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Title: The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. III, No. 6, November 1896)
Author: Various
Language: English
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The Philistine
A Periodical of Protest.
_You have too much respect upon the world! They
lose it that do buy it with much care._—MERCHANT
OF VENICE.
[Illustration: Vol. III No. 6.]
Printed Every Little While
for The Society of The Philistines
and Published by
Them Monthly. Subscription,
One Dollar Yearly
Single Copies, 10 Cents.
November, 1896.
THE PHILISTINE.
Contents for November.
1. Karma, Gelett Burgess
2. Powers at Play, Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
3. Life, Fred. W. Claus
4. Our Friend the Enemy, William McIntosh
5. Lines, Yone Noguchi
6. In Re Ophelia, Preston Kendall
7. The Cricket, a Fable, Eleanor M. Winn
8. Side Talks, The East Aurora School of Philosophy.
American Academy of Immortals
Otherwise
THE SOCIETY OF THE PHILISTINES
An association of Book Lovers and Folks who Write and Paint. Organized to
further Good-Fellowship among men and women who believe in allowing the
widest liberty to Individuality in Thought and Expression.
ARTICLE XII. SEC. 2. The annual dues shall be one dollar. This shall
entitle the member to all the documents issued by the Society, together
with one copy of the incomparable PHILISTINE Magazine, monthly, for one
year.
ARTICLE XIX. SEC. 4. The duties of each member shall consist in living up
to his highest Ideal (as near as possible) and in attending the Annual
Dinner (if convenient).
Address The Philistine,
East Aurora, N. Y.
THE PHILISTINE is supplied to the trade by the AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY and
its branches. Foreign agencies, BRENTANO’S, 37 Avenue de l’Opera, Paris;
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, 24 Bedford street, Strand, London.
_Entered at the Postoffice at East Aurora, New York, for transmission as
mail matter of the second class._
_COPYRIGHT, 1896, by B. C. Hubbard._
We are printing four hundred copies on Hand-Made Paper of Mr. Hubbard’s
Ruskin-Turner Essay. The book will contain twelve full-page photogravures
from negatives taken especially for us in the National Gallery at London.
Price, per volume, $5.00. _Twenty copies specially illumined by Bertha C.
Hubbard; price $10.00 each._
ART AND LIFE, by Vernon Lee.
We have printed a small edition on Japan Vellum of this exquisite Essay
and are illuminating the copies by hand. Bound in classic limp vellum,
tied with tapes; price, $5.00 per copy. _Twelve copies, no two alike,
illumined by Mr. W. W. Denslow_; also, _Ten copies specially illumined by
Mr. William B. Faville. Price, $25.00 each._
VOLS. II and III of the Philistine.
Handsomely bound in Buckram and Antique Boards, One Dollar per volume.
VOLUME ONE of the Philistine.
Bound in Antique Boards, price $2.00 each.
OUT OF PRINT:
The Song of Songs,
The Journal of Koheleth.
THE LEGACY.
Mr. Hubbard’s new two-volume novel, entitled THE LEGACY, is now ready
for delivery. The book has 450 pages of text on Dickinson’s rough Dekel
Edge paper; photogravure portrait of author and illustrations on Japan
paper. Bound in bottle green chamois, silk lined. Price $3.00, for the
two volumes, express paid.
THE
ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP,
EAST AURORA, N. Y.
Philistine Readers
will be interested in a monthly illustrated magazine that is devoted
exclusively to literature and its progress in America and England. No
person who lays claims to culture and wide reading can afford to be
without The Bookman.
To any reader mentioning The Philistine we will send a sample copy free
of all charge.
ADDRESS
THE BOOKMAN
151 Fifth Ave New York City
THE PHILISTINE.
NO. 6. November, 1896. VOL. 3.
KARMA.
Into his eyes there flashed a fire,
Out of its scabbard leaped the blade;
Three strides across the room he made—
His heart beat hot with fierce desire.
Cold is the wreck his steel has wrought,
While living horror takes its stead:—
Have all these years of calmness sped
To miss at last, the prize he sought?
_O, blossom of that long-past life!_
_O, venom of forgotten sin!_
_So nearly won—again begin_
_The long, long round of weary strife!_
GELETT BURGESS.
POWERS AT PLAY.
We caught for a moment the powers at play.—_Browning._
The smell of kerosene in the pantry sickened the woman who was pouring it
into lamps. Through the window and side-door the quintessence of the July
noonday palpitated in. Twinkling black flies buzzed on the ceiling.
The woman pulled out the spice-drawer and sat down on it. It slanted
uncomfortably forward, and she smelled with loathing the warm fragrance
of spilled cinnamon. The kitchen clock whirred and struck eleven.
She went to the side-door and called to a man forking hay somewhere in
the blinding distance.
“Abel! Abel! when do you want”——
“Can’t hear a word you say,” he called back impatiently. He leaned on his
pitchfork, a blur of blue clothes back of dazzling hay and steel.
“What time do you want—I should have—dinner?”
Her voice rose high on the last word.
“Well!” the man kicked at something in the confused grass. “Well, quarter
past twelve, I guess. Got to go over to Sydney’s, you know, well, say
half past twelve, that’ll give me plenty a’ time; half past twelve.” He
lifted a fork full of wizened hay and began to whistle.
