Still after all, Agrippa’s going to Gaul would be away out of the Land Bill business, and I begin to think I went too far in the matter. Yes: he had better go.

G. W. Stevens.

I have been greatly amused quite recently by two little items that were printed in one of those short-lived magazinelets. One article was by Neith Boyce and the other by Emma Eggleson, both of which ladies are subscribers to The Homely Ladies Journal. If I am not mistaken one of these ladies raised a club for the Journal (not at it), and when Mr. Curtis and me offered to send her abroad to be educated, the amusing fact was discovered that she already had a lovely education.

But the articles that amused me so much were about the penchant of editors to monkey with manuscript. Both articles were on the same theme, but the article by Neith Boyce was the longest. As Mr. Howells has not improperly spoken of one of Neith Boyce’s short stories as a crackerjack, and as this master of letters has also referred to a poem by Emma Eggleson as hotstuff, I feel that I am justified in saying that both of these ladies are arriving successward in the merry and dizzy field of literature very rapidly.

I have sometimes thought in my thoughtful way that the reason an editor is called by that appellation is because he loves to edit. A young literary aspirant told me of a case in point the other day. He wrote a lovely triolet which was accepted on its seventeenth trip by a paper which shall be nameless. When he sent it out it ran thus:

This is how it was printed:

You see much of the poetic effluvia was lost when it had been edited.

A very witty novelist, author of a novel, by the way, said an awfully bright thing to me the other day. He was speaking of the way that certain houses had of sending you a postal saying your manuscript would receive attention. “That,” said he, “keys you up to concert pitch. But there isn’t any concert generally. Your manuscript is refunded: that’s all.” I had to laugh, it was so witty.

A well known poet told me the other day that an editor should be a judge of good poetry. Said he, “when an editor cuts two or three lines out of your sonnet to a wild flower or a wild animal, or anything whatever, and retains the distinguishing label, it is like passing off XX milk for the XXX article and the real connoisseur is justly indignant. An honest and self respecting poet wishes to give full measure in his sonnets and it is an injury to his moral character that the editor works when he palms off ten or a dozen for the usual fourteen or fifteen lines of a sonnet.”

Poets are not practical. Why didn’t he write that out himself and sell it for a dollar a line instead of giving me the chance?

I’m an editor myself in a small way.

I ask celebrated authors, actors, preachers, presidents, doctors, lawyers, generals, naval officers and the like to send in any old thing they happen to have on the hook and then I have it beautifully illustrated and print it just as it is; no matter how bad it is, I never change a line. It’s a matter of principal—not to say of interest. For above all things I wish to be honest and successful.

Edward W. Tok.

Dr. Robertson Nicoll, of London, England, a good Scot, is the present day discoverer of Scotch genius, and Ian Maclaren is largely the creation of his splendid audacity of prophecy and executive ability.

Dr. Nicoll is a noticeable and interesting personality in contemporary literature. He fully deserves his wide celebrity, for he has put into the chronicling of monotonous literary news and criticism an element of newsyness and vim that is characteristic of the best American journalism. He has made mere literary news as exciting and mysterious as politics or horseracing. We now bet on the sales of new poets as well as on the Derby favorites. This adds a great deal to the picturesqueness and interest of “The Literary Show,” and Dr. Nicoll deserves the credit due to a bold innovator. He marks an epoch in literary journalism, and his “Scotch era” will be remembered in history. But fashions change and Ian Maclaren, and some of Dr. Nicoll’s other inventions and discoveries, will pass into well deserved oblivion, in a very little while.

They are significant simply as striking examples of the creative genius of criticism. As “famous authors” they are purely factitious. In a word, they must be considered at par amply as the shadows and phantoms of Dr. Nicoll’s picturesque power of criticism and great creative gifts.

The literature of the Kailyard is having its day, but happily it will not last forever. It will eventually go the way of negro dialect fiction, when its unique adaptability as a conveyance for the perfectly obvious and the perfectly absurd come to be more generally recognized than is possible in this hour of perfervid enthusiasm.

All the Scots who want to be in the Scotch Sweepstakes and win, had better mount their nags in this hour of favor and get away. A few discerning and canny critics are still alive, and the suspicion is gaining ground among them from a perusal of Ian Maclaren’s pages, that the great literary prophet of Paternoster-Row, while a delightful chroniqueur and a generous soul, is not altogether an infallible judge of the permanent and essential elements of robust and distinctive literature.

