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

So then they have gone to their account—the princes of humor and song. All have their reward of silence. Some already stand in the deepening shade of oblivion. The language of earlier eulogy would have some reference to the sheaves they bring to their harvest. The more sharply real imagery of to-day calls for a change of figure, and substitutes for sheaves the black bundles of the clothing district that we see borne by pallid women in cotton drapery, with needle-pricked fingers, on Saturday mornings. For the sweat shop has engulfed them all. They fed the yawning demand for “copy” till their rest came.

It is a strange sequence of change from the time of American didactics, when literature thought and spoke as a child, with the simplicity of childhood and single aims. Deeper soundings have been made in every department of letters than the pellucid ripple of the Osgood-Hemans-Longfellow days afforded. A dozen of our poets have told more that is in human hearts than the Sunnyside group ever gauged. Riley has quickened more smiles and tapped more tears than Poe with his property Niobes and his taxidermist shudders put in the verse that ranked him among our immortals. The humor that bubbled in Artemus Ward, Showman, was clarified and made high proof in the satire of Burdette and the Danbury man. The child songs of Field are truer than those of Willis and Sigourney and the Cary sisters. Bret Harte in the stately march of Miss Blanche’s monologue and the “Saber cuts of Saxon speech” made more vivid war pictures than all the trumpeters of the abolition period. The paragraphers succeeded the phonetic spellers in the field of humor and bettered their instruction. The short story writer took the place of the two volume novelist, and the poetry of direct appeal superseded the didactic inheritance wherein classic types were represented by domestic lay figures scarcely more automatic.

The successive groups—the paragraphers, the short story builders, the dialect poets, the feulletonists, the humorists of the Bailey and Nye school, met the same fate. Prosperity opened its jaws and nearly all have disappeared therein. The making of monumental newspapers was the fatal suction in which each group was lost. Riley celebrating Hoosier scenery in dialect bouts rimes and Mark Twain “moving wild laughter in the throat of death” on the lecture platform, are survivals. The multiplex Hoe has done the business for each succeeding phase of American sentiment and humor since the magazines degenerated into compends of crochet and pseudo-biography.

In Mr. James L. Ford’s “Literary Shop” the author reads a severe lesson to the young people who have ambition to write and be printed. They should do newspaper work, he says. The desire for covers and immortality is reprobated. It is to much more that they should know life, and especially the life beyond the confines of the barbed wire fence that shuts out the odorous East side of the metropolis. But Mr. Ford does not tell his young people of a literary shop that stifles more genius than the verse works in Jersey City or the anglomaniac reminiscence mills on Union Square. He has forgotten the metropolitan paper that counts its pages by the ream. What the exclusive clique-ridden magazine discourages by closed doors the Sunday maelstrom swallows alive. The glory of bigness is the destruction of individuality in literary work. The brand of the sweat shop is on all the yawning jaws consume—like the slaver cm the boa’s feast.

The successor of the humorist and the domestic poet is the caustic free lance of the little magazines. The reaction is a sequence of the unreasoning greed of the sweat shop. The bibelot is born of the surfeit of the big newspaper. Readers seek it out—stawed with too much for their money. And it is a hopeful sign for individuality in literature that a clean cut idea is valued for a time more than quantity of words on paper, even if the latter have the vanishing magic of a name.

Tonnage has had its day in the literature of America. The product of the literary sweat shop is taking its rank with the other things commercially dear to the money changers and despised of all Philistines.

William McIntosh.

(An Old Song Resung.)

It having come to my notice that nine out of ten of the people who buy this magazine read from the back page forward, on account of the phosphorus in these “notes,” I have decided to make the Side Talks in future fully one-half of the entire magazine. The large crop of potatoes, and the prosperous condition of the School of Philosophy, make it easier for me to be wiser and more joshuescent than ever before.

I note a disposition in some quarters to roundly censure the western college paper that dished over that old joke of Dean Swift’s, and reported Mr. Hubbard dead. Why, that story is as true as anything the present editor of the intercollegiate periodical has written in the calendar year!

