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Title: The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. III, No. 2, July 1896)
Author: Various
Language: English
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The Philistine
A Periodical of Protest.
_I am sure care’s an enemy to life._—TWELFTH NIGHT.
[Illustration: Vol. III. No. 2.]
Printed Every Little While
for The Society of The Philistines
and Published by
Them Monthly. Subscription,
One Dollar Yearly
Single Copies, 10 Cents.
July, 1896.
THE PHILISTINE.
CONTENTS FOR JULY.
A Sea Song, F. W. Pickard.
A Bit of War Photography, T. W. Higginson.
A Prologue, Stephen Crane.
A Hot Weather Idyll, Estes Baker.
A Venture in Manuscript, Charles M. Skinner.
The Micketts of a Wybirt, Ian Taylor.
The Purple Insurgent, Frank W. Noxon.
Heart to Heart Talks with Men, J. Howe Adams.
Plots and Things, Kenneth Brown.
Side Talks with the Philistines.
Conducted by the East Aurora School of Philosophy.
Have you seen the Roycroft Quarterly? The “Stephen Crane” number is
attracting much attention and we believe it will interest you. 25 cents a
copy.
_Entered at the Postoffice at East Aurora, New York, for transmission as
mail matter of the second class._
_COPYRIGHT, 1896, by B. C. Hubbard._
NOTICE TO
Collectors of Artistic Posters.
On receipt of 10 cents we will send to any address, a copy of our largely
illustrated catalogue of 500 posters exhibited by “The Echo” and “The
Century.”
“The Echo” is the pioneer in fostering the poster in America. It began
its department of Poster-Lore in August, 1895, and has printed it
fortnightly, with many illustrations, ever since.
Each issue of “The Echo” bears a poster design, in two or more colors,
on its cover. During the past year seven of these covers were by Will H.
Bradley.
“The Echo” is $2.00 a year, 10 cents a number. NEW YORK, 130 Fulton
Street.
LOOK OUT for the second and popular edition of “Cape of Storms,” price 25
cents. One sent free with every year’s subscription to “The Echo.”
_THE LOTUS._
_A Miniature Magazine of Art and Literature Uniquely Printed and
Illustrated_.
A graceful flower.—_Rochester Herald._
It is a wonder.—_Chicago Times-Herald._
The handsomest of all the bibelots.—_The Echo._
Alone in its scope and piquancy.—_Boston Ideas._
Artistic in style and literary in character.—_Brooklyn Citizen._
The prettiest of the miniature magazines.—_Syracuse Herald._
Each bi-weekly visit brings a charming surprise.—EVERYBODY.
THE LOTUS _seeks to be novel, unconventional and entertaining without
sacrificing purity and wholesomeness. It seeks to be a medium for the
younger writers._
THE LOTUS _is published every two weeks and is supplied to subscribers
for One Dollar a year; foreign subscription, $1.25. Sample copy five
cents. On sale at all news stands._
THE LOTUS, Kansas City, Mo.
The Roycroft Quarterly:
Being a Goodly collection of Literary Curiosities obtained from Sources
not easily accessible to the average Book-Lover. Offered to the
Discerning every three months for 25c. per number or one dollar per year.
Contents for May:
I. Glints of Wit and Wisdom: Being replies from sundry Great Men who
missed a Good Thing.
II. Some Historical Documents by W. Irving Way, Phillip Hale and Livy S.
Richard.
III. As to Stephen Crane. E. H. A preachment by an admiring friend.
IV. Seven poems by Stephen Crane.
1—The Chatter of a Death Demon.
2—A Lantern Song.
3—A Slant of Sun on Dull Brown Walls.
4—I have heard the Sunset Song of the Birches.
5—What Says the Sea?
6—To the Maiden the Sea was Blue Meadow.
7—Fast Rode the Knight.
V. A Great Mistake. Stephen Crane. Recording the venial sin of a mortal
under sore temptation.
VI. A Prologue. Stephen Crane.
THE PHILISTINE.
NO. 2. July, 1896. VOL. 3.
A SEA SONG.
Away with care! Away with grief!
Hurrah for life! Hurrah, we’re free!
Away with sorrow! Perish wrong!
Hurrah, Hurrah! The sea! The sea!
