The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. II, No. 4)

An Italian kept a fruit stand on a corner where he had good aim at the people who came down from the elevated station and at those who went along two thronged streets. He sat most of the day in a backless chair that was placed strategically.

There was a babe living hard by, up five flights of stairs, who regarded this Italian as a tremendous being. The babe had investigated this fruit stand. It had thrilled him as few things he had met with in his travels had thrilled him. The sweets of the world laid there in dazzling rows, tumbled in luxurious heaps. When he gazed at this Italian seated amid such splendid treasure, his lower lip hung low and his eyes raised to the vendor’s face were filled with deep respect, worship, as if he saw omnipotence.

The babe came often to this corner. He hovered about the stand and watched each detail of the business. He was fascinated by the tranquility of the vendor, the majesty of power and possession. At times, he was so engrossed in his contemplation that people, hurrying, had to use care to avoid bumping him down.

He had never ventured very near to the stand. It was his habit to hang warily about the curb. Even there he resembled a babe who looks unbidden at a feast of gods.

One day, however, as the baby was thus staring, the vendor arose and going along the front of the stand, began to polish oranges with a red pocket-handkerchief. The breathless spectator moved across the sidewalk until his small face almost touched the vendor’s sleeve. His fingers were gripped in a fold of his dress.

At last, the Italian finished with the oranges and returned to his chair. He drew a newspaper printed in his language from behind a bunch of bananas. He settled himself in a comfortable position and began to glare savagely at the print. The babe was left face to face with the massed joys of the world.

For a time he was a simple worshipper at this golden shrine. Then tumultuous desires began to shake him. His dreams were of conquest. His lips moved. Presently into his head there came a little plan.

He sidled nearer, throwing swift and cunning glances at the Italian. He strove to maintain his conventional manner, but the whole plot was written upon his countenance.

At last he had come near enough to touch the fruit. From the tattered skirt came slowly his small dirty hand. His eyes were still fixed upon the vendor. His features were set, save for the under lip, which had a faint fluttering movement. The hand went forward.

Elevated trains thundered to the station and the stairway poured people upon the sidewalks. There was a deep sea roar from feet and wheels going ceaselessly. None seemed to perceive the babe engaged in the great venture.

The Italian turned his paper. Sudden panic smote the babe. His hand dropped and he gave vent to a cry of dismay. He remained for a moment staring at the vendor. There was evidently a great debate in his mind. His infant intellect had defined the Italian. The latter was undoubtedly a man who would eat babes that provoked him. And the alarm in him when the vendor had turned his newspaper brought vividly before him the consequences if he were detected.

But at this moment, the vendor gave a blissful grunt and tilting his chair against a wall, closed his eyes. His paper dropped unheeded.

The babe ceased his scrutiny and again raised his hand. It was moved with supreme caution toward the fruit. The fingers were bent, claw-like, in the manner of great heart-shaking greed.

Once he stopped and chattered convulsively because the vendor moved in his sleep. The babe with his eyes still upon the Italian again put forth his hand and the rapacious fingers closed over a round bulb.

And it was written that the Italian should at this moment open his eyes. He glared at the babe a fierce question. Thereupon the babe thrust the round bulb behind him and with a face expressive of the deepest guilt, began a wild but elaborate series of gestures declaring his innocence.

The Italian howled. He sprang to his feet, and with three steps overtook the babe. He whirled him fiercely and took from the little fingers a lemon.

Stephen Crane.

An article in a late number of The Philistine names Organized Charity as The Kind that Paul Forgot. Such an aspersion on a saint’s memory is itself uncharitable. If Paul knew his Bible he did not forget the injunction of the Old Testament: “I was a Father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out;” and Paul said himself to the Thessalonians: “If any man will not work neither shall he eat.” These precepts state two root principles of charity organization—information before reformation, and a flat denial of alms to the indolent. To deny their truth would imply a “Philistinism” of the obnoxious kind that Matthew Arnold had in mind when he said: “Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in its resistance to light.” Even Paul, by the way, was once such a Philistine, but we read that as he journeyed towards Damascus a great light shone around him and he became a new man.

