The Philistine
A Periodical of Protest.
Printed Every Little While
for The Society of The Philistines
and Published by
Them Monthly. Subscription,
One Dollar Yearly
Single Copies, 10 Cents.
April, 1896.
To a Friend in Time of Trouble, | Louise Imogen Guiney |
The Gold that Glitters, | Ouida |
Moods, | Clinton Scollard |
A Song of Solomon, | H. C. Bunner |
After Dark, | Kenneth Brown |
A Fable, | John Bryan of Ohio |
Thoughts, | Charles P. Nettleton |
The Passing of Clangingharp, | Frank W. Noxon |
Death the Doorway, | Alexander Jeffrey |
Lines, | Stephen Crane |
Side Talks. |
Subscriptions can begin with the current number only. A very limited quantity of back numbers can be supplied. Vol. 1, No. 1, 75 cents. Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 at 25 cents each.
Mr. Collin’s Philistine poster in three printings will be mailed to any address on receipt of 25 cents by the publishers. A few signed and numbered copies on Japan vellum remain at $1.00 each.
Entered at the Postoffice at East Aurora, New York, for transmission as mail matter of the second class.
COPYRIGHT, 1896, by B. C. Hubbard.
THE CONSERVATOR
Printed Monthly
in Philadelphia.
HORACE L. TRAUBEL, Editor.
Annual Subscription Price One Dollar.
All communications intended for the Editor should be addressed to Horace L. Traubel, Camden, New Jersey.
The attention of persons interested in Walt Whitman is directed to The Conservator, in which, along with the presentation of other views, affecting freedom, democracy, ethics, solidarity, there appear special studies treating of the significance of Walt Whitman’s appearance in history, written in part by men whose personal relations to Whitman, often whose genius, give their utterances great importance and offer special reasons why readers of books and lovers of man cannot afford to ignore or neglect their contributions.
Grouped here following are some names of recent writers aiding in this synthesis.
The Bibelot.
MDCCCXCVI
Those authors and subjects that many readers are glad to come at in a brief way, (and who may be thereby quickened to direct their studies anew to the sometimes surface hidden beauties of literature,) will continue to find ample presentation in The Bibelot for 1896.
The typework that has made so many friends among bookmen, will also be fully sustained; in a word, The Bibelot still proposes to remain something quite by itself, and out of the highway and beaten track of every-day book-making.
Subscriptions for 1896 at the regular price, 50 cents in advance, postpaid, are taken for the complete year only. After March 1, the rate will be 75 cents, which will, on completion of Volume II, be advanced to $1.00 net.
It is desirable that renewals for 1896 should be forwarded Mr. Mosher early that no vexatious delays may occur in mailing. All subscriptions must begin with January and end with December of each year.
THOMAS B. MOSHER, Publisher.
Portland, Maine.
THE LOTOS.
A High Class Monthly Magazine of Art and Letters.
Cover and Poster by Arthur W. Dow.
CONTENTS FOR MARCH.
The Nature of Fine Art, | Ernest Francisco Frenollosa. |
As to Stephen Crane, | Elbert Hubbard. |
O Sada San, the Bride, | Mary McNeil Scott. |
A Patron of Art, | Diana Archer. |
Hawthorne, a character sketch, | May Alden Ward. |
Altruism, | Emily S. Hamblen. |
Etc., Etc. |
Fifteen Cents a Number.
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THE LOTOS.
No. 156 Fifth Avenue, New York.
MEDITATIONS IN MOTLEY.
By WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE
Meditations in Motley reveals a new American essayist, honest and whimsical, with a good deal of decorative plain speaking. An occasional carelessness of style is redeemed by unfailing insight.—I. Zangwill in The Pall Mall Magazine for April, 1895.
Philip Hale, the well known and brilliant literary and musical critic, writes: “Walter Blackburn Harte is beyond doubt and peradventure, the leading essayist in Boston to-day. For Boston, perhaps you had better read “The United States.” His matter is” original and brave, his style is clear, polished when effect is to be gained thereby, blunt when the blow should fall, and at times delightfully whimsical, rambling, paradoxical, fantastical.”