Yo ho, The waves are dashing,
Yo ho, The billows crashing,
Yo ho, The spray goes flashing
Down the bay.
Hurrah! The gulls are winging,
O’er bows the waves are flinging
The cooling, pelting, stinging,
Salt sea spray.
Away with care! Away with grief!
Hurrah for life! Hurrah, we’re free!
Away with sorrow! Perish wrong!
Hurrah, Hurrah! The sea! The sea!
F. W. PICKARD.
A BIT OF WAR PHOTOGRAPHY.
After the applause won by Mr. Stephen Crane’s _Red Badge of Courage_,
a little reaction is not strange; and this has already taken, in some
quarters, a form quite unjust and unfair. Certainly any one who spent
so much as a week or two in camp, thirty years ago, must be struck with
the extraordinary freshness and vigor of the book. No one except Tolstoi,
within my knowledge, has brought out the daily life of war so well; it
may be said of these sentences, in Emerson’s phrase, “Cut these and
they bleed.” The breathlessness, the hurry, the confusion, the seeming
aimlessness, as of a whole family of disturbed ants, running to and fro,
yet somehow accomplishing something at last; all these aspects, which
might seem the most elementary and the easiest to depict, are yet those
surest to be omitted, not merely by the novelists, but by the regimental
histories themselves.
I know that when I first read Tolstoi’s _War and Peace, The Cossacks and
Sevastopol_, it seemed as if all other so-called military novels must
become at once superannuated and go out of print. All others assumed, in
comparison, that bandbox aspect which may be seen in most military or
naval pictures; as in the well known engraving of the death of Nelson,
where the hero is sinking on the deck in perfect toilette, at the height
of a bloody conflict, while every soldier or sailor is grouped around
him, each in spotless garments and heroic attitude. It is this Tolstoi
quality—the real tumult and tatters of the thing itself—which amazes the
reader of Crane’s novel. Moreover, Tolstoi had been through it all in
person; whereas this author is a youth of twenty-four, it seems, born
since the very last shot fired in the Civil War. How did he hit upon his
point of view?
Yet this very point of view, strange to say, has been called a defect.
Remember that he is telling the tale, not of a commanding general, but of
a common soldier—a pawn in the game; a man who sees only what is going on
immediately around him, and, for the most part, has the key to nothing
beyond. This he himself knows well at the time. Afterward, perhaps, when
the affair is discussed at the campfire, and his view compared with
what others say, it begins to take shape, often mixed with all sorts
of errors; and when it has reached the Grand Army Post and been talked
over afterward for thirty years, the narrator has not a doubt of it all.
It is now a perfectly ordered affair, a neat and well arranged game of
chess, often with himself as a leading figure. That is the result of too
much perspective. The wonder is that this young writer, who had no way
of getting at it all except the gossip—printed or written—of these very
old soldiers, should be able to go behind them all, and give an account
of their life, not only more vivid than they themselves have ever given,
but more accurate. It really seems a touch of that marvelous intuitive
quality which for want of a better name we call genius.
Now is it a correct criticism of the book to complain, as one writer has
done, that it does not dwell studiously on the higher aspects of the
war? Let the picture only be well drawn, and the moral will take care of
itself; never fear. The book is not a patriotic tract, but a delineation;
a cross section of the daily existence of the raw enlisted-man. In other
respects it is reticent, because it is truthful. Does any one suppose
that in the daily routine of the camp there was room for much fine talk
about motives and results—that men were constantly appealing, like
Carlyle’s Frenchman, “to posterity and the immortal Gods?” Fortunately
or unfortunately, the Anglo Saxon is not built that way; he errs on the
other side; habitually understates instead of overstating his emotions;
and while he is making the most heroic sacrifices of his life, usually
prefers to scold about rations or grumble at orders. He is to be
judged by results; not by what he says, which is often ungracious and
unornamental, but by what he does.