“When letters of appeal to the newspapers are sent to a board of review,” our critic says, “impulse will be put in cold storage.” Possibly, but it would no longer be easier for people to work the newspapers than to work themselves. “Catalogue poverty,” he says, “quiz it, register it, dub it Case One; let hunger wait for an investigation, and if a bar sinister appears anywhere, deny food and shelter.” The last sentence could never have been written if its author had made some preliminary inquiries such as modern charity requires. The invariable rule of true charity is to relieve urgent distress instantly, and to forgive errors seventy times seven even, with a sympathy which never grows callous, if there is still a chance of helping. Paradoxical as it may seem, money is not a panacea for poverty. If drink has made a man poor, money will feed not him but his drunkenness. If improvidence is his fault, free lodging, free food, free clothes, or even work found ready-made, will only foster his improvidence. There are so-called charitable institutions which spend huge sums in gathering about them colonies of thriftless, indolent loafers, whose only hope of regeneration lies in the very spur of hunger which devoted men and women are laboring night and day to remove. It is “moral murder” to teach the poor that drunkenness, indolence and improvidence will be toled along and that a “poor face” will draw doles. To interfere lightly with the severe laws of Nature is to assume a grave responsibility. “Suppose the Father of us all did administer His beneficence on such a plan?” says our critic. Are we sure he does not?

Pauperism is a disease, and requires more skilled treatment and less amateur dosing. Only the most unregenerate complain of the hospitals because they catalogue sickness, register it, quiz it, dub it Case One, or even let suffering wait for an investigation, and refuse to administer soothing drugs which, like alms, give a temporary relief without curing, and are apt to create an appetite which is more harmful than the pain which they relieve.

The Moses has not yet appeared who shall lead the suffering masses out of the bondage of poverty, and we know not even which road he will go, but perhaps the smoothest way and the nearest way is not the one which will prevent backsliding. “And it came to pass that God led them out, not through the way of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure they return to Egypt, but God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea.”

Frederic Almy.

In a recent critical article on American letters in the London Atheneum is this sentence: “In point of power, workmanship and feeling among all poems written by Americans we are inclined to give first place to the Port of Ships of Joaquin Miller.”

[This is high praise, and whether deserved or not I leave to my readers to determine.—Editor.]

Sunset hour at the meridian of Paradise Flats: but no sunset was visible. It was the worse end of a bad December day. Out doors, all was one color, and the rain froze as it fell.

Before the big tenement stood a Russian sleigh, with an impatient pair of clipped chestnuts. A Roman sentinel in furs sat on the box, and his liveried mate groped in the dark hall for the habitat of John Jones, who had been “recommended.” John Jones lived there, but there was no evidence of it on the first floor. This tenement was not provided with a hall directory and a battery of bells. Poverty makes residence uncertain from month to month. Many a good man has been returned “not found” or “a fake,” because he had to try elsewhere when the rent came due.

On the fifth floor, a room that looked back over a net of railroads held John Jones’s treasures. Three little girls were keeping the stove warm. There was some coal in it, but the way it acted was proof that warmth is not always provoked by poking. The fire had a hungry look like the children, and like them, moreover, evinced an anxious desire to go out, cheerless as it was beyond the ineffective screen of the walls. The footman’s knock created a flutter in the little group. Who would knock at that door?

“It’s a p’liceman,” suggested little four-year-old Kit. The coal in the stove and a grape basketful more had been picked up on the tracks.

Hand-in-hand they lined up at the door and eight-year-old Annie opened it. Kit and the two-year-old pulled hard on the line when the towering footman entered.

“Does John Jones live here?”

“Yes,” said the eldest girl.

“John Jones, who registered at the Work and Aid Bureau?”

“I think so,” said the girl, cautiously.

“Sure!” put in the four-year-old.

“Where is he?”

“He’s out looking for some work, sir.”

