The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. II, No. 5)

I observe that the New Woman still sharpens her lead pencil with the scissors.

The Chicago Times-Herald, realizing that owing to emanations from the Stock Yards, the Pierian Spring might need a drainage canal, is making an effort to dam the obnoxious flow, by offering prizes for the very best machine-made prose and verse. The literary editor who was selected to do the damning has recently, in a marked manner, proved his competency for the “job.” He awarded the prize for the best original poem on the romantic subject, “Chicago,” to a young lady from Indianapolis who sent him a copy of B. F. Taylor’s Fort Dearborn, which was an original and a favorite twenty years ago. When the editor’s attention was called to the prehistoric flavor of the prize poem, he treated the matter with fine scorn, admitting that it was true, that there had been a “writer of some local reputation named Taylor who had originally written the poem.” He then intimated that any plumber’s daughter from Indianapolis, who would thus attempt to deceive a guileless Chicago editor, ought to be well spanked. And straightway he impaled her on the turnspit of public opinion and “roasted” her like an articled literary chef, and in fact the girl deserved it for wasting her time in copying poetry when she could have employed it more profitably in making out her father’s bills. The literary editor handled this matter so diplomatically that the proprietors of the journal rewarded him with an order on McClurg for a copy of B. F. Taylor’s Old Time Pictures which contains the poem.

In China there is no copyright law. An author’s reward consists in the thought that he has expressed his idea and thereby benefitted mankind. My reward so far for good work has been the pure Chinese article.

Walter Blackburn Harte has engaged board at the Widow Blannerhassett’s, second door east of the blacksmith shop. At Johnson’s grocery last night Harte beat old Si Emery three straight games at checkers—and that is no small matter.

Aunt Polly, of the old school, lives with a niece who is a modern of the moderns. Hearing the expression “decadent” used in connection with sundry articles in The Yellow Book and The Chip-Munk, she looked into the matter herself when left alone after dinner and the young folks had gone to see and hear The Scarlet Letter.

She read until her spectacles began to quiver and her cap strings heaved upon her breast like signals of distress in a brooding tempest.

The books suddenly fell with a dull thud.

“Decayed! well, I should say so!” groaned Aunt Polly, as she began rocking in her chair at the rate of a mile in two forty. What could she have been reading?

It’s a curious comment on our civilization that a priest in the Catholic Church should (or could) make himself obnoxious to a very large number of his townsmen by advocating total abstinence from strong drink. Yet this is exactly what the Rev. Father George Zurcher of Buffalo has done. It seems some merry brewers have been playing pranks on the good Father by sending him cases of bottled lager with four-horse teams, brass bands and decorated vehicles. It was awfully funny to see the big wagons rattle up to the little house that stands beside the church and then behold fat men with faces like full moons and noses like glowing oriflammes lug in the lager and deposit it on the priestly steps. Then other jokers took the matter in hand and sent hurry-up telephone orders for wet goods to be delivered at the Rectory. But Father George is a bit of a joker himself and at the same time is dead in earnest as the true humorist always is. And now when invoices of “Old Tom,” or “Triple XXX,” or “Monongahela” arrive Father George walks out in sight of the people who have gathered to see the fun, solemnly crosses himself, murmurs a prayer and proceeds to slam the bottles against the side of the pretty brick church. Slap-dash, spang, bang, zipp they go! Corks fly, red moisture flows and glass covers the sidewalk like hail after a Kansas blizzard. Some of the assembled citizens laugh, some cheer, others look solemn and deprecate the waste of valuable goods that might be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Still others, sadder still, with sensitive spirits, deem it sacrilege to throw things at a sacred edifice, and ask for Bible justification.

But Father George, being a most unreasonable man, and a perverse, says that the best use a church can be put to is that of a barricade on which to smash bottles of Extra Triple XXX. In fact, he earnestly declares that his church was built with this special idea in mind and that the foundation is so deep and the walls so solid that if all the demijohns in Buffalo were banged plumb against it, it would still stand secure.

And the upstart of it all is that over a hundred bicycle tires have been punctured in that block during the last month and no wheelman feels safe from broken glass within a mile limit in any direction of St. Joseph’s church. So the police have notified the Father that he must smash no more bottles in the street on penalty. And furthermore, on the statute books of the State of New York is a law known as “The Bottlers’ Protective Act.” This law makes it a misdemeanor to wilfully break a beer bottle in the great Empire State. The Beer Bottlers’ Association, in order to uphold its dignity, is about to bring action against Father George under this law, all as legally provided, and the end is not yet.

We now have the Lotus, the Lotos and the Lettuce. The latest is The Prairie Dog. Its hole is in Lawrence, Kansas, and it is patterned after the Chip Munk. Verily, like begets like.