Mr. Harte is not always so good in the piece as in the pattern, but he is a pleasant companion, and I have met with no volume of essays from America since Miss Agnes Repplier’s so good as his Meditations in Motley.—Richard Le Gallienne, in the London Review.
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NO. 5. April, 1896. VOL. 2.
There lived once in the East, a great king; he dwelt far away, amongst the fragrant fields of roses, and in the light of suns that never set.
He was young, he was beloved, he was fair of face and form; and the people, as they hewed stone, or brought water, said amongst themselves, “Verily, this man is as a god; he goes where he lists, and he lies still or rises up as he pleases; and all fruits of all lands are called for him; and his nights are nights of gladness, and his days, when they dawn, are all his to sleep through or spend as he will.”
But the people were wrong. For this king was weary of his life.
His buckler was sown with gems, but his heart beneath it was sore. For he had been long bitterly harassed by foes who descended on him as wolves from the hills in their hunger, and he had been long plagued with heavy wars and with bad harvests, and with many troubles to his nation that kept it very poor, and forbade him to finish the building of new marble palaces, and the making of fresh gardens of delight, on which his heart was set. So he, being weary of a barren land and of an empty treasury, with all his might prayed to the gods that all he touched might turn to gold, even as he had heard had[139] happened to some magician long before in other ages. And the gods gave him the thing he craved; and his treasury overflowed. No king had ever been so rich as this king now became in the short space of a single summer day.
But it was bought with a price.
When he stretched out his hand to gather the rose that blossomed in his path, a golden flower scentless and stiff was all he grasped. When he called to him the carrier-dove that sped with a scroll of love-words across the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece of metal. When he was athirst and called to his cupbearer for drink, the red wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, the pulse and the pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo! at eventide, when he sought the silent chambers of his home, saying, “Here at least I shall find rest,” and bent his steps to the couch whereon his beloved was sleeping, a statue of gold was all he drew into his eager arms, and cold shut lips of sculptured gold was all that met his own.
That night the great king slew himself, unable any more to bear this agony; since all around him was desolation, even though all around him was wealth.
Now the world is like that king, and in its greed of gold will barter its life away.
Look you—this thing is certain—I say that the world will perish even as that king perished, slain as he was slain, by the curse of its own fulfilled desire.
The future of the world is written. For God has granted their prayer to men. He has made them rich, and their riches shall kill them.
When all green places have been destroyed in the builder’s lust of gain; when all the lands are but mountains of bricks, and piles of wood and iron; when there is no moisture anywhere, and no rain ever falls; when the sky is a vault of smoke, and all the rivers reek with poison; when forest and stream, the moor and meadow, and all the old green wayside beauty are things vanished and forgotten; when every gentle timid thing of brake and bush, of air and water, has been killed because it robbed them of a berry or a fruit; when the earth is one vast city, whose young children behold neither the green of the field nor the blue of the sky, and hear no song but the hiss of the steam, and know no music but the roar of the furnace; when the old sweet silence of the country-side, and the old sweet sounds of waking birds, and the old sweet fall of summer showers, and the grace of a hedgerow bough, and the glow of the purple heather, and the note of the cuckoo and cushat, and the freedom of waste and of woodland, are all things dead, and remembered of no man; then[141] the world, like the Eastern king, will perish miserably of famine and of drought, with gold in its stiffened hands, and gold in its withered lips, and gold everywhere; gold that the people can neither eat nor drink, gold that cares nothing for them, but mocks them horribly; gold for which their fathers sold peace and health, and holiness and beauty; gold that is one vast grave.
Ouida.
[This dainty poem first published in Scribner’s has been set to music by that brilliant woman, Mary Knight Wood. The Oliver Ditson Company are the publishers.]
Central Park on Saturday afternoon and the Tenderloin district on Saturday night give one different ideas of New York. Rather different ideas, too, of New York society, if one happens on a night when any of the Four Hundred bring up in the Thirtieth Street Police Station. Then you see him whom tailors do not bully as they do ordinary men, but bow down to as one whose whims are to set fashions, brought in, covered with mud, by some cab-driver who has failed to get his due from the drink-befuddled brain and the drink-emptied pocket.
Those who come into the station of their own accord act differently. They take off their hats and tiptoe across the room to ask if they may go upstairs to the sleeping room; and if it is full they tiptoe meekly out again. Misery is very unostentatious.