The very merit of this book is that in dealing with his men the
author offers, within this general range, all the essential types of
character—the man who boasts and the man who is humble—the man who
thinks he may be frightened and is not, and the man who does not expect
to be, but is. For his main character he selects a type to be found
in every regiment—the young man who does not know himself, who first
stumbles into cowardice, to his own amazement, and then is equally amazed
at stumbling into courage; who begins with skulking, and ends by taking
a flag. In Doyle’s _Micah Clarke_ the old Roundhead soldier tells his
grandchildren how he felt inclined to bob his head when he first heard
bullets whistle, and adds “If any soldier ever told you that he did not,
the first time that he was under fire, then that soldier is not a man
to trust.” This is putting it too strongly, for some men are born more
stolid, other more nervous; but the nervous man is quite as likely to
have the firmer grain, and to come out the more heroic in the end. In my
own limited experience, the only young officer whom I ever saw thoroughly
and confessedly frightened, when first under fire, was the only one of
his regiment who afterwards chose the regular army for his profession,
and fought Indians for the rest of his life.
As for _The Red Badge of Courage_, the test of the book is in the way it
holds you. I only know that whenever I take it up I find myself reading
it over and over, as I do Tolstoi’s _Cossacks_, and find it as hard to
put down. None of Doyle’s or Weyman’s books bear re-reading, in the
same way; you must wait till you have forgotten their plots. Even the
slipshod grammar seems a part of the breathless life and action. How
much promise it gives, it is hard to say. Goethe says that as soon as
a man has done one good thing, the world conspires against him to keep
him from doing another. Mr. Crane has done one good thing, not to say
two; but the conspiracy of admiration may yet be too much for him. It is
earnestly to be hoped, at least, that he may have the wisdom to stay in
his own country and resist the temptation to test his newly-found English
reputation by migrating—an experiment by which Bret Harte has been
visibly dwarfed and Henry James hopelessly diluted.
T. W. HIGGINSON.
Cambridge, Mass.
A PROLOGUE.
A GLOOMY STAGE. SLENDER CURTAINS AT A WINDOW, CENTRE. BEFORE THE WINDOW,
A TABLE, AND UPON THE TABLE, A LARGE BOOK, OPENED. A MOONBEAM, NO WIDER
THAN A SWORD-BLADE, PIERCES THE CURTAINS AND FALLS UPON THE BOOK.
A MOMENT OF SILENCE.
FROM WITHOUT, THEN—AN ADJACENT ROOM IN INTENTION—COME SOUNDS OF
CELEBRATION, OF RIOTOUS DRINKING AND LAUGHTER. FINALLY, A SWIFT QUARREL.
THE DIN AND CRASH OF A FIGHT. A LITTLE STILLNESS. THEN A WOMAN’S SCREAM.
“AH, MY SON, MY SON.”
A MOMENT OF SILENCE.
CURTAIN.
STEPHEN CRANE.
A HOT WEATHER IDYLL.
The new assistant sat in the office, vainly endeavoring to discourage
the perspiration in its efforts to show him how the water comes down
at Lodore. But, with a perseverance worthy a wetter cause than the dry
weather, it continued to flow from his mobile brow and neck, mop he never
so well. The thermometer on the wall registered 89, and the calendar only
May 1st. It was the new assistant’s first day in the office, and he had
already begun to contemplate with humid horror the prospect of spending
an entire summer in a place that was already warm enough to have caused
his once stiff and glossy collar to emulate his puff-bosom shirt.
“Why,” he gasped to the Old Book-keeper, “what _will_ it be when summer
really comes?”
The latter, who had been a cent short in his cash the night before,
gruffly replied that it would probably be June 1st. But, before the day
was over, he, too, was forced to realize the heat and to speak of it.
So, when his face began to assume the appearance of a greasy plank under
a hydrant, he concluded that it might not be so great a compromise to
his dignity for him to agree with his junior, and his looks showed him
to be rapidly thawing. They managed to survive that day and the next and
several others that followed. In the meantime the thermometer seemed
bent, in fact, warped, upon beating all previous records, and the two
sufferers watched the mercury climb, until it seemed to be trying to
reach its Olympian namesake. The thought that the worst was to come
served to increase their distress. It always does.
Finally, the Old Book-keeper, who occupied a sort of oldest inhabitant
position in the neighborhood, although he had always worked for a living,
threw up the sponge and reluctantly admitted that, for so early in the
season, it really beat all the weather he ever saw. The new assistant
sympathized with the old man in his defeat, and went so far in his
efforts to cheer him, as across the street to buy the beer, without first
proposing to match for it.