The one man of the Nineteenth Century who will be remembered when all others are forgotten, and whose name will go clattering down the Corridors of Time like a tin kettle to a dog’s tail, is Professor J. Dorman Steele. This man covers all Science and all Philosophy. He has compiled text books on seventeen subjects and over three million volumes of his works have been sold. Darwin, Humboldt, Spencer, Huxley—all fade into misty nothingness when we think of Steele, and bless my soul! what a suggestive name that is anyway!!

The Forum for March had an article concerning your Uncle Kruger and his folks. It was headed “Manners and Customs of the Boers.” But the compositor got it “Manners and Customs of the Boors,” just as if every one did not know only too well what they were already. I understand that nearly half of the edition was run before the mistake was discovered.

“If I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent Texas and live in Hell,” once said Phil Sheridan. But now comes The Fad, one of the Chip-Munk brood, printed on green paper at San Antonio, and claims that Texas has more real, sure-enough Culture than all of New England. This is only truism—Rodents!

Speaking of a certain very New Woman, Quilp says, “God made her, let her pass for a man.”

On sighting the Crookes tube in the direction of East Aurora we find there are some very choice things to appear in The Philistine within the next few months.—Exchange.

So far no charge has been made that the Philistines were mixing up in the theatrical business; but on every hand the air is full of complaints because the stage has fallen into the hands of the Children of Israel. Even Mr. Howells has turned Harper’s Weekly into a Periodical of Protest, and declares that the greed for dollars has dropped histrionics to a point where the drama is not only artistically decadent but positively demoralizing.

But a friend of mine takes issue with Silas Lapham and declares that there is a sure reaction just now in favor of plays with a strong ethical purpose. To prove his point he cites a certain curtain raiser called The Flea Hunt.

The scene opens, in this choice little fantasy, on the ennui of a pretty young woman, whose husband, a sea captain, is far across the water. The afternoons pass slowly for her; she cannot read and tosses on her boudoir lounge distressfully. To add to her uneasiness a young man across the way has had the impudence to send her flowers and a note, with a rendezvous for 3 o’clock. Indignation. Pride of conscious strength. Admiration. Curiosity. Hesitation. Remorse. Prayers to her husband’s portrait. Sighs. Wriggles. Pillowtossing. Thoughtfulness.

The clock strikes 2. Zut! She starts up guiltily, tiptoes across the room, and turns her husband’s picture to the wall. Now she is in a tempest of preparation with her street toilette. The time is growing short. She has her gloves, her hat, her cloak, her muff, her veil, her parasol, and stands at the open door to give a last apologetic look. Ouch! What is that! Can it be! Ouch! again. Certainly a flea is biting her neck—she reaches for it! Then the trouble begins. In the search for the nimble flea nearly everything the lady has on is cast aside. At last she finds it. But by this time she has revealed a very roly-poly tenement of clay with a center of gravity like a sofa pillow. Lingerie is strewn over chairs, tables, sofa and floor. She is clad only in very scanty, but dainty dimity. The clock is striking 3. Too late! she looks at the flea, first revengefully, then thoughtfully, then gratefully. Hesitatingly she slips across the room and turns her husband’s portrait to the light. Saved—providentially saved, saved by a flea! Curtain.

In 1859 there lived three miles north-east of Skowhegan an Old Farmer, and he subscribed for the New York Tribune. The reason he subscribed was because the Editor, one Horace Greely, wrote Hot Stuff. Now the Old Farmer was a great admirer of Mr. Greely and of the Hot Stuff and he induced several of his neighbors to subscribe for the Tribune on account of the Hot Stuff and the greatness of Mr. Greely. Now it chanced that Mr. Greely wrote on many themes and on a certain day he produced Hot Stuff on a certain subject about which no man should write unless he has had a Call. When the Old Farmer read that particular editorial he was very wroth and he wrote a very angry personal letter to Mr. Greely, cancelling his subscription; and he also induced his neighbors to cancel theirs.

About a year after this the Old Farmer went to Skowhegan with a load of slipperyellum, and walking into a grocery he found the Grocer reading the New York Tribune. The Old Farmer started, stared, and exclaimed, “What er—eh—what er that paper you be readin’?”

“The New York Tribune,” was the answer.

“My! Judas Priest—that can’t be—me and three other fellows ordered it stopped a year ago!”

I hear that an article by Mr. Cudahy is soon to appear in The Ladies Home Journal. The subject is not yet announced but it probably will be “The Pigs that Have Helped Me.”

Latest advices from the Librarian of Congress confirm the report that Mr. Brander Matthews’ whiskers are fully covered by copyright.