Worst of all are the old women, with their repulsiveness which almost prevents one from pitying them. I wondered, the other day, what became of all the pretty girls who walk Broadway and Sixth Avenue at night. I think I saw in the police station what became of some of them.
With the proud scions of aristocracy there is no humbleness. In some stages there is jocularity and affability; in some, haughtiness; but the end of both[144] is the same. When the scion understands that he is to spend a night in jail the horror of it appears to him something the gods cannot allow. He remonstrates with the police captain; he mentions his pride of birth and the shame that incarceration would be to such as he; he appeals to all the police captain’s higher feelings one after the other; he speaks to him as one gentleman to another. His ignorance of the vulgar world leads him into strange mistakes. And the policeman laughs and encourages him to talk, if the night has been dull, and finally putting him into a cell, examines the inside cover of his watch to see if he has given his right name.
About an hour after midnight Detective Dugan brought in a pretty, fair-haired girl.
“What is your name?” asked the sergeant.
The girl leaned forward and her lips moved, but they trembled so she could not answer for a moment. “Fanny Kellogg,” she said faintly at last.
“Kelly?” asked the sergeant.
“No; Kel—Kel—”
“Kellogg,” said the detective for her.
“What’s your age, Fanny?” asked the sergeant.
“Twenty-five.” She did not look more than twenty; so I suppose she spoke the truth.
“Your occupation?”
There were two or three reporters near her. She looked straight ahead and did not answer at all. The sergeant waited a minute; then he asked:
“The same old thing?”
She nodded, still looking straight before her.
“Married?”
Her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.
“That’s too bad, Fanny, you ought to get married.” He finished writing in his book, and then rang for the matron. The bell was out of order, so he sent a messenger. While waiting he said to the girl jokingly:
“Couldn’t you see that Dugan was a copper?”
She turned and looked at the detective, smiling. She looked at him from top to toe, as if to see whether her judgment had been at fault, or whether she had merely had a case of hard luck. Dugan began to blush and Fanny smiled still more. She had a pleasant face, but in the smile one could see things that the face in repose did not reveal.
There was some delay before the matron came. After the little joke on the detective had passed, Fanny’s eyes again filled with tears, which she furtively wiped away with the tips of her fingers. Then the little plump matron appeared in the doorway, beckoned to Fannie with a stiff little finger of rectitude, and they went out of the room together.
“It’s a pity she shouldn’t marry; she’s a nice girl,” said the sergeant.
“She’s pretty, too,” said a reporter.
“Her figure isn’t good enough for me,” said another.
“Oh, I guess you’d take her fast enough,” answered the sergeant.
The talk was slipping down very rapidly. Few men consider chivalry a thing to be worn all the time.
Kenneth Brown.
A Monk who belonged to a very Wealthy Order went forth to beg, pleading great poverty and distress to those from whom he asked alms. He met a Butcher and a Baker to whom he said he had eaten nothing for many days, and that he was almost starved.
“How is it thou art so fat?” said they as they drove on their wagons.
He met a Tradesman and said he had not had any money for years, even from his youth, as he had long been a Monk.
“I have no money to give thee,” said the Tradesman, at the same time jingling a handful of gold coins in his pocket.
“I pray Jesus to forgive thee that lie,” said the Monk, “for I hear the coins jingling in thy pockets.”
“If thou hast seen so little money in thy life,” said the Tradesman, “how dost thou so well know its jingle?”
He met a Fishmonger carrying a basket of fish, coming from attending his nets, to whom he said: “I and my brothers are perishing for want of fish. Pray give us thy basket of fish and go thou and catch others.”
“Go and catch thy own fish,” said the Fishmonger, “the waters of the earth are as free for thee to fish in as for me.”
He met a Woman at her door, to whom he bowed low and made the sign of the cross:
“Kind Madam,” said he, “I and my brothers are perishing for want of food and money. I pray you give unto us according as the Lord hath prospered thee.”
“Come in, poor Monk,” said she, “we have not much except my husband’s wages, but to share with thee is to give unto the Lord.”
So saying she gave him half her savings, and when he made ready to depart she craved his blessing.