The woman shut the door. She turned to the window, leaned out in the hot
light, and pulled to the blinds. Standing up in the sudden darkness she
felt a hammering in the back of her head. Pink and green lizard-like
coils of nothing swam over the china-shelf.
“It’s them pink plates,” she said aloud. “No sir! it’s in my eyes!”
She rested her head against the warm plaster for a minute. Her eyes
blinked at the incessant colored coilings in the air. Her hanging hands
seemed to pull at her shoulders. Something fused into a troublous
unreality the shelves, the odors, and the drone of flies.
Suddenly she became aware of waking up from a swift uncomfortable dream.
A shiver of air stirred through the shutters. She shrank away from it,
cold. As she stepped into the dark front hall, a hot rush of blood
flushed her face like air from an oven. She sat down by the back window,
let her hands drop, and woke up again from rapid dreaming.
The start of this shiver shook her permanently awake. Her wide eyes
looked out through the shutter-slits, on a blue-green shady spot in the
door-yard. “I should like,” she said slowly, “to lay down under them
trees—on a shawl—and go to sleep. But I s’pose there’s bugs dropping off
the trees—oh, but it looks nice!—There’s Abel’s dinner, let me see, new
potatoes, dock-greens, bacon. I wonder if folks could see me from the
road? oh, it would look awful silly! I got a good mind to do it, though.
I’m just beat out! I don’t see how women keep up and do their work—Abel’s
got to have his dinner—I got a good mind”——
She began to be agitated. She was pressed upon by tradition, by
generations of women that never had slighted their work. Their
transmitted canonized habits stifled her, wrapping innumerable folds
about her small wrestling will. The sleepy air about her magnified her
labor. She had never heard of such a thing, her mother never would have
done it! and was Abel to go over to Sidney’s on an empty stomach? But her
will to get dinner seemed paralyzed.
There was a small swirl and soar of dust up the road, as of a strong
summer wind. The trees swished outside, the new cool air billowed up the
little hall. The woman looked out again at the sheltered place in the
yard; then she picked up the small rug by the door and went out.
It was a dry, cool place, under blue-green layers of maple boughs. There
were lumps and hollows in the turf, and the grass was fat and long. The
branches plashed gently as a faintly piping bird pushed through them.
Two or three small leaves blew down and stirred in the woman’s hair. The
grass protruded gently against her face; every breath renewed the fresh
smell of it. Far away clicked a hay-gathering machine, in the olive,
billowy, upland fields—thick timothy starred with goldenrod. Her eyes
closed on the white road, curving down hill between cushiony meadows,
but from an infinite drowsy distance she heard a tin pail swing with a
creak, and dimly fancied the glare on it.
* * * * *
At noon, Abel finished the patch, dropped his pitchfork, and tramped up
across the lumpy ground. His blue shirt was hot and damp, pricked through
by the dazzle. He could almost see the tan thicken on his hands. The
swing of walking and walking towards home and towards dinner was keen
pleasure. He liked to lift his great boots and stamp down the dry, puffy
sod.
Inside the kitchen door there was a sleepy and motionless air; nothing
hummed on the stove but the multitudinous flies about the boiler. Cups
and saucers gleamed whitely through the glass pantry door.
“Clara!”
“Clara!” Twice Abel’s voice cut the monotone, but it closed in again like
deep water.
He burst through the hall and swung back the front door. In the flood
of daylight his eyes caught the red and white stripes of her skirt, low
among fringes of grass under the maple.
His heart jumped in a great fright. There seemed to be insects in his
blood that buzzed. His pulses dinned and pounded. The skin was drawn
tight to bursting round his neck. He stopped still, than ran and jumped
the piazza railing with a smothered shout. He stumbled across the lawn,
hindered by his tense veins as by strings. His body seemed to have
swollen in a sort of anger.
She lay there on the hall rug. One hand stirred in the sleek grass as an
eager little ant crept over it.
Abel’s breath came easier.
He sat down by her on the sod. She had become so valuable that he could
not bear to touch her or speak to her, but he reached up and lightly
shook the branches. An insect was flung down in confusion, a mass of
kicking black legs.
She looked up with surprised eyes at the broad blue chest and the bared
arm just letting go the bough. Abel leaned over and flicked a caterpillar
from her sleeve. Her hand shrank away, and he took hold of it, drawing
her sidewise until she sat up.
“I thought you—well, I had a good scare!” said Abel.
“It was dreadful hot,” she said stupidly, “and I was so tired I
couldn’t—oh, you haven’t had no dinner, and you got to go over to
Sidney’s! oh my, what time is it? I forgot. I don’t know how I forgot. I
just let it go. Oh, what possessed me? well, I was so hot and tired, I
just couldn’t”——
“There! I don’t care a snap!”
He sat looking at her warm throat and face. “Say, I’ll skirmish ’round
and git dinner myself,” he added. “You stay right here—or, come—I’ll help
you int’ the house.”
He threw the rug over one arm and put the other round her waist. He would
have liked to push the stars aside for her. She put her head on his
shoulder.
SARAH NORCLIFFE CLEGHORN.
LIFE.