John was a mechanic until over-production or under-distribution or something else turned everything upside down. Now he was looking for work of any kind—and not finding it.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s sick in bed, sir,” said Annie.

“Say, mister! Do you know what we’ve got?” piped the four-year-old. “We’ve got a new baby, and it’s a boy!”

A grunt of disgust was the lackey’s only answer. Well, what then? If John Jones had work, or a little money in the bank, it would be no reproach to him that the miracle of life had been wrought once more over in the corner of that room, and that there was one more mouth to feed. But this wasn’t business.

“Can you write?” the footman said to the girl.

“Yes, sir, a little,” she said.

“Write your name here,” he said, producing a receipt book.

The girl made a scratch where he indicated, with some tremor. Then he handed her a large package which he had held in his gloved hand. “This is for your father,” he said; “don’t open it until he comes,” and the vision of furry magnificence faded from sight.

John Jones, coming up the narrow stair, was almost crowded down again by the swelling cape of the man who was looking for him, passing down. Of course neither knew the other. A moment later the father with a heavy countenance entered the back room and asked in an anxious whisper how mamma was. Before the elder girl could answer the younger cried out, “O Papa! there was a splendid man here for you and he brought you somefing nice.”

The square package was a problem to the man. So large and so light. When it was opened the puzzle was no less. It was a picture—a beautiful woman’s head, with a pensive, tender look that might have been the Sphynx’s own schoolmarm stare for all it meant to him. As he looked for an explanatory mark somewhere a card dropped to the floor. This is what he read on it:

All this but the address line was printed. Below a form was filled in as follows:

Names,	John Jones.
Residence,	Paradise Flats.
Picture,	Psyche, by Smith.
Owner,	Jane Hodges McVickar.
Date of Loan,	December 16, 1895.
Picture to be called for,	December 23, 1895.

“Papa,” said four-year-old Kit, as the card fell from the nerveless hand of John Jones, “I fought it was somefing good to eat.”

The Latest Revision tells after this fashion what followed the Trial in the Wilderness:

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights he was afterward an-hungered.... And behold, angels came and patronized him.”

William McIntosh.

Yes, most potent seignors, a complaint! Persuade me not; I will make a star chamber matter of it.

Which of us—humble and much enduring devotees of the Muse—having somehow got our song or sonnet accepted and in the course of years published, has not waxed wroth to find it mischievously meddled with, the trail of the editor’s blue pencil over all its printed lines?

In prose editorial interference is exasperating enough. But in verse, where a comma misplaced, arbitrarily inserted or omitted, may change the whole meaning or effect of a pet phrase! And when the editor comes to manipulating words instead of punctuation marks, and juggling with rhymes even and with titles, what is to be said? What the author commonly says cannot be printed here.

I once knew a poetaster who wrote a handful of little rhymes which he called rather happily after his own notion, “Songs of a Year,” and which in due time appeared in print. The editor, however, had thought “The Four Seasons” a more taking title. The poetaster disagreed with him, but it was too late. Another effort of this same unfortunate he protested tearfully that he could not recognize in its printed form except by the strawberry mark, that is, the signature; and he said he wished the editor had revised that, too, while he was about it.

What is an editor? Is he omniscient? We know better. Are all the articles in his magazine supposed to bear the imprint of his ideas and style? When Mr. Howells, at an alleged salary of fifteen thousand a year, edited the Cosmopolitan and wrote most of it himself—well, you remember.

If the editor knows to a comma how he wants his poetry written, let him write it himself, as Mr. Gilder mostly does. If he thinks he can improve on the poetical style of his contributor and wants to put in his time that way, let him write and propose collaboration, or at least submit to the poor mortal of an author a plan of the contemplated improvements. But to go ahead on his own hook and change the whole complexion of the thing perhaps, and then send it out over the original signature? It is not honest.

The author relinquishes for a time the child of his brain, fondly expecting to get it back again in beautiful new clothes of type. What he does get is a changeling with dyed hair and a clothespin on its nose. Is he grateful? Hardly.