The Drumtochty folks are both good and witty. And it looks a bit as if that old idea that a joke cannot be gotten into the head of a Scotsman without trepanning is a mistake. Some say, though, that there is no such place as Drumtochty; yet the same remark has been made about East Aurora. But Dodd, Rott & Company declare that Drumtochty exists, and in their last Price List they insert this poem, which they say fitly describes the Land of parritch:

No Scot has arisen so far to deny the allegations set forth; but an Englishman has, and he winds up with this:

And now Mr. H. O. Mac Arthur, who edits The Bookman, has offered a reward of seven dollars and fifty cents for the name and address of the Englishman aforesaid.

If Rider Haggard had been Lew Wallace what would She have been?

Conan Doyle used to print good things before he made a success; but now that he has found a market, what’s the use!

I have wrestled patiently and mightily with a volume called A Study of Death, by H. M. Alden, and have been worsted. Any man who will chase Mr. Alden into a corner and get a plain simple answer to anything shall be crowned with honor.

“You may talk of all subjects save one, namely, your maladies,” said Emerson. Yet in each issue of the Cosmopolitan Andrew Lang takes the public into his confidence concerning his bodily ills.

The tendency to play flim-flam with their names is a penchant of the Inklings. No sooner does a mortal have a bit of manuscript accepted than he gives himself a middle name if he hasn’t one, and drops it out if he has. Some in fact petition the legislature for brand new handles and have themselves rechrisumed by a priest, as recently was the case in Boston; the man’s age being thirty-six. Others add a hyphen and join two names with a philological integument that makes one think of the Siamese twins.

The queerest freak of this kind perhaps is the case of the Gilder-Family-Robinson. The name as it first appears on the Parochial Register is Gildersleeve. But when Judge Gildersleeve shot in the American Rifle Team and made a bad score at Wimbledon, the sleeve was cut off in certain instances. In other words, the name was raveled and worn with short sleeves—or no sleeves at all, like a bodice or stomacher.

Now that William Watson has been knighted we see it is spelled Watson-Guilder. But the latest development in this peculiar evolution is a letter from Sir William Watson disclaiming all relationship with the Watsons of America. The closing paragraph of this epistle is worthy of note: “It is true that I was caught and knighted by the Queen, as a certain flippant American paper has put it; but any American who hopes to add lustre to his name by claiming kinship with me should be caught and knouted.”

The London Graphic thinks that Judge Grant is not so great a man as his father, the General. That’s a matter of opinion.

The Frederick A. Stokes Company has issued a pretty book, written by Mrs. Walford, entitled A Bubble. I will prick it in my next number.

If literature does not pay, we can still beg—if to dig we are ashamed!

Union Down by Mr. Scott Campbell is not an imitation of Thistle Down, as has been sometimes stated. And furthermore is the Boston Library right in classing Thistle Down as light literature?

The Lynx-Eyed being yet on a journey the Chip-Munk spells it “Carlysle.” Or is it only a pricking of conscience for quoting in dead earnest from the works of Carlisle, who now is only spoken of by scholars in connection with Imogen Such, Abe Slupsky, Thomas Collins and Wigelow Vorse?

William Marion Reedy, who holds The St. Louis Mirror up to Nature, is one of the strongest writers that this glorious Republic contains. He has wit and better still he has humor. He writes with a pen that does not scratch; and in his ink there is a goodly dash of Attic salt but no vitriol. Yet when Reedy declined the Ph. D. offered him by the Chicago University, and said in his letter “I hardly consider myself worthy to be so honored by Chicago’s great institution of learning,” was it tincture of iron or what? Anyway, Rockefeller’s mad.

A Boston paper describes Mr. Hornaday’s book, The Man Who Became a Savage, as “an artistic romance, penned by a man who believes in art for art’s sake.” From other sources I hear it spoken of as “a novel with a purpose, written by a crank with a tandem hobby.” The National Brewer’s Gazette calls it “a musty piece of bombastic fustian, written by a ranting Methodist preacher.”

I understand that a movement is on foot in Chicago to treat divorce as a sacrament. And as a straw that tells which way the wind blows in the Windy City, please note that Judge Gibbons has recently issued an order that a certain man shall be paid twenty-five dollars per week alimony by his former wife.

Last week all of the Boston papers contained a large picture of J. Stilman Smith, secretary to Dr. Edward Everett Hale. It was explained that Dr. Hale is the author of etc., etc., etc., and the reason that Smith is shown to the world is because he had a severe attack of influenza coupled with poster-mania, and was cured by taking two boxes of Dr. Muckyroot’s pills. Great is Dr. Hale! Great is Dr. Muckyroot! Great is Smith!

I warn the public against a book called Youth: A Poem of Soul and Sense, by Mr. Michael Monahan. It is dedicated to “The True and the Chaste,” which evidently was an attempt to flatter me. But I’m not for sale. Still, I read the book—read it to Her—read it through, and we two voted that it could not be safely recommended: for many people on reading it would be very much shocked and the dear public shall not be shocked if I can help it. Portions of the book are addressed to the poet’s wife, and several of the poems (the best) I believe were written by her. Now a man who is not enough of a man to do his work without calling in his wife to help him is not much of a man after all—that’s just what I mean and I don’t care who knows it!