In summing up a comparison between two prominent literary men, one of whom is keenly malicious, and the other graspingly selfish, Clangingharp decided in favor of the latter in this wise: “I don’t like either, but if you demand which kind it is best to encourage, I say as Congressman Horr said of the farmers of the south, ‘Less hell and more hogs.’”

A modest knock was heard at Heaven’s Gate. “Who is it?” called St. Peter.

“A Philistine!” came the assuring answer.

“Goodness! We don’t get anything but Philistines now-a-days,” remarked the old gentleman. “Wait a few moments until there is a dozen ready to come in and I’ll open the gate!”

In Munsey’s (circulation seven million) for July, first column on page 512, is this expression, “that terrible foe of the aborigine—the demon familiarly personified as John Barleycorn.”

Oh, oh, oh! This passion for saying something else, when you wish to say a thing, is the terrible foe of the inkling aborigine—familiarly personified as Munsey’s Monkey.

About that picture of Miss Jeannette Gilder in the September Bookman—go on with you, I didn’t say a thing, did I?

Skipkinson Smith, who is quite a Hivite himself, is said to have said that Clangingharp’s scheme of making photographic reproductions of all rough drafts of your poems, so your biographer could trace the progress of your soul-evolution, was pinched from Cudahy, and is rot in any event.

The Rev. Doctor Slicer once went down into a Cornish mine. After traversing the murky moral darkness through various winding ways, the safety lamp carried by the guide suddenly began to splutter; the flame shot up, flared, flickered and the wires became red hot, showing the presence of fire-damp.

“Is there no danger?” asked the clergyman of the miner.

“Well, I’ll tell you. You see the flame now is there?”

“Yes!”

“Well, when it gets to there, you and me will be in hell in a minute.”

Calvinism has gone, but it had several advantages: for one thing, it gave you peace by supplying a hell for your rivals and enemies.

If some latter-day skeptics had been amongst the twelve apostles, poor Thomas would hardly have received honorable mention.

Mr. William McIntosh, author of a fine article printed herein, is the Great Original Philistine. He is also Managing Editor of the Buffalo News, a paper that has a larger circulation than any daily between New York and Chicago. But Mr. McIntosh will live in history because he wrote the leading article in the first number of the Philistine Magazine, and not because he is Managing Editor of the Buffalo News, a paper that has a larger circulation than any daily between New York and Chicago.

“Where do you get your plots?” asked the interviewer of Mr. Zangwill.

“I’ll tell you, young man, if you’ll say nothing about it: I get my plots from stories that are sent me for criticism by little boys and girls.”

“But does not your conscience trouble you?”

“Oh, no. You see it gives the little boys and girls a chance to call attention to themselves by crying aloud that they have been robbed.”

It is now pretty generally conceded that Steve Crane is in the secret pay of the British Government, with intent to throw all possible discredit on the patriotism of the American Volunteer.

Scribner’s for July shows a picture entitled, “Mr. Hornaday at work on his Bengal Tiger.” Now my friend Hornaday, being a genuine Jebusite, is really a fine looking man; but Frank Stockton writes me that in the picture it is a toss-up to know which is Hornaday and which is the tiger.

In the Missus’ Home Journal of Philadelphia it is learned that “Ice cream may be eaten with either a fork or a spoon.” It is so nice to have an option in these important matters. Sometimes it is inconvenient to gum it over the edge of a butter plate in the New York fashion.

It is still permissible to wear a white tie in daylight—especially if the tie is fresh.

Populist whiskers are worn long and bloomers short.

Finger bowls are made larger this season—with fluted edges. This avoids mistakes.

We have proceeded so far in our imitation of foreign refinements that one who reads the Loidy’s Own may easily determine where to improve on Providence in the giving of good gifts. The Loidy’s advises that “In a hotel one only tips those servants who have rendered some special service. It is not necessary to tip servants for doing their usual work.” In private life the old-fashioned providential way of bestowing on the just and the unjust, still prevails.

If you would have friends, be one.