“You may kiss my Big Toe,” said he. Which[148] being done he departed, and with a shrug of his shoulders said to himself:
“Ah, if Women were not so easily beguiled, we should be compelled to work.”
John Bryan of Ohio.
And so old Clangingharp passed out. He did not die, and his case was not like Elijah’s or Enoch’s. Enoch left a spoor, while Clangingharp calmly and peacefully passed away, without striking a discord. Nobody had any idea where Clangingharp was. Frostembight had seen him the night before and they had drunk and been drunk; but where Clangingharp was Frostembight could not or would not say.
The Knittenpin woman, of course, acted like an idiot and went around to Frostembight’s house in the morning and threatened to kill Frostembight. Nothing prevented her but Frostembight. She afterwards told Shiningstar and Shiningstar’s little girl Eva, that Frostembight was not safe for dependence, even as a victim. Eva leered proudly and said she guessed it made very little difference anyway.
Eva was one of those frail, delicate little girls, happy for their years, who grow up into frail, delicate women, wretched for theirs. Sometimes they have blue eyes, sometimes black. Eva’s were green. Championoar liked green-eyed women, and half promised to wait till Eva was old enough to be married to him, when he could get her off the[150] stage. Shiningstar was his stepdaughter’s stepfather.
By the second night after Clangingharp had passed away the editor of The Evening Coat had gone back into society again, and was the center of a jostling cluster at the Opera. Madame Frustra, the prima donna, seemed to incline toward the editor, and when his flowers reached her in her dressing room she was heard to murmur, “Poor Clangingharp!” That was really all there was to connect The Evening Coat with the affair, and, indeed, Frustra wrote the editor a note saying that nowadays a successful actress had to forego wine suppers and skip to her hotel directly after the opera. She got out of town with her luggage before the stranding was discovered.
Charmingbland, the hotel clerk, got himself into a devil of a fix, it was said, for hinting foul play and collusion between Little Eva and Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was a good enough fellow, though pale at times, and made a dramatic exit when the Chinaman lost his cue. Of course there was a tremendous sensation, and speculation of all sorts over what Clangingharp’s son would have done if Clangingharp had had one. That led Padmarx, dramatic editor of The Evening Coat, to put on a copy and go behind the scenes to interview Ellen Squigs.
“Say, Squigsy,” he wheedled, “where’s Clangingharp?”
Squigsy went right on frizzing her hair with a curling-iron, and said she wasn’t no slouch and wasn’t going to be bluffed by Championoar nor any other dude. That made Padmarx curious, and he asked Squigsy if she really thought she could act. Squigsy rushed at Padmarx and ran the hot curling-iron all over his dress shirt, making long, irregular scorches on the bosom. Padmarx buttoned up his ulster and went out after the ball. Late that night a stranger walked up to Charmingbland, pulled off a false mustache and said furtively:
“There, you idiot—dyuh recognize meh now?”
“Strings Clangingharp, by Gawd,” remarked Charmingbland, “where you been?”
Clangingharp put his mustache on crooked, and they sat down at a table in the bar-room from which Charmingbland could see anybody that tried to steal the silver card-platters off the desk. Clangingharp drank eleven cocktails before he said a word, then he put his finger to his mustache to enjoin maudlin secrecy upon Charmingbland and said:
“Shay, ol’ man. Want t’ know w’er I been? Been zh’ gol’ cure, ol’ man. Zhay wouldn’ take me. Gimme some pepper there!”
And he spread himself, like a green bay tree.
Frank W. Noxon.
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[155]
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[156]
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[157]
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[158] 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[161] 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[163]
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.[164]
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:
Hail to thee, Neith Boyce! Suffering makes a sisterhood and I embrace thee.
The desire to “edit” every article printed in its columns is often a ruling force in the career of the Presiding Elder of a Newspaper. Especially is this illustrated in the walk and conversation of sundry publications that pour out chronic sweetness at stated periods on the classic air of the Hub.
It is meat and drink to the modest Literary Aspirant to see himself in type, even if his “effort” is served with a few modifications in style, but when he beholds the offspring of his genius scalped on the crown, shorn on each side, and whittled down to a sickly wedge of small talk at the close, the swift flow of interesting narrative converted to a sluggish bayou with the cream ideas carefully skimmed from its surface and discarded, he stares helplessly at the title and signature, which are all the recognizable features left, and resolves to become—a kicker.