A singer paused upon the shore, Forever,
And sung the love song, Life, with voice full free;
Yet heeding, lest the song be wrongly rendered
And Life be made a harsh inharmony.
FRED. W. CLAUS.
OUR FRIEND THE ENEMY.
It was no discredit to anyone to be on speaking terms with Satan in the
early days. The best of us could have tipped a hat to him on the street
or had him to a wheel meet without loss of social prestige. For Satan
was good people before a certain event which is a prologue to human
history. He was one of the Princes of Light and moved in the best circles
once upon a time, when everybody was well-bred and had a tide, like an
Irishman’s ancestors.
Satan was Walking Delegate to the created universe a few thousand years
ago. He assumed that dignity soon after a disturbance in heaven, where he
undertook to unionize the angels and was thrown out. What happened after
his celebrated fall is told in the book of Genesis. He came into the
Garden eastward in Eden and found labor progressing there peacefully. The
man was tending the trees and truck, and all the beasts of the earth were
obedient to him; and the woman did not know too much to be happy. After
he had organized things, labor was a penalty and a trial to the human
race, and the sweat of the brow had become a badge of punishment.
Satan was not himself condemned to work. Walking delegates never labor.
He was simply required to go in and out on his belly from that day, in
his capacity as an agitator and promoter of strikes.
It has been whispered to me by a sage who dwells among the hills
of Persia and holds the modified sun-worship of the Ghebers, that
Satan’s claim to the authorship of evil in the world is in dispute. An
investigation is going on in the hill country, whence cometh great help
in the solution of world-old riddles. It was started some forty centuries
back, more or less, by one Zoroaster, who so Frenchified the religion of
that day that the absorbent Hebrews, ever ready to trace the idea of
sex in anything, adopted the dual theory of divinity, and were called to
order by the first and greatest of their prophets later on. But in the
title search of creation conducted by the Persian sages something came to
light which abated the pretensions of the Walking Delegate. It was found
that what he called his particular dominion was held on no better title
than a quit claim, and the Jewish Prophet who set forth the unity of the
Final Authority made proclamation of this also, in these words:
“I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I
the Lord do all these things.”
It may be remarked that the proclamation of the divine herald here cited
is not fully acknowledged up to this day, even in the churches that
profess his theology. But, seeing that it took a dozen centuries to set
aside the idea of a dual divinity, it is not surprising that twenty-five
centuries have passed without an absolute clearing of squat claims
to universal dominion—for idolatry is of rapid growth, but it decays
exceeding slowly, and so reverses the general law of primitive nature.
So it happens that the Walking Delegate of the Garden, who organized the
original lock-out, is in chancery for all time defending a pretender’s
claim. There is a _caveat_ on the process of disintegration, which is
part of creation, antedating his. Near a thousand years before Isaiah
proclaimed the divine origin of evil the Levite priests almost discovered
the great principle when they set forth the marks and tints whereby
the leper’s brand of death might be known. They blindly testified to a
marvelous fact that, once fully recognized, ends the theory that death
is a penalty. They found the leper’s ominous ulcers uniform and complex.
They almost knew that the complexity of destruction is as ingenious as
the complexity of life, and the product of as high a creative power.
A sad day it was for the authority of our alienated friend, the Walking
Delegate, when the seeds of disease were found and science proclaimed,
twenty-five centuries after Isaiah, that the Lord of All created the
parasite, which has life, as he created the life the destroyer feeds on.
In the economy of Providence great changes come mostly from unexpected
sources. They were not Parsees or Levites who sought the bacteria of
disease. They had no direct quarrel with the Father of Lies, but they
doomed Satan when they found in their sterilized culture tubes the sign
manual of the Creator of Evil. The germ theory, there established, sealed
the fate of catastrophe. Henceforth Satan was an intruder. It was not
sin that brought death into the world. Death was in the world before sin.
The tree of life itself, in the midst of the Garden, was “for the healing
of the nations.” The fruit the man and woman were free to eat yielded its
life to their hunger; and hunger itself implied disintegration and death.
Not the Walking Delegate who failed to create a lock-out in heaven, but
the Creative Intelligence that shaped all things and set life in motion
everywhere, is the author of the check that keeps all in balance. He
makes peace and creates evil.
Our old friend Satan is an interloper and a fraud. Some day, perhaps,
we shall rattle his armor and find no living thing therein—like the
terrifying empty casque and breastplates that did duty for a ghost in
miser Gaspard’s window.
WILLIAM MCINTOSH.
LINES.
Mystic spring of vapor:
Opiate odor of colors:
Alas—I’m not all of me!
Wanton fragrances, dewy, dim,
Curl out from my drowsy soul;
Wrapping mists about its breast.
I dwell alone,
Like one-eyed star,
In frightened, darksome, willow threads.
In world of moan,
My soul is stagnant dawn—
Dawn; alas, dawn my soul is!
Ah, dawn—close fringed curtain
Of night is stealing up:—God—
Demon—Light—
Darkness—oh!
Desert of No More I want;—
World of silence, bodiless sadness tenanted;
Stillness.
YONE NOGUCHI.
IN RE OPHELIA.
[Hales vs. Petit, Plowden’s Reports, 1st Vol., P. 253.]