The ’Bus drivers of London are a proud and ’aughty class; yet they recognize a gentleman at sight, and often unbend—showing a friendliness bordering on confidence. Among them I have several dear friends. The true type wears a ’igh ’at, a ’igh collar and a red scarf, dimun pin, kid gloves and in the lapel of his coat is a half-blown moss rose, supplied stealthily by some sweet maid. Then he has his own private lap robe, used only in fine weather, with his initials worked in yellow worsted across the center. I never saw John the slightest frustrated or impatient. He may be “laid out,” or bumped into, or bump into others, which he prefers, yet the reins are still held lightly in one hand and with the whip in the other, he tosses a kiss to some fair lidy, and all so deftly done that none but she (and I) understand. ’Bus conductors get only half the pay of drivers and are a cringing, knavish lot, totally unfit to associate with gentlemen, and are never recognized by women who possess any degree of self respect.

I went to the Tabernacle where Spurgeon, the son of his father, preaches to six thousand people. The great man waved his arms, stamped wildly and spoke with vehemence of the iniquities of the wicked city of London. “Why does not God sink the place in a night, as he did Sodom and Gomorrah!” shrieked Mr. Spurgeon.

A man from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, seated next me, wrote on the fly leaf of his hymn book: “Because Henry Irving, play actor; William Morris, infidel, and Zangwill, Jew, live here.”

I see that Mr. W. W. Denslow is being spoken of by the Chicago papers as the Leonardo da Vinci of the North Side. Den draws things, paints divinely, is a good collar-and-elbow philosopher, an all ’round wit, a story teller of no mean repute, and like Mr. Boffin, occasionally drops into poetry. But they do say that all of Den’s really choice ideas are supplied by his wife, daughter of Amber and child of her gifted mother. Happy Den! he doesn’t have to think; like a hippocampus, he just absorbs.

I have received from the publishers a book written by an Englishman, entitled, The Art of Graceful Horseback Riding Taught in Ten Chapters. The work reads like a lecture on rhetoric by the Shock-headed Youth in English A at Harvard.

Haven’t you ever felt that the prince is as good as the pauper even if he is no better?

Who says that we are not an artistic people? All that was necessary was the faith of two American patriots like Koster and Bial, to pack the galleries with spectators of such masterpieces as The Bath and The Flea Hunt whose living models had been chosen with great care so as not to offend the delicate popular sense of beauty.

“Ephemeral?” Yes!—I’m still, you see, the butterfly flitting from flower to flower; while the busy, bumptious bumble-bee improves each shining hour.

One James L. Ford claims to have discovered Bok. But Ford is not like charity; he is exceeding puffed up and doth vaunt himself unseemly. In homeopathic doses Ford is funny, but one reaches a point where he wants to carry this too funny man in a buck basket to the wharf and dump him for good and all.

To Anxious One: No, Every Man His Own Trainer, by Jack Splan, is not a work on Theosophy. Its general theme is education after the manner taught in Successward.

Mr. Chester S. Lord, managing editor of the New York Sun, recently discharged a reporter for wearing a pink shirt with a blue collar. Mr. Lord declares that any man who gets a salary of thirty dollars a week and yet is in such financial distress that he cannot match up his linen is not to be trusted.

Plain living and high thinking do not go together through choice, for if you think high you will not have the money to live high, and not having the money to live high you live plain—see?

Yes, let sound and perfume and color evolve from the wild, natural, divine joy of life. Let art be born that is wayward as the western winds; so long as it expresses that which the many feel, or arouses to life the hopes that are dead, or animates with renewed strength the ambitions that falter, or fans to flame the loves that languish, so long will we bid it hail and God-speed!

Let the bicycle teach the great moral truth that unstable equilibrium is made stable by progressive motion. He who stands still is lost.

Certain of the truths herein set forth have been expressed before, but not well.

A retentive memory is a great thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

Latest advices confirm the report that Mephisto (who walks with a slight limp, having had a fall) was put out of Heaven on account of his shocking bad temper. He was afflicted with dyspepsia. After all, Heaven is largely a matter of digestion, and come to think of it digestion is mostly a matter of mind.