So affairs went on, nothing worthy of note transpiring, except, of
course, the two now becoming warm friends. Every morning and again after
lunch they would enter the office, take off their coats and everything
else that Mr. Comstock might not object to, and drearily settle down
to their work, always wondering if they would be able to stand it
when summer really came. By this time, they had ceased to consult the
thermometer, and the calendar was forgotten. Several pages that should
have been torn from the latter remained there still: not enough air was
stirring to move them. At last, one afternoon just as the new assistant
had succeeded in opening his attenuated countenance wide enough to say,
as usual—“I wonder what it will be when summer really”—the door was
suddenly darkened by a portly form enveloped in a heavy overcoat and a
confident manner that unmistakably stamped their wearer as the Boss, and
a hearty voice exclaimed—“Well, this bracing weather is delightful after
a hot summer on the Riviera!” The Old Book-keeper and the new assistant
staggered to the door and looked out. The snow was falling thick and fast.
ESTES BAKER.
Knoxville, Tenn.
A VENTURE IN MANUSCRIPT.
Having finished some literature I put it into an envelope, with postage
stamps to get it back; for that happened sometimes, even when it was
real, hand-made literature, as in this case. It came back, because the
editor of the _Bugle_ said it was too long. I sat up that night paring
and changing, and when it had been condensed a third it occurred to me
that maybe there was a surer market for it in the office of the _Banner
of Freedom_. Another try; more postage stamps. Returned with statement
that “We never print stories less than 6,000 words long and yours is
too short.” I rewrote it in part, restoring an episode on which I had
slightly prided myself in the original version, and as it was neither
long nor short I sent it, this time to _Tomlinson’s Bi-Monthly_.
Tomlinson kept it for nearly two years before returning it, and it
reached me a veritable tramp of a manuscript, dusty, creased, dog-eared
and ragged, with editorial changes in blue pencil that could not be
erased, and the remark that, as _Tomlinson’s_ circulated largely among
the Bulgarians in America, and received advertising patronage from
them, it was impossible to print anything that might offend Bulgarians.
This surprised me, because the fact that one of my characters, Gilhooly
McManus, was a Bulgarian had nearly escaped my notice. He was introduced
because his nationality made occasion for an incident that I needed, and
had he been an American every reader would have denounced his conduct as
absurd.
There was nothing for it but to copy it afresh and send it to _Bloxam’s_.
It was returned in the next mail, manifestly unread, with the usual form
announcement that “owing to pressure” etc., it was impossible, etc.,
so I tried _The Pacific_ with it next. It came back in time with the
objection that it was too sensational, and the next week it was returned
by the _Chambermaid’s Own_ as too quiet. _Hanks’ Review_ would not have
it because plots were going out of fashion, and _The Athenian_ suggested
that I imbue it with at least a trace of interest. At last a little
one-horse magazine in Texas offered to print it if I would subscribe for
three years to his magazine at two dollars per year. I accepted the offer
by return mail, stipulating only that the magazine should be sent, with
my compliments, to an almshouse.
And I set out on my next story wondering if the time would ever come when
a man could speak his mind to his fellow men in print, or if all written
things would have to be shaped according to the Procrustean notions of
the average editor.
CHARLES M. SKINNER.
THE MICKETTS OF A WYBIRT.
Then with a touchbox of transalpine tar,
Turning thrice round, and stirring not a jot,
He threw five tons of red hot purple Snow,
Into a Pigmy’s mouth, nine inches square.
Which straight, with melancholy mov’d,
Old Bembus Burgomaster of Pickt-hatch,
That plunging through the Sea of Turnbull street,
He safely did arrive at Smithfield Bars.
Then did the Turntripes on the Coast of France,
Catch fifteen hundred million grasshoppers,
With fourteen Spanish Needles, bumbasted,
Poach’d with the Eggs of fourscore Flanders Mares.
Mounted upon the foot of Caucasus,
They whirled the football of conspiring Fate,
And brake the shins of smug-fac’d Mulciber:
With that, grim Pluto all in Scarlet blue,
Gave fair Persephone a kiss of Brass,
At which all Hell danc’d Trenchmore in a string.