I disagree with many good people and count not William Shakespeare
a demi-god. Rather would I think of him as a man—a toiler; a
master-workman, selecting from the folio-forests the fine grained woods
with which to build that matchless instrument whose melodies still sing
a lullaby to our life’s regrets. Using but the best of the forest,
leaving the lumber for us, the crude makers of discordant fiddles. I like
to dream of him as at the Inns reading Plowden’s late Reports; gibing
perhaps at the Year Books’ vile Latin, or at Littleton’s unintelligible
jumble. But best of all I love that quiet midsummer’s evening when the
friendly barrister from over the way drops in to chat with the master.
(A sergeant, also, is sometimes there, but he is too dignified for
all occasions and I never allow him to talk much at any time.) The
gossip from the City to the Hall is exchanged. The barrister from over
the way amusingly chronicles Sir Edward Coke’s chagrin at his late
granted absolution—Sir Edward’s marriage ceremony having been irregular
“evidently,” as the absolution read, “through ignorance of the law.” The
twilight deepens and the young man seated apart near the window lays
aside the book he has been reading. The master takes it up and idly turns
the pages. Many of the triumphs and defeats there chronicled are very
real ones to him. He pauses a moment at Lady Hales’ case. The funereal
rows of black type awaken memories of his first days at Westminster, when
with lips apart he stared at the six sergeants—two for the Lady and four
for the Crown—as they delivered their intricate arguments. As the master
ends his solemn recital of the Lady’s struggle for her own, the youngster
near the window laughs. And we to this day laugh with him when we hear
the case retried by poor mad Ophelia’s grave-diggers.
Sir James Hales, the son of a Baron of the Exchequer, was a Justice
of the Common Pleas, a suicide and ergo, a felon. For, “while walking
through divers streets and highways of Cambridge, he did wantonly enter
a ditch flowing there-through and himself therein feloniously and
voluntarily drowned.” In those days of simple justice such an atrocious
crime was, though falling perhaps a little short of rank burglary, at
least felony without benefit of clergy. This same spirit of simple
justice not only denied him christian burial but also escheated his goods
and chattels to the Crown, leaving his guilty widow, guilty through her
marriage to such an atrocious criminal, penniless. In 1550, Lady Hales
caused an action of trespass to be brought against one Petit, a lessee
holding under the Crown, claiming that Sir James’ alleged crime was not
consummate until after his death and “the dead can do no wrong.”
“The death precedes the forfeiture,” argued the widow’s learned council,
“for until the death is fully consummate he is not a felon; for if he
had killed another he should not have been a felon until the other had
been dead and for the same reason he cannot be a felon until the death of
himself be fully had and consummate.”
The sergeants for the Crown insisted that the crime lay in the act done
in the life-time which was the cause of the death. “The act consists
of three parts: the imagination, the resolution and the perfection. The
death is only a sequel to the act.”
“_It must be ‘se offendendo;’ it cannot be else. For here lies the
point; if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath
three branches, it is, to act, to do, and to perform: argal, she drowned
herself wittingly._”
Sir Anthony Brown, in delivering the judgment of the Court, said: “Sir
James Hales is dead; and how came he to his death? It may be answered,
By drowning. And who drowned him? Sir James Hales. And when did he drown
him? In his life-time. So that Sir James Hales, being alive, caused Sir
James Hales to die, and the act of the living man was the death of the
dead man.”
“_If the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill
he, he goes—mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him,
he drowns not himself; argal, he that is not guilty of his own death
shortens not his own life._”
“_But is this law?_”
“_Ay, marry, is’t! crowner’s quest law._”
PRESTON KENDALL.
THE CRICKET: A FABLE.
A poor little cricket hidden in the flowery grass, regarded a butterfly,
flying o’er the prairie. The insect shone with bright colors. Blue,
purple and gold sparkled on his wings. Young, beautiful, little beau!
He ran from flower to flower, taking and quitting all, even the most
beautiful.
“Ah!” said the cricket, “how different is my life from his! Mother Nature
has given him all and me nothing. I have no talent, still less figure. No
one looks at me—I am ignored everywhere! As well not live at all!”
As he spoke, a troop of children arrived in the meadow. They all ran
after the butterfly—they all wished to have it. Hats, handkerchiefs,
bonnets, served to entrap him. The insect vainly sought to escape them.
He soon became their conquest. One caught him by the wing, another by
the body, a third by the head. It did not need so many efforts to pull
the poor thing to pieces. “Oh! Oh!” said the cricket, “I am not so
discontented as I was: it costs too much to shine in the world!”
ELEANOR M. WINN.
Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.
But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full heart still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet days die—
Remember me a little then, I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.
The heavy trouble, the bewildering care
That weighs us down who live and earn our bread,
These idle verses have no power to bear;
So let me sing of names remembered,
Because they, living not, can ne’er be dead,
Or long time take their memory quite away
From us poor singers of an empty day.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
Telling a tale not too importunate
To those who in the sleepy region stay,
Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: CONDUCTED BY THE EAST AURORA SCHOOL OF
PHILOSOPHY.
“O, it is naught! It is naught,” said Clangingharp. “It is all a yawning
void, the ghost of a joke, a mosquito’s dream, a lecture by Barrett
Wendell.”