I know not what others may say, but as for me, my single self, the Great Big Black Things that loomed against the horizon, threatening to come and devour me, simply loomed and nothing more. The things that really made me miss my train were soft, sweet, pleasant, pretty things of which I was not in the least afraid.

This, which seemed at first to be a non-sequitur, was found in the Buffalo Courier of recent date:

On more mature consideration it seems that the Cathedral Car prelate was simply candidating. There are other persons of extremely lovable nature who meander around the same part of Buffalo betimes, and devour all they pick up.

I fear there will not be general public sympathy with Mr. F. Tennyson Neeley of Chicago in his defense of the suit of Col. Richard Henry Savage, but as a matter of justice, it would seem that $12,000 is a small fine for inflicting such books as My Official Wife and others on a suffering public. And if Mr. Neeley, having gotten some of the Colonel’s pile, keeps it, the latter gentleman should remember it’s Chicago and thank his stars they didn’t take it all.

The Anti-Slang Club of Somerset, N. J., sent $5.50 the other day to the New York Herald’s Ice Fund and one of the members confidentially writes me, “They can’t say now that Anti-Slang don’t cut no ice.”

Now that Winter is in the offing and Discontent at the door, it is pleasant to think that Organized Charity is getting ready for the season. The plan of campaign is a simple one, but lest I should provoke a charge of misconstruction, I take leave to state it in the words of the author of Oliver Twist, who was never accused of exaggerating anything:

On the authority of Mr. Frank L. Stanton of Atlanta, Hamlin Garland is quoted as saying, “I will stick to the soil till I die.” That is a very sub-tropical way of putting it, and I don’t wonder the Georgian likes it. To be more accurate, the soil will stick to Hamlin—and it will do so after he dies too.

Way down South where tradition is king and they hark back for all the glory of life, it has been surmised that Li is in some way connected with the family of the great soldier of the Confederacy and an investigation is going on with the hope of establishing a relation of elbow kin with the Celestial prince. It ought not to be news to my Southern friends that the Lees are great people in China. For these many years the secret faction fights which take the place of politics in the land of the sun have been between the Lees and the Chews. The latter are supposed to be in some way consanguine to the Chaws of Castle Garden. If so, it will be seen that the Flowery Kingdom is divided on much the same lines as Tammany Hall, and Li may have good reasons for feeling much at home in New York.

From the Philistine view-point it is very funny to note the panic among our friends of the cloth at the inroads that bicycles are making on the attendance at the churches. Some of the reverend gentlemen seem to overlook the well-established philosophic fact that religion is innate and fundamental in human nature and is bound to assert itself somehow. The present symptom fills them with anxiety, and what most gets them, so to speak, is that “fair weather Christians,” so-called, are the ones who are missing now. When it rains it’s too wet and when it’s fair they go wheeling. One minister takes his robes and his liturgy and follows his sheep to the park—but that’s a stern chase. Another checks wheels and his Sunday school room looks like a road house. I suppose a bowling alley and golf links will be next. There’s no real reason for alarm, of course. Relief will come from the opposite side, as it usually comes. Wheeling is going to diminish the ranks of the old maids, and marriage is the nursery of the church. But in all fairness I think there should be no commutation of wedding fees in favor of wheel marriages. It costs just as much to splice a pair in bloomers and goff socks as if they wore point lace and waiter coats and it has happened that future millionaires and millionairesses have been married with a foot on the pedal, so to say. Let no gilty one escape.

The true Driver of the Quill is a virtuous Person. He wears his hair long in token that he does not sleep with his precious head in the lap of Delilah. To every literary Aspirant my advice is: Leave thy sconce well thatched and keep comb and scissors at the distance of an Irish mile. Let thy shock grow like a young forest, allowing it to be tossed by the wanton western wind, but touched not by horse clippers nor sheep shears. The Greeks were called the long-haired. Scissors were a barbarous Roman invention, afterwards adopted by the Puritans. In olden time the first mark set on a slave was to shave his head, and any man who getteth even now a sentence of sixty days secures a close crop; whereas thirty-day guests go untrimmed. Yea, wear thy hair longer than a lawsuit. It is the sign that thou art Free.