When the editor accepts a drawing for his magazine does he proceed to work it over, put in a few more shadows, touch up the high lights and perhaps alter the arrangement of the model’s back hair? Not as a rule.

A magazine is not a school for drawing, nor is it a literary kindergarten. An editor is not a pedagogue.

If he thinks a thing good enough to print, let him print it honestly as it was made; if not, let him return it with thanks and encourage the author to send it somewhere else. That author, if he is worth his Attic salt, would rather have his verses printed in the Podunk Thinker as he wrote them than in the Century with R. W. Gilder’s emendations.

Neith Boyce.

When Abiel Whitworth went to the assessor’s office to get fifty per cent. taken from the taxable value of his house and lot, he stepped jauntily into the room. Then he shuddered. “I want to see the assessor,” he faltered.

Now, the man who had lifted his head when he stepped on the rug before the official desk filled him with a vague alarm. He was of only medium size, not well put together: he had a curling black mustache, a heavy, monkey-like face, a miraculously clean shave, a political diamond in his shirt, new clothes and an air of brutal leisure that reminded one of a sphinx, or an alderman. But it was the shining, glassy, far seeing eye, with its lashes turned back, that startled Mr. Whitworth. It was so cold, so empty of expression, so thoroughly uncanny, that it scared him. After a long, searching look, in which he did not seem to breathe, the assessor bent his head and resumed the study of a paper that lay on the desk before him.

Mr. Whitworth waited; a clock ticked and buzzed somewhere in the room, emphasizing the silence: then he gulped and repeated, “I want to see Mr. Flannery, the assessor.”

Some seconds elapsed this time before the man at the desk raised his head again and transfixed him with another stare: then he resumed his reading. The man was wrong, in some way. Was he mad? He might be a vampire, or a ghoul, for he did not look or act like a human being. Mr. Whitworth became quite chilly in his blood.

“I don’t believe I want to see the assessor,” he said, huskily, and was about to turn away and run, when a solitary clerk, who had been toiling over a ledger in the back of the room, hastened forward and said, “Beg pardon, sir, but I was in the middle of a calculation and wanted to finish it. Can I do anything for you?”

“I wanted to see Mr. Flannery.”

“This represents Mr. Flannery,” said the clerk, “and represents him remarkably well, in more than one way. He is, if I may so call him, the official Mr. Flannery.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I dare say not. We don’t let everybody know about it.” And, calmly lifting Mr. Flannery’s head from his shoulders, the clerk reached down his neck and adjusted something inside of him. The sound of the clock stopped, and Mr. Flannery did not lift his head again after it was replaced.

Mr. Whitworth gasped.

“You see, sir,” added the clerk, “Mr. Flannery was appointed by Mayor Rourke, at the request of Boss McManus. It was supposed that he could read and write, for he has been quite successful in managing primary elections, and has made a good lot of money in the saloon business. But he can’t read and he is busy, so what was the use in his coming to the office? He had this wax figure of himself made to sit at this desk, and there is a spring attachment that works whenever anyone stands on that rug. The figure, you see, lifts its head once in twenty seconds, and that is all that Flannery does when he is here. The taxpayers have been kicking so hard about absentees that the boss and others have been stirring the office holders up and Flannery thinks it’s only right to make this much of a concession. Very few find out that it is not Flannery, except that he swears more. If you want to see the sure enough Flannery go down to his saloon on Columbus avenue. He comes here every second Saturday—he is very good about that—to get his pay.”

“Seems to me you are giving him away pretty freely.”

“Well, to tell the truth, I’m hoping to get his job myself, under the new mayor.”

In which Narrative an Allegory may perhaps be discovered without a Powerful Mind or a Microscope.

Charles M. Skinner.