* * * * *
It was at the Universalist State Convention, held at Herkimer, N. Y., in
September. Rev. Dr. Bolles was there—charming bookish old Dr. Bolles who
is not so very old; then what if he was, seeing that his heart is the
heart of youth! Dr. Bolles he met there a certain Literary Fellow who he
had not seen for a Long While. Now the Literary Fellow he loves old Dr.
Bolles and Dr. Bolles he likes the Literary Fellow, and not having met
for a Long While, they embraced each other there on the sidewalk; then
they went into the tavern called the Farmer Tavern to get dinner. They
paid for the dinner at the desk; they paid a youth wearing a dimun pin,
in good silver coin and then walked arm in arm into the dining room.
The landlord was there seating his “guests.” Now the landlord’s name is
Jay but it should be December, for he is as chilly a man as ever edited
an intercollegiate chip-munk magazine. He is tall and stooping, with a
yellow chin whisker; he is wheezy, and discerning (nit) and has a brass
watch chain and one wisp of hair, that looks like dry hay, on his Number
Six head. There was a convention in town and a horse race beside, and
consequently the landlord was busy as a monkey catching fleas.
“Here _you_, sit here, and you fellow, _here_,” he bawled, snatching out
two chairs at different tables.
“We can’t do _that_,” said Dr. Bolles, “you see we haven’t met for a Long
While and we must sit together, otherwise we would have no appetite!”
“You set where I tell you!” cried the hustling, bustling landlord.
“We paid in advance!” said Dr. Bolles wofully.
“Yes, in our innocence we paid in advance.”
“Say, you fellers better git!” shouted the Ramrod.
“He can’t take a joke, can he?” said Dr. Bolles, turning to the Literary
Fellow.
“No, he stood under an umbrella when God rained humor.”
“What a recruit he’d make for a Fallstaff Army?”
“Ah, your pencil—thank you—I’ll sketch him!”
By this time the fifty people in the dining room were in a roar of
laughter and the landlord was in a red rage. “Here, you two fellows—go
down and git your money back if you can’t be peac’ble! You mustn’t raise
no row in _my_ house.”
The Literary Fellow sketched.
“Come, we will go and get our money back,” said Dr. Bolles, sighting and
snapping an imaginary kodak at the landlord. And out they walked, arm in
arm, with stately dignity. They got their money back and once outside
the tavern that is called the Farmer Tavern they laughed a loud peal of
merriment at the landlord who stood under an umbrella when the heavens
rained Philistine jokes. And the moral of this true tale is, don’t gibe
a landlord who has a brass watch chain and a billy-goat whisker. And far
away across the moor echoed the piteous cry of the curlew.
* * * * *
There may be a difference twixt red-headed men and men with red hair,
but I cannot explain it now. I’ve heard it said that no one ever saw an
imbecile or a pauper with red hair, and that there are no red-headed old
maids save those who are determined to remain old maids. All of which was
brought up by my thinking of my red-head friend, Ellis—Ellis who writes
“The Smoking Room” in the _Northwestern Lumberman_. Ellis might have
graduated at a college of which Ras Wilson was president, but at a guess
I don’t believe either one of them ever crossed a campus—and I’m glad.
College would have ironed all of the individuality out of these strong
men and given us instead a pair of droning curates. Emerson said “wealth
is good for those who can use it,” and I say college is good for those
who know how. Now Ellis is not the smartest man who ever lived, and no
one claims that Ras Wilson is, not even Ras himself; but when I think of
these men I mumble to myself, “Thou hast not much head, Teddy, but thou
hast a heart and perhaps ’twill serve as well.” Into all the work these
men do they infuse a deal of throbbing human sympathy. You seem to feel
that you are in the presence of a fellow on whom you can rely; one who
has nothing to conceal, who is afraid of no man and of whom no man is
afraid. And the moral of it is, while we cannot all be geniuses we can be
gentle men if we have a mind to.
* * * * *
“Life is a warfare,” remarked Clangingharp as he rolled a cigarette.
He paused, licked the edges of the paper calmly, viewed his work with
critical eye, applied the match, blew three whiffs through his nose and
continued, “Life is a warfare—between the sexes. I’ll leave it to any
truthful man or woman who has arrived at years of discretion, married or
single, if life is not one long campaign between man and woman. There
are continual skirmishes, advances, repulsions, nocturnal surprises,
ambuscades, diplomatic consultations, parleys with one or both trying to
outwit the other. After stormy times peace is declared with good priestly
reservations; sometimes they call it eternal peace because it lasts a
whole day. It’s mostly a game of strategy. Armistices are agreed on only
for the sake of getting into the other’s camp to find out what is going
on. ‘All is fair in love and war’ is a fool proverb. Bless my soul, love
_is_ war:—have you a match? Thank you!”
* * * * *
A worthy young man writes me from Keokuk after this wise: I want to tell
you something about Agnes Repplier. I just drew from our town library
here a book of essays by her and on the first page is a notice that the
book was placed in the library September 15, 1890. Yet I was the first
person who ever called for the volume, and the leaves were still uncut.
The incident related is interesting, but it is not a fact about Agnes
Repplier; it is a fact about Keokuk.
* * * * *
“Who are those who will eventually be damned?” asked a Seeker after Truth
of the Busy Pastor. “Oh, the others, the others, the others!” was the
reply.