And here comes from Emma Eggleson, Sumner, Iowa, something that is too choice even for my Waste Basket:

I welcome David B. Hill to the ranks of the Philistines. There are some things about the more or less disingenuous David that I don’t like, but when he slings a pebble at the gluttony that calls itself public life in Washington, he strikes twelve. It was Emerson who spoke of “the riot of the senses to be seen in American Hotels,” and when Mr. Hill stands in the gilded bar-room of the Ebbitt House and asks “Are we a Christian people?” the question is in order.

My brother Anthony’s little girl calls all medicine Nasty Stuff. The little girl much resembles her uncle. Not many grown-ups know as much as she. She is very smart, which surely is better than to be big, for instance like Conan Doyle, who was described by that Barnum of Art, James B. Pond, in his catalogue as “a large man, weighing full two hundred and twenty pounds.” Now the distinguished Veterinary, just named, besides lecturing, also writes on medical topics, putting his theses in form of novels. He just grovels in pathology and wallows in therapeutics. He is ever administering boluses to his heroes and emetics to his heroines—and readers. In that story of a box-stall, The Stark-Monroe Letters, he displays vials, bottles, droppers, corks, iodoform gauze, trepanning tools, silver treacheas, catgut thread, antiseptic cotton and scalpels. The man who can read two of the Stark-Monroe Letters without being salivated shall have The Philistine gratis for a year. I beg of Dr. Doyle that he will read Science and Health by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and forever eschew Nasty Stuff in literature.

Brander Matthews’ little tinkle is heard again in Harper’s this month. He arrives with a belated Vignette, in which he tells as usual all about Many Things. The Maverick’s plan is simple. It doesn’t tax the inventive powers and at the same time it is capable of almost infinite extension, for it consists merely in describing the places of amusement and the familiar parks and street corners of the metropolis. Slight variations in the attenuated love story are necessary and care must be taken to work in something appropriate to the season or that has a newspaper vogue, but all the rest is purely topographical. There is absolutely no end to it, for the hero can be made to have his emotion of triumphant or disappointed love at the football game, at the opening night at the opera, at a chrysanthemum show, at St. Thomas church or at the Duke’s wedding, and in each case there is material for a separate story. It is a limitless sausage with link added to link so it can go clear around the world, and the Maverick’s world is small, anyway. The scheme is glorious; it is limitless. All up and down Fifth Avenue bits of romance can be woven into every block. A case of disappointed affection at Washington Square for story No. 1; true love at the Brevoort House for No. 2; hopeless longing at the corner of Tenth street for No. 3, and so on up to Harlem. Call these Vignettes of Fifth Avenue. They would be the first of The Avenue Series, which when completed, would be followed by The Side Street Series, and this in turn by a set of sketches arranged according to wards or voting precincts in the lower part of the city. Then take up all the parks in order, the theaters, the hotels, the music halls.

You see, the breezy Brander is doing in fiction what has so often been done with success in our recent drama. His description of Carmencita’s dancing, of a Broadway cable car, or Macy’s by moonlight, corresponds exactly to the introduction on the stage of a live baby, or a really and truly fire engine, or a genuine puddle of water into which one of the characters falls with a bona fide splash, to the great delight of the galleries. The reader’s simple heart rejoices at the recognition of familiar lamp posts and L stations as the hero walks through Twenty-third street and takes the Sixth avenue car to Herald Square. He loves to hear how the electric lights flicker and sputter, how the clock on the Herald Building strikes nine and how the cabs drive up and down, for sakes alive! he has seen these very things with his own eyes.

He is clever—is the unbranded Maverick—to have hit on this method. It is a mine that can be worked without effort. To twaddle lucratively and prattle with profit, ah! that is an art worth knowing! It brings the Harper smiles and the soft sinecures of literature.

Of this issue there have been printed, in addition to the regular edition, one hundred copies of The Philistine on Ruisdael hand-made paper, with the advertising pages on Japanese Vellum. These numbers are stitched with silk, have extra wide margins and are bound in a special Holland paper, purposely imported by John Dickinson & Company, Limited, for this issue. Each copy will be numbered and signed by one of the editors. The price of these de luxe numbers is one dollar each. Address

THE PHILISTINE,
East Aurora,
New York.

Quarterly. Illustrated.

“If Europe be the home of Art, America can at least lay claim to the most artistically compiled publication devoted to the subject that we know of. This is Modern Art.”—Galignani Messenger (Paris).

“The most artistic of American art periodicals. A work of art itself.”—Chicago Tribune.

Fifty Cents a Number. Two Dollars a Year.
Single Copies (back numbers) 50 Cents in Stamps.
Illustrated Sample Page Free.

Arthur W. Dow has designed a new poster for Modern Art. It is exquisite in its quiet harmony and purely decorative character, with breadth and simplicity in line and mass, and shows the capacity of pure landscape for decorative purposes.—The Boston Herald.

Price, 25 Cents in Stamps,
Sent Free to New Subscribers to Modern Art.

L. Prang & Company, Publishers.
286 ROXBURY STREET, BOSTON.