The drama is queer. Life’s queer, for that matter, but queerness does most abound when Mr. Mansfield gives up elevating the stage and begins hoisting the lecture platform—or doesn’t, whichever is the latest news. Mansfield can earn some hundreds a week acting; wants to make it thousands, managing; fails, naturally, not having a spreadeagle mustache and sufficient capacity for the tender passion; abuses people for not supporting Art. Mansfield reminds the irreverent reader of Jno. Glimmer Screed, bewailing in the Forum that he can only make five thousand dollars a year by his puissant pen and that his children must eat breadless butter or butterless bread, or other incomplete dietary, and live in a flat. These considerations suggest a legislative enactment of the “be and hereby is” sort, assessing upon the taxpayers the cost of paying fifty thousand dollars a year each to all people who are so lacking in the sense of humor as to suppose it makes any difference whether they eat bread or snow.

The drama isn’t queerer than literature. Laureate Austin, mere mention of whose name has been known to split a horse’s sides, dedicates England’s Darling to the Princess of Wales by permission. No knowing whether the darling is the Princess or the Laureate without reading the verses, and that’s too much trouble.

Mr. Moulting Storrs Bigelow has lost the tail feathers of his prestige in the insurance business, which than his requires cheek even more adamantine.

Mr. Richard Harding Davis is being congratulated upon his “manly words about the Monroe doctrine,” wherewith the fifteen dollar a week hired-man-of-intellect in the Harper factory saved his fifteen thousand dollars a year article upon Venezuela from being quite so idiotic as it might have been. Dr. Conan Doyle prescribes peace with Great Britain to Uncle Sam, with a canny view to the sale of sedative Tales, uninterrupted by blockades. B’rer Crockett also loves the Americans. So does Sarah Grand. So would Screed and Beau Brummell Mansfield, if——

The way to get rich is to sell paper, not like the newspaper publisher, who sometimes makes a hit buying tree paper at two cents a pound and selling it at the rate of one hundred fakes for five cents; that’s an uncertain business and requires a disciplined conscience, not to speak of capital, which is more rare. No, sell paper of the kind recommended by the Bucyrus Authors’ Journal or the Dutch Flats Cable Railway to Parnassus. Here is the whole snap:

1. Personal Intelligence: “Du Maurier is to receive fifty thousand dollars and a paid up accident policy for The Martian.”

2. Helps for Young Authors: “Write only on one side of the paper. Use good cream paper, unruled, seven by ten. Mr. Gilder always writes his sonnets with violet ink. Keep a written record of all manuscripts sent out, etc.”

3. Advertisements.

Wherefore hath Mr. Screed written himself down an ass. Yea, a wild ass. If he values money more than doing what he wants to do, let him sell seven by ten paper, violet ink and manuscript records, and let us have Peace.

Mr. Sothern makes an announcement. For production next year he has accepted An Enemy to the King, and thus tosses into the arena Mr. R. N. Stephens, of Philadelphia, who made the play. Mr. Stephens has a past. Having endured for some years as a dramatic editor the honeyed wheedlings of theatrical advance agents, he crouched for a spring last year while painstaking audiences beheld his dramatic works, The White Rat, The Sidewalks of New York, Girl Wanted and others, and then he began working out swift and cosmopolitan vengeance as an agent on all the remaining dramatic editors. One afternoon before that, however, Mr. George Marion, the veteran though happy stage director for Messrs. Davis and Keogh, contractors, sat in their Herald Square Factory smoking the most dynamic cigar ever taxed.

“What are you doing, George?” piped a voice.

“Oh, I’m not very busy,” replied Mr. Marion, apprehensively.

“Well, you go over to Pittsburg and tell John Kernell we’ll have a new play ready for him tomorrow;” and turning around, the voice, though twisted, remarked, “Stevens, you write Kernell a play and send it to him tonight. Call it The Irish Alderman.”

Mr. Stephens has written eighty plays in a single week. His nights he spends with Sherlock Holmes, and in his dreams he converses with the White Robed Mahatmas. His brain food is scrapple, and he draws his strength from Johann Malt’s street car poster. Mr. Sothern’s courage must proceed from the gods.