Yet this is Boston, that sits upon her throne of Baked Beans sandwiched between hills of Brown Bread, and discourses to hungry souls on the occult sciences of philosophical research, and the inscrutable never-the-less-ness of the More-over.
Boston, the mystic sea-kine, wearing horns of pearl, a ring in her nose whereby Wisdom leads her, and a board before her placid countenance on which is printed “Inquire Within,” so that even the ships in the harbor may read the sign and profit thereby!
Farewell, thou Press of a traditional city! Smitten on both cheeks by the blade of thy pruning knife, I withdraw my MS. from thy sanctum and seek for it a field where its individuality is not thrown aside like a worthless banana-peel. The world is wide, and if a publisher offends in this manner, though he may have been like one’s right hand, he should be cut off and cast away entirely. The blue pencil has many privileges, but when it rides too high on the wave of editorial presumption, a halt must be called. Better the comforting printed slip that offers thanks to the obliging contributor for submitting unavailable matter for consideration and announces it “returned herewith,” (probably unread).
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[166]
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[167]
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[168]
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,
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New York.
THE AMERICAN.
The Leading Exponent of Bimetallism and Protection in the United States.
A national weekly journal, Truthful, Fearless and Aggressive in the discussion of Public Affairs and other events of general interest, in which those who are literary, as well as those who desire to be fully informed on current events of Public Importance will find what they want.
WHARTON BARKER, Editor.
The American is fighting the battle of the masses against those who would fix the gold standard permanently upon the country; holding that the supreme duty of the American People is to conserve, protect and fortify the interests of the United States. $2.00 per annum. Sample copies free.
$3.00 for $2.00.
JUST THINK OF IT! For $2, the regular price of subscription, we will send The American and any one of these well-known periodicals:
The name of the subscriber must be one not now on our list. Mention this advertisement.
THE AMERICAN,
No. 119 SOUTH FOURTH St., PHILADELPHIA.
Little Journeys
SERIES FOR 1896
Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors.
The papers below specified were, with the exception of that contributed by the editor, Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late G. P. Putnam, in 1853, in a book entitled Homes of American Authors. It is now nearly half a century since this series (which won for itself at the time a very noteworthy prestige) was brought before the public; and the present publishers feel that no apology is needed in presenting to a new generation of American readers papers of such distinctive biographical interest and literary value.
No. 1, | Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis. |
” 2, | Bryant, by Caroline M. Kirkland. |
” 3, | Prescott, by Geo. S. Hillard. |
” 4, | Lowell, by Charles F. Briggs. |
” 5, | Simms, by Wm. Cullen Bryant. |
” 6, | Walt Whitman, by Elbert Hubbard. |
” 7, | Hawthorne, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. |
” 8, | Audubon, by Parke Godwin. |
” 9, | Irving, by H. T. Tuckerman. |
” 10, | Longfellow, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. |
” 11, | Everett, by Geo. S. Hillard. |
” 12, | Bancroft, by Geo. W. Greene. |
The above papers will form the series of Little Journeys for the year 1896.
They will be issued monthly, beginning January, 1896, in the same general style as the series of 1895, at 50 cents a year, and single copies will be sold for 5 cents, postage paid.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS,
NEW YORK AND LONDON
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.
RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES: Translated by R. Nisbit Bain. Illustrated by C. M. Gere. 8vo., Ornamental Cloth, gilt top, $1.50.
OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES: By S. Baring Gould. With illustrations by F. D. Bedford. Octavo. Cloth, $2.00. London: Methuen & Co.
SHELLEY’S TRANSLATION OF THE BANQUET OF PLATO: A dainty reprint of Shelley’s little-known translation of “The Banquet of Plato,” prefaced by the poet’s fragmentary note on “The Symposium.” Title-page and decorations by Mr. Bruce Rogers. 16mo., $1.50. Seventy-five copies on hand-made paper, $3.00 net.
HAND AND SOUL: By Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Printed by Mr. William Morris at the Kelmscott Press.