Who says that woman has more feeling than man? Her feelings are more shallow, and this being so more ripple on the surface is seen, that’s all. So says Nax Moredough.

No doubt but that Mr. Howells is a great man, but he would be a greater if he never used in print those tattered and attenuated expressions, “so to speak” and “as it were.” These ancient terms belong with the hoary oratorical, “If I may be allowed the expression.” Further than this, I have gibes and jeers in store for any man who says “from time immemorial.”

In the Forum for April Mr. Brander Matthews has a preachment entitled, On Pleasing the Taste of the Public. No man has made more anxious efforts to do it than Mr. Matthews.

I certainly have nothing against Mr. MacArthur nor against Mr. Dodd, who hires him. They are both nice men, and as an advertising sheet the Bookman is certainly skilfully conducted. But they shall not mislead the dear public if I can help it. On page 36 of the March issue the Bookman makes bold to tell us that Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married “in September of 1866.” And then in the next column “on March 9th, 1869, was born their son.” If James Russell Lowell were alive today I can imagine him saying, “I may be a bookman, but by the eternal I’m not the kind issued by Dodd, Mead & Company.”

Philosopher and prophet, Edward S. Martin, avers that when the Chip-Munk doubled its size it reduced its value one-half.

Way & Williams, Chicago, the publishers of Mrs. Wynne’s book, The Little Room and Other Stories, say that The Philistine’s mention of the volume sold seven thousand copies. Advertising rates made known on application.

“Should we have an Eleventh Commandment?” asked a youth of the Greatest Living Actress. “Most assuredly, no—we have ten too many now!” answered the divine Sara.

The fact that we have no “serving class” in America, and that some of us (or you) have wealth and insist on being waited upon, is a stream of tendency that makes for misery. The wives of very many of our rich men make a business of keeping up an establishment. They are not producers in any sense, and their one excuse for living is put out of court when we consider that “society” to them means neither affinity nor friendship. Their woes are in exact proportion to the number of servants that play tennis with their peace of mind. Or, more strictly speaking, the size of the house, showing the bigness of their cares, their happiness is in inverse ratio to the square of the domicile.

Writers who can gain an audience in a foreign and distant country reap some of the advantages of the cool and impartial interest of posterity. The English authors enjoy this advantage, and something more with the contemporary American reading public; but the English critics and public do not reciprocate our hospitality and impartiality in any degree, though there is a reported demand in England for American text books on electric lighting and improved methods of agriculture.

However, the future of the English speaking race is with us on this continent, and in Australia and in Africa, and so certain characteristics of the English mind and English literature will be remolded and touched and broadened by other racial influences. They have already been so modified and changed here since Emerson’s day. So, eventually, instead of Americans looking obsequiously over to Paternoster Row and Fleet street in all intellectual concerns, England will shrink into a small and insignificant provincial community, cut off from the rest of the race and its great centres of thought. Modern civilization will upset all the traditions of the old intellectual centres by making new ones. Thus our posterity will have a revenge on British condescension we can only enjoy in anticipatory imaginings. I wish I could live as long as Methusaleh to be alive then. England and English’ literature will perhaps finally hold the importance of the Provencal literature in France—it will be an archaic survival in the midst of the great throbbing heart of a great modern people. Our descendants will roar over our adulation of English female theological novelists.

The Chip-Munk “Notes” are all long past due; and most depressing to contemplate. It was after trying to make sense of them that Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote:

Here is a true story that I have pinched for the benefit of the Hivites, the Moabites, the Hittites and the Parasites: A nice young man in Scranton called on a nice young lady and spent the evening. When he arrived there was not a cloud in the sky, so he carried no umbrella and wore neither goloshes nor mackintosh. At ten o’clock when he arose to go, it was raining cats and dogs; the gutters o’erflowed and if it had been in Johnstown, it could properly have been called a Johnstown flood.

“My, my, my!” said the nice young lady, “if you go out in all this storm you will catch your death a’ cold!”

“I’m afraid I might!” was the trembling answer.

“Well, I’ll tell you what—stay all night; you can have Tom’s room, since he’s at college. Yes, occupy Tom’s room—excuse me a minute and I’ll just run up and see if it’s in order.”

The young lady flew gracefully up the stairs to see that Tom’s room was in order. In five minutes she came down to announce that Tom’s room was in order, but no Charles was in sight. Like old Clangingharp, he had passed out—no one knew where or how. But in a very few moments he appeared, very dripping and out of breath from running, a bundle in a newspaper under his arm.

“Why, Charles, where have you been?” was his greeting.

“Been home after my night shirt,” was the reply.

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