Mr. Daniel Frohman, the theatrical manager, to distinguish himself from whom Mr. Charles Frohman bills his name with an emphatic score under the “Charles,” has achieved for the drama something dignified enough to be called an episode. He saw what Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Mr. George Alexander, Mr. Richard Mansfield and others denied—that Mr. Anthony Hope’s novel, The Prisoner of Zenda, needed very little mending to make a play of the first class. For this lonely act Mr. Frohman richly deserves a monument in Fourth avenue opposite his templar Lyceum. A Daniel certainly came to judgment. Zenda on the stage is great. Mr. Edward Rose, who made the play, has not attempted to clear up the moats and castles and bridges, which in an infantry novel I never could understand, but he has made very human beings and used a precious lot of Mr. Hope’s dialogue. Zenda has a bad ending. There is no question about that. I can just imagine my friend, Mr. Adv. W. Bok, sitting through the martyr separation of Rassendyll and Flavia and scuffling away thinking “Ugh, how mean!” People that croak over Mercutio’s untimely taking off are of the same ilk; and they wish A Tale of Two Cities ended happily. Mean, are these nobilities. Rupert in the play, scornful-merry, thinks it is the meanest ending possible; and chained he goes laughing away, taunting Rassendyll with being the biggest of fools for giving up love and a kingdom for honor’s sake. Fritz thinks not, though. Manfully he strides up to Rassendyll, a great chunk of grief on his palate, and taking the unwounded hand, shakes it fiercely and silently, as if his allegiance were bound with that clasp, and when he let go he would be a traitor forever. And when he goes away, old Sapt comes; and he thinks not, like Fritz. He grips the “lad’s” hand while a tear falls on the bloody bandage Rassendyll wears, and a magnet somewhere somehow snaps his loyal old knee to the floor in reverence for this “lad” that ought to be king if he isn’t. Flavia? She thinks not, too. She is not to die, like Camille, but is doomed to a more horrible tragedy: she must live on. She speaks the brave, spirit-crushing word that decrees the parting, and Rassendyll goes away, too. The red badge of courage is on his rag-slung arm, and there is a royal Vestal flame in his agonizing heart. “Is love the only thing?” The tear-blinded eyes of many a spectator of Mr. Sothern and Miss Kimball’s sweet and pathetic performance testify that the average man or woman thinks, yes. I don’t know.

In a late number of the Paris edition of the New York Herald I find this: “According to the new etymology a Philistine is one who believes in health, good cheer and manly self reliance as opposed to languid, mawkish sentimentality—that sure breeder of refined vice and degeneracy.” I really could not put the matter better than this myself.

My, My, My! but the “Note” that took the Five Dollar Prize was rotten!

In the American reprint of “Without Prejudice” sixty errors occur; the proof reading was left to Miss Mayme, who came up from the bindery: the Only Lynx-Eyed being on a journey.

My correspondents still continue to chew about the statement that this world is Hell and we are now being punished for sins committed in a former life. One woman writes me that if this world is surely Hell then there must be many devils here. “This being so, who are they?” she asks. I can only answer this in the words of a great poet who on being asked who the Decadents were, replied testily: “The others—always the others.”

The reason that it is called “Children’s Department” is because it is conducted by papa’s little boy.

I call the attention of Gunner Antonio Kumstalk to the fact that while the Youth’s Companion and the Ladies’ Boklet furnish the pictures for Art and Underwear, the Boston Commonwealth still supplies the text.

Law is now being successfully taught by correspondence. In fact the most brilliant legal lights of the future will probably be men who never went to school a day in their lives—simply hit the principles of Blackstone by correspondence while working on a farm. Journalism, too, is taught by correspondence and also in night schools. Twenty first-class lessons can be had for five dollars, with promise of position as Managing Editor to all who run the course and are glorified—that is graduated.

I am informed that the reason young Mr. Bumball of Chicago is often spoken of by his father as Issachar is fully explained in verse 14 of Chapter xlix of Genesis.