* * * * *
Mrs. E. A. Richmond of West Medford, Mass., has been granted Letters
Patent as Chief Musician to the Society of the Philistines. All parties
expecting to strike the lyre and lift the tuneful lay at Christmas-tide
around the merry yule log, should supply themselves at once with a
copy of Mrs. Richmond’s _Philistine Phantasia_. It is dedicated to the
American Academy of Immortals. Price, single copies, fifty cents.
* * * * *
That Philistine giant, Col. Robert Mitchell Floyd, is cultivating a
fine tonsure, yet his nature is as frolicsome as that of a country boy
at recess. When Death calls for the Colonel he will have to wait, smoke
a cigar and hear a good story, and by that time, egad! the destroyer
will forget his errand. The Colonel is bookish, and has written some
choice verse and better prose, but the thing he is to bring out soon is
a compilation of over a hundred poems relating to the fruit that cost us
Paradise. Incidentally there will also be in the book selections on apple
pie, apple fritters, hard cider, baked apples and apple jack.
* * * * *
Midnight Oil—high test—recommended by Charles G. D. Roberts; also the
Gilbert Parker XXX brand Local Color in casks. Address,
PROF. JOHN PEASCOD,
Room 1101 Philistine Building,
East Aurora, N. Y.
* * * * *
All jokes in the _Lotos_ are warranted worked out by the publishers’ own
Egyptologist.
* * * * *
My friend, Nixon Waterman, has been sending out Ms. and getting it back
for about forty-seven years. Now the tide has turned. Three publishers,
within a single week, have written him asking him to send ’em articles.
One request would have been all right—but three! Land sakes!! Straightway
did Nixon hasten to the printers and order ten thousand blanks printed,
of which the following is a copy:
In declining to furnish the contribution you request, I trust
the motives prompting my action will not be misconstrued. No
reflection, whatever, upon the merit or character of your
publication is intended. My non-acceptance of your offer may
result from one or more of many causes, none of which relates
to the desirability of your publication as a means of placing
my work before the public.
A publisher, on having a request for manuscript rejected,
should not infer, necessarily, that his offer lacks the
qualities that would insure its acceptance by other writers of
creditable standing. A request for manuscript which one writer
may refuse, another may gladly consider.
Again thanking you for your pleasant communication, I am,
Very sincerely,
NIXON WATERMAN.
* * * * *
I am in receipt of a letter from a gentleman in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who
says he hesitates about sending his dollar for membership in the Society
of the Philistines because he is slightly bowlegged; and not looking
well in a dress suit could not attend the Annual Dinner. His case will be
considered by the School of Philosophy at its next session.
* * * * *
A certain trifler, one Livy S. Richard, has this gentle gibe in a recent
number of the _Scranton Tribune_: “It is a fact that Mr. Hubbard was
tossed by a small Irish bull into the Irish Sea and drowned, but as all
really good men go to East Aurora when they die, there is no change in
his postoffice address.”
* * * * *
The next Annual Philistine Dinner will probably be in honor of Mr. Yone
Noguchi.
* * * * *
Here is a true story with a moral for those who can find it: A certain
teacher in the primary department of one of the Chicago public schools
had a six-year-old boy in her room who seemed rather perverse and very
dull. When she would talk to the class he would sit with open mouth and
stare at her. Five minutes afterward he could not, or would not, repeat
three words of what he had been told. She could not get him to study; and
so she scolded him, had him stand on the floor, “stay after school,” and
once tried whipping him. At last in despair she explained the matter to
the principal. “For th’ Lord!” that gentleman exclaimed, “we can’t use
the Public School funds to learn imbeciles! they should send that kid
to the Home for Feeble Minded.” And this was the advice sent by a big
brother to the parents. The parents decided to accept the advice and they
took the little boy to the Home for Feeble Minded and asked that he be
received as an inmate.
The matron took the child on her lap, talked to him, read to him and
showed him pictures. Then she said to the parents, “This boy is fully
as intelligent as any of your other children, perhaps more so—but he is
deaf.”
* * * * *
To Herbert S.:—Thanks for your well-meant letter. But the Roycroft holds
no copyright on the Songs of Solomon and cannot therefore “stop that man
Mosher from pirating the stuff,” as you suggest. None of Solomon’s stuff
is covered by copyright.
* * * * *
Mr. Warner once wrote a particularly good article wherein he says, “What
is wanted in this era of literature, is not writers but discriminating
readers.” Mr. Warner wrote a long preachment in order to make the matter
plain. Now if I were at all given to sarkastical remarks I might say
something just here. As it is I’ll only hint that no one wishes Mr.
Warner to cease bookmaking and become a book buyer; but if Mr. Warner
should cease to write and begin to read, why then I hope he’ll buy and
read my books—no one need prove they are good, I acknowledge it myself.
Catalogue on application.
* * * * *
After all, there surely are too many people writing. I think I will draw
up a list, the first rainy day, of the fellows who I think should quit.
I’ll publish the names and if the rogues don’t stop perhaps there is a
way to make ’em; there used to be.
* * * * *
No mistake, Chimmie played a good game of ball. Then he could shout, too.