When Philip asked that eunuch “Understandest thou what thou readest?” he propounded a very needless question. Only men and women who are well sexed understand what they read; ’tis they, and they only, who possess the ability to see the unseen.

“Do you ever get lonesome?” asked the Giddy Youth of the Only Bernhardt. “Do I get lonesome? Why, little boy, I often get as lonesome as my feet were the first time I rode a horse astride,” was the answer.

Come, fellows: leave thinking of your thoughts and feeling of your feelings; never mind how your heroine would have regarded herself if the lover had spoken earlier or later—he didn’t, so it doesn’t matter a rap; and don’t fret too awfully much about the way your yarn is to get itself into words. Only give us something behind the words. Give us action, story, incident, life. More things are happening right here in Yankeeland than in any other equal space of earth. Tell about them.

If Dr. Conan Doyle and Miss Mary Wilkins and Miss Sarah O. Jewett had sent the same kind of literature to the magazines, and things, ten years ago that they send now, how cheerfully it would not have been accepted.

My Trans-Asian neighbor, Li Hung Chang, tells me he felt quite at home when he came into this country and found everybody wearing button decorations. He was a little shocked though when he found the insignia of rank devoted to party cries and ribald slang—for he comes of a sincere race, and veneration for dignities is a principle of life with them. However, he thinks we are well on the way to the establishment of privileged orders. The self made crests on our carriages further encouraged him. No doubt he will see more of these as he goes on. If he attends our theaters he will find privilege pretty well installed, as the managers can tell him to their sorrow. It has its drawbacks of course. For example, the desire for special honors leads some people who have money to spend to go to great effort to get newspaper credentials at such places. In one of our provincial cities you will see millionaires enjoying the play at the expense of a newspaper. In the Buffalo suburb of this metropolis of Philistia is a society leaderess who has been known to extort “passes” in exchange for society items and then go to the box office and have them exchanged so she “would not have to sit in newspaper seats.” This is the sordid side of privilege. I think it may surprise Li.

An eminent Pittsburg physician with a scientific bent has made the revelation that if you are a normal man you have one hundred and twenty-eight eye-winkers on one side and one hundred and thirty-two on the other; and that if you lose six from either side you have appendicitis. It was Balzac who discovered that any woman with two tiny black specks on the end of her nose was fond of amusement. Great is Science!

“A widow does not pay formal visits for one year after her bereavement,” according to Mrs. Isabel Wallon. This is almost an incitement to murder. It’s a wonder it wasn’t in the Chicago platform.

The kind of self-consciousness that calls itself propriety enters even the sanctuary of devotion. The Betchersweetlife-I’m-a-Lady’s Home Journal reminds its devotees that “It is very improper to recognize an acquaintance during service in church.” Nothing is left to instinct in the Narcissean Lady’s Own.

Ruth Ashmore is authority that “Flowers may, with perfect propriety, be accepted from gentlemen.” There is no disputing this decision. Ruth knows the limit.

Corn is still eaten from the cob. Cobs are indigestible.

They refer me to the mortality rates to prove the healthfulness of the city of London. They say that coal smoke is only carbon and as such is nourishing rather than otherwise. But I submit that a London cupid is smirched by more than soot alone.

Ras Wilson says (and I hope you know Ras Wilson, for if you don’t you have dropped something out of your life) Ras he says to the new reporter, “Young man, write as you feel; but try and feel right. Feel good humored towards every one and every thing. Believe that other folks are just as good and just as smart as you, for they are. Give ’em your best and bear in mind that God has sent ’em in His wisdom all the trouble they need, and it’s for you to scatter gladness and decent, helpful things as you go. Don’t be too particular about how the stuff will look in type, but let ’er go—some one will understand. That is better than to write so dosh bing high and so tarnashun deep that no one understands—let ’er go!”

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Advertisement.—A copy of The Philistine Fantasia, a brilliant piece of music composed and published by E. A. Richmond, Medford, Mass., will be sent gratis to all persons sending yearly subscriptions for this Magazine during the month of October. Persons wishing the music only should remit 50 cents direct to the composer.

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