My good friend Walter Hippeau Merriam writes me from New York: “As a Philistine in good standing, with dues paid to 1901, I wish to exert my prerogative to protest. In your February issue you allow Mr. Macpherson Wiltbank to put forth some very startling “facts” concerning a musician named Chopin. The musician was not fertile enough in matters of revenge to ever originate that story of The Little White Black Bird. It was the work of an obscure poet named De Musset and can be found in his Contes, (Charpentier Librarie Editeur, 39 Rue de l’Universite, Paris, 1854.) If the Datary has not fined Mr. Wiltbank twenty-five skekels for trifling with truth, please see that it is done at once.”

The New Cycle has changed its name. Being essentially feminine, and this being leap year beside, of course it had a perfect right to do so. The move I understand was made to circumvent the joker who had a way of saying Wheels. Neith Boyce did not like this, for she said it was twitting on facts. She even threatened to resign if the name was not changed and a prettier cover used. The manager swore he would never be dictated by a woman, and swearing he would never consent, consented—changing the name (but not its nature) and getting that pretty cover. Phosphorus in editorial rooms is at a premium, and The Lotos (that’s the new name) cannot afford to lose Neith Boyce.

The Cosmopolitan (not the magazine composed merely of printers’ ink) contains on page 425 of its February, 1896, issue a poem (?) by one Gustav Kobbe, entitled Obediah Folger. In Hundred Choice Selections, 1872, No. 5, under the title The Nantucket Skipper, and in American Union Speaker, 1865, as The Alarmed Skipper, is the identical story now published by John Brisben Walker as something new! Nothing about it is new except the word combinations. The only possible excuse that I can see is that both the plagiarist-author and his publisher have never been in Boston and never heard of that eminent author and publisher, James T. Fields, (1817-1881), who composed the first poem on this idea.

It was well enough for Shakespeare to ask “What’s in a name?” seeing that he never realized what his own would stand for in the scroll of time; but do our modern writers who are not satisfied with one, but insist on forcing three and sometimes more names apiece upon public observation, take the same modest view of the significance of a cognomen? Not when there are three or more together, evidently. In short, and let us remember that “brevity is the soul of wit,” the natural inference is that they hold their signature as of more consequence than the screed that follows it. And perhaps they are right in this, though in some cases that is only a left-handed compliment.

The Revolutionary condition of Literature in America: Old Men sitting in shade on door steps; sometime smoking, always talking: of paper battles won in many magazines; of thrusts with pen; parries with pencil; ink bespattered veterans o’ercome, all in wordy warfare; of merry meetings turned to stern alarums; a so-long manuscript at so-much a page. Then Boys come by detached from Philistinic Hosts: make mud balls; revile; jeer; hiding behind bibelots. These two Factions, the Old and Young; the Senile and the Callow, the Wornout and the Willing: this is all there is to Literature in America. So saith that paper which with rare satire calls itself Truth.

Mr. John Langdon Heaton, who writes good poetry (and bad), suggests that the use of the fig leaf in these notes is “indelicate.”

Backed by the sanity of keen observation and good sense, the stories of “Octave Thanet” come out of the West like young Lochinvar. Recently from Miss French came a note of commendation enclosing the first stanza of a Philistine Hymn. Hearing that great things are in the air, I hasten to print these lines lest they be grabbed by greedy publishers:

The esteemed Whims of New York begins a new series. It will be followed rapidly by Jims, Skims, Limbs and Pims. We already have had Chips, Dips, Skips and Pips. I learn that Grandmother Chip-Munk is exceedingly proud of her interesting brood and is still laying eggs.

And the flood continues. I wonder what the definite aim of all the periodicals may be? At any rate I wish them all success, and hope they may “try to do which,” as the French say, “is that which it is that which it is what.” High aims are good things, we are told, and doubtless, like the mariners, we should steer our courses by the stars. Still there is good game which lies close to the earth if we knew how to hunt for it—and there’s the fun of hunting anyway, game or not.

Colonel Frank L. Stanton, able poet, of Atlanta, Georgia, is whirling his wheels too rapidly. Seventeen yards of poetry a day, seven days in the week, is too much for all concerned. The Colonel started with foam, and already is running to emptyings, namely:

The office boy can rhyme you in that style till the cows come home.

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