I believe he is the only man who ever thoroughly rattled the Scranton
pitcher. For this and other things his salary was raised; fame came to
him and invitations, dainty and perfumed, fluttered his way by every
mail. He was even invited to a Progressive Euchre at the Smythe’s on the
Avenue. Now every one knows that Miss Mame Smythe is not only artistic
but bookish, besides she elocutes beautiful.
“And did you accept the invitation?” I asked Chimmie, who was telling me
the tale.
“Did I go? Well dats wot I did—see!”
“And I suppose you had a good time?”
“I didn’t say dat. Miss Mame she sent ’em in too hot. I couldn’t ezackly
get on to her curves—see?”
“What did she say to you?”
“Well, one thing she said was, ‘Mister Fadden, which do you prefer, art
or letters?’”
“Yes; and what did you say?”
“Wot t’ell could I say?”
* * * * *
Literary aspirants in want of Homeric laurel trees (_laurus nobilis_)
should apply at the Philistine Nurseries, East Aurora, N. Y.
* * * * *
“What is your religious creed?” asked the interviewer of Miss Amy Leslie.
“I believe in the Nebular Hypothesis and a Tariff for Revenue only,” was
the somewhat ambiguous reply.
* * * * *
A celebrated Russian Princess has just dashed off a “pot boiler.” It
appears in the last number of _Bloxam’s_. This fact in itself is of no
importance. What impresses one is the frigid accuracy in description. The
intelligent reader is introduced to a locomotive engine (whose name, by
the way, is Zenobia and furnishes the title of the soup procurer) having
eight-foot driving wheels. The headlight shines upon and irradiates the
steam thrown off when in motion, to accomplish which feat the engine
must advance backward. The stomach of this unique colossus is innocently
ignorant of coal, being fed with logs and having a preference for
chestnut timber; and its grinding genius, the hero, is engineer and
fireman combined.
It is only just to remark that had the engine been fed with coal there
would have been no romance to chronicle. Verily fiction is stranger than
truth.
* * * * *
Dr. MacDonald, the Nordau of America, has favored me with a copy of his
book, _Abnormal Woman_. The learned doctor cites a hundred cases of
“females” whose acquaintanceship he made through “personals.” In pursuing
his subject he pursued many women and some of the women pursued him; and
his argument is, that the fact of these women having had anything to do
with him proves their abnormality. Motion granted without prejudice or
costs.
* * * * *
Who is it should quit writing things to print? I once asked Clangingharp.
“Oh the others, the others, the others,” was the answer.
* * * * *
When literary men are invited to dine they are expected to exhale wisdom
at every pore. Thackeray said of a certain lion-hunter: “Should she
invite Blondin to lunch, a wire would be stretched across the street and
the great man would be expected to sip his tea in midair: did he not do
this all the guests would consider themselves victimized.”
* * * * *
I belong to no party, to no school, to no sect. And yet I belong to each;
and all belongs to me, for I accept the good in all things. When anything
that seems to savor of spite escapes from my ink bottle I am as innocent
of vengeful intent as were the simple, swaying reeds that bending before
the breeze sighed, “Midas, the king has asses ears.” Now the reeds
really never voiced any such sentiment, but Midas mindful that he had
asses ears thought they did; for any man having asses ears continually
considers himself assailed.
* * * * *
There is a man in East Aurora who strictly “observes” the Seventh Day;
and being very pious, and there existing considerable doubt as to which
is the Seventh Day, he also rests all the week.
* * * * *
“Ah, he must be a queer man!” I said to the woman in the railroad
carriage who insisted on complaining to me of her husband.
“Queer! he’s worse nor that—he’s a wolf in a medicated Jaeger combination
suit.”
In a late issue of the _Chap Book_ is the following poem:
My mother bade me not to pass
Too near her shining looking glass.
I thought it strange such things to say
To just a little girl at play;
So in one hour of mortal sin
I crept quite close and long looked in,
And, Oh, I saw within—a sorceress.
How much lovelier it would have been to us all if we could not remember
a poem strangely similar—written at least six years ago by Mrs. Pratt,
which ran:
My mother says I must not pass
Too near that glass;
She is afraid that I will see
A little witch that looks like me,
With red, red mouth to whisper low
The very thing I should not know.
* * * * *
There is nothing half so funny in the joke books as the column in the
Serious Family magazines devoted to conduct, which, according to Edwin
Arnold, is three-fourths of life—that is, such life as some people
have to be content with. There is a delightful humor in the absolution
doled out at 25 cents a month, or whatever it is for subscription, to
young people and widows and others who want to marry, or don’t, or
would like to wear white at a second marriage, or be wedded within six
months after a parent’s death, or eat ice cream with a spoon, or take
some other liberty with the eternal unfitness of things which is called
good manners. The column is usually run _a la_ chaperon—by a lady of
middle age plus, and not so pretty as to be in any sort of doubt about
the attention she receives. Impartiality is thus secured. She knows the
grapes are acid, and can give due warning of cramps and Sun mixture.
She also knows the combinations of mauve and other soft tints that
best moderate the advertised pangs of widowhood or other consolable
conditions. She can tell to a dot how long children must wear deep black
and what is the approved cut of mourning garments for first, second and
third bereavements and grass ditto. Particulars adapted to all cases may
be had in all the journals for ladies and ladies’ ladies published in
Philadelphia, which put out their leaves like the original tree of life
twelve times a year, with red and yellow covers for Christmas.