This book is printed in the “Golden” type, with
a specially designed title-page and border, and
in special binding. “Hand and Soul” first
appeared in “The Germ,” the short-lived magazine
of the Pre-Raphælite Brotherhood. A few
copies also on Vellum.
For sale by all booksellers, or mailed postpaid by the publishers, on receipt of price.
WAY & WILLIAMS,
Monadnock Block. Chicago.
1. RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.
RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE
BY EDWARD FITZGERALD.
This is not a mere reprint of “The Bibelot” edition, but has been edited with a view to making FitzGerald’s wonderful version indispensable in its present OLD WORLD shape.
The following are special features that as a whole can only be found in THE OLD WORLD edition:
I. An entirely new biographical sketch of Edward FitzGerald by Mr. W. Irving Way of Chicago.
II. Parallel texts of the First and Fourth editions, printed the one in Italic and the other in Roman type on opposite pages, the better to distinguish them.
III. Variorum readings giving all textual changes occurring in the Second, Third and Fourth editions.
IV. The omitted quatrains of the rare Second Edition of 1868. To the student of literature these cancelled readings are of the greatest interest and value.
V. A bibliography of all English versions and editions revised to date.
VI. Finally, three poems upon Omar and FitzGerald, not generally known, are here given, just as in The Bibelot Edition, two poems were there reprinted as fitting foreword and finale.
925 copies on Van Gelder’s hand-made paper at | $1.00 net. |
100 ” ” Japan Vellum (numbered) at | $2.50 ” |
Address THOMAS B. MOSHER,
Portland, Maine.
A SHELF OF BOOKS.
LITTLE JOURNEYS.
To the Homes of Good Men and Great.
By Elbert Hubbard. Series 1895, handsomely bound. Illustrated with twelve portraits, etched and in photogravure. 16mo., printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top. $1.75.
THE ELIA SERIES.
A Selection of Famous Books, offered as specimens of the best literature and of artistic typography and bookmaking. Printed on deckle-edge paper, bound in full ooze calf, with gilt tops, 16mo., (6½ x 4½ inches), each volume (in box), $2.25.
⁂ There are three different colors of binding—dark green, garnet and umber.
First group: The Essays of Elia, 2 vols. The Discourses of Epictetus. Sesame and Lilies. Autobiography of Franklin. Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius.
NO ENEMY: BUT HIMSELF.
The Romance of a Tramp. By Elbert Hubbard. Twenty-eight full-page illustrations. Second edition. Bound in ornamental cloth, $1.50.
EYES LIKE THE SEA.
By Maurus Jokai. (The great Hungarian Novelist.) An Autobiographical Romance. Translated from the Hungarian by Nisbet Bain. $1.00.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS,
NEW YORK AND LONDON.
FOOTLIGHTS,
that weekly illustrated paper published in Philadelphia (pity, isn’t it?), is a clean (moderately so) paper, chock full of such uninteresting topics as interviews with actor and actress (bless ’em); book gossip, news from Paris and London, (dear, old Lunnon), woman’s chatter, verse and lots more of idiocy that only spoils white paper. It sells for five cents a copy, or $2.00 a year.
VERY SPECIAL: Send two dollars and Footlights and The Philistine will be sent you for one year. Address
THE PHILISTINE,
East Aurora, N. Y.
THE ROYCROFT
PRINTING SHOP
at this time desires to
announce a sister book
to the Song of Songs:
which is Solomon’s.
It is the Journal of
Koheleth: being a Reprint of the
Book of Ecclesiastes with an Essay
by Mr. Elbert Hubbard. The same
Romanesque types are used that
served so faithfully and well in the
Songs, but the initials, colophon and
rubricated borders art special designs.
After seven hundred and
twelve copies are printed the types
will be distributed and the title page,
colophon and borders destroyed.
In preparation of the text Mr. Hubbard has had the scholarly assistance of his friend, Dr. Frederic W. Sanders, of Columbia University. The worthy pressman has also been helpfully counseled by several Eminent Bibliophiles.
The seven hundred copies that are printed on Holland hand-made paper are offered at two dollars each, and the twelve copies on Japan Vellum at five dollars. Every book will be numbered and signed by Mr. Hubbard. Orders are now being recorded, but Book Lovers are requested not to send remittances until the volume is in their hands.
THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP,
East Aurora, New York.