* * * * *
I am informed that the death of _The New Bohemian_ was caused by slipping
off the gang plank into the Irish Sea. The literary gang plank is very
slippery and the Irish Sea is not yet full. Keep your eye on our Obituary
Column.
* * * * *
Often I am seized with a desire to buy a ticket to New York by the Empire
State Express and become a Great Man. And I think I would ha’ done this
long ago had I not once seen Frank Stockton eating green corn off from
the cob.
* * * * *
“Why should not America have an Academy of Immortals?” asks Mr. Oscar Fay
Adams. Bless you! it has. Any person properly vouched for remitting One
Dollar to The Society of the Philistines, East Aurora, N. Y., will be
duly enrolled.
* * * * *
ADVERTISEMENT.—A little before Christmas time “The Roycroft” will issue
a dainty little book in red and black, on Japan paper, by Yone Noguchi,
pupil and companion of Joaquin Miller.
{ Cents,
52 { Weeks,
{ Numbers.
FOOTLIGHTS
A Weekly Journal for the Theatre-Goers.
_Printed in two colors, with a cover page design by ETHEL REED._
Contains 32 illustrated pages filled with chat with actors and actresses,
criticism of the new plays, gossip about the people of the stage, reviews
of the new books, and gossip about the happenings in the literary world.
Letters from special correspondents in Rome, London, Paris, New York and
Boston. Also, short stories and verse, and once in a while an article by
Sir Henry Irving, Richard Mansfield, or other favorites of the stage.
Edited by CHARLES BLOOMINGDALE, JR., and E. ST. ELMO LEWIS. The price
of the paper is 5 cents an issue, $2.00 per year. As a test of this
magazine’s advertising worth we will send you the paper for 52 weeks—=52
numbers for 52 cents=.
FOOTLIGHTS,
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
To Lovers of Fine Books _AND_ POSTERS.
On receipt of 10 cents we will send to any address a copy of our largely
illustrated catalogue of 50c posters exhibited by “THE ECHO” and _The
Century_.
Of the first edition of Percival Poffard’s Novel OF TO-DAY
Cape of Storms
With cover design (in red, white and black) by Will H. Bradley, and title
page by John Sloan, on hand-made paper, very few remain.
Price, $1.00
Clever and out-of-the-common.—_Chicago Journal._
Distinctly a clever book.—_Chicago Tribune._
Has made a hit.—_Footlights._
Brightly told.—_Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin._
THE ECHO’S POSTERS.
Will H. Bradley’s 1895, 25c.
John Sloan’s 1.00
Miss H. S. Lowry’s, 25c.
Bradley’s, 1896, 25c.
The Echo, Chicago.
ON GOING TO CHURCH
By GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, author “Quintessence of Ibsenism,” “Arms and the
Man,” etc., etc. (Authorized Edition.) This book is done throughout in
the best Roycroft style: Romanesque type, Kelmscott initials, Dickinson’s
Dekel-edge paper, wide margins
Price, stoutly bound in antique boards, One Dollar.
The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora,
N. Y.
NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS.
We have the greatest Reading Room in the World and clip from 15,000
publications of all kinds.
We receive them direct from the publishers, every issue, and furnish
clippings on all subjects, $1.00 per month and upwards.
Material for Speeches Books, Sermons, Lectures, Special Information,
Scrap Books, etc.
Write for particulars
THE CHICAGO PRESS CLIPPINGS BUREAU
36 La Salle Street, Chicago
A STORY IN VERSE
GLYNNE’S WIFE, BY JULIA DITTO YOUNG, AUTHOR OF “Thistle Down,” “Adrift:
a Story of Niagara,” etc. Mrs. Young is a poet who has written much but
published little. This, her latest and believed by her friends to be
her best work, is the product of a mind and heart singularly gifted by
Nature, and ripened by a long apprenticeship to Art. As a specimen of the
pure “lyric cry,” illustrating the melody possible in the English tongue,
the volume seems to stand alone among all the books written by modern
versifiers. Five hundred and ninety copies are being printed on smooth
Holland hand-made paper, and twenty-five on Tokio Vellum paper. Bound in
boards and antique silk; the Vellum copies will have on various pages
special water-color designs done by the hand of the author. Every copy
will be numbered and signed by Mrs. Young. Price on Holland paper, $2.00;
Vellum, $5.00.
THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP,
East Aurora, New York.
We make a specialty of Dekel Edge Papers and carry the largest stock and
best variety in the country. Fine Hand-made Papers in great variety.
Exclusive Western Agents for L. L. Brown Paper Company’s Hand-mades.
GEO. H. TAYLOR & CO.,
207-209 Monroe Street,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Hubbard’s new two-volume novel, entitled THE LEGACY, is now ready for
delivery. The book has 450 pages of text on Dickinson’s rough Dekle Edge
paper; photogravure portrait of author and illustrations on Japan paper.
Bound in bottle green chamois, silk lined. Price $3.00, express paid.
The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora,
N. Y.
[Illustration]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. III, No. 6, November 1896)" ***
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