Whilst Acheron and Termagant did sing,
“The Mold-warp,” all this while in white broth bath’d,
Did Carol Didoes happiness in love,
Upon a Gridiron made of whiting-mops,
Unto the tune of “John Come Kiss Me Now,”
At which Avernus Music ’gan to roar,
Enthron’d upon a seat of three-leav’d grass,
Whilst all the Hibernian Kernes in multitudes,
Did feast with Shamrocks stewed in Usquebaugh.
At which banquet made of didillary
Took great distaste, because the Pillory
Was hunger-starv’d for want of Villains ears,
Whom to relieve, there was a Mittimus,
Sent from Tartaria in an oyster boat,
At which the King of China was amaz’d,
And with nine grains of Rhubard, stellified,
As low as to the altitude of shame,
He thrust four Onions in a Candle-case,
And spoil’d the meaning of the world’s misdoubt.
Thus with a Dialogue of crimson Starch,
I was inflamed with a nun-cold fire,
Upon the tenterhooks of Charlemagne.
The Dogstar howl’d, the Cat a Mountain smil’d,
And Sisyphus drank Muscadel and eggs,
In the horn’d hoof of huge _Bucephalus_,
Time turn’d about, and show’d me Yesterday,
Clad in a Gown of mourning; had I wist,
The motion was almost too late they said,
Whilst sad despair made all the World stark mad;
They all arose, and I put up my pen,
It makes no matter, where, why, how, or when.
IAN TAYLOR.
THE PURPLE INSURGENT.
Clangingharp told Frostembight the only prophetic way to write an epic
was to save all the rough drafts, with interlinear corrections. He
said your biographer could thus trace the growth of your work from its
earliest inception to its final bloom, and the photographic reproductions
would do away with the cost of sketches. Frostembight said a man that
would write an epic was a lunk-head. Clangingharp started to get up and
destroy Frostembight, but he stepped on Marcus Aurelius, and with a rush
of words to the throat fell helpless into his chair. Marcus Aurelius was
the cat. “Dam that cat,” added Clangingharp.
One night when Clangingharp sat writing, an episode occurred.
Clangingharp couldn’t write on an empty stomach, and the verses he made
when he was sober were so drab and elegiac that in spite of his remark to
Frostembight he threw them away and went out after cocktails. He could
write shriller and hotter stuff when he had had cocktails. Well, one
night he sat thinking of what an empty thing a cocktail is. He had been
writing verses, and he knew they were regrettable. But he did not go out
and have cocktails. It might be told why he didn’t, but what’s the use?
You go to a comedy to get away from your business troubles, and the chief
clown constantly thrusts under your nose a big wad of stage money. It
would simply be dragging in sordid matter that should have no place in
a psychological study. It is enough to say he didn’t go out. He sat and
plunked drops of purple ink from his pen into a blotter with an insurance
advertisement on it that lay submissively on the desk. Then Marcus
Aurelius leaped onto the blotter, and a fiendish shine glittered dryly in
the epicist’s eye. He noticed the cat was white. Rainy afternoons on the
fire-escape had made the beast very white. Clangingharp plunked a drop of
royal purple on the tip of Marcus Aurelius’s tail.
The next instant Clangingharp had written:
“And gave him hemorrhage of the soul.”
“Great!” he screeched in a seething cauldron of joy. “Powerful!”
He began to wonder whether or not cattails were as effective as
cocktails. He plunked another royal purple drop onto the cat’s tail, and
wrote another line. It was not so good as hemorrhage of the soul, but it
was pretty fair:
“And freshet-flushed his hydrant eye.”
For two weeks Clangingharp’s days and nights were dry. He did not go out
after cocktails, and as there was a drought on the fire-escape the cat
was becoming splendidly regal. The window was kept open, for the weather
was hot; but Marcus Aurelius got no nourishment excepting an occasional
mouse and what he absorbed from the ink, so he staid in. Clangingharp
would sit there for hours and deliberately sling ink at him. Not a growl
from Marcus. At last he would take down the folding-bed, and before
getting in would remember the pen and wipe it along Marcus’s spine. Not a
plaint from the cat: always patient and forgiving.
The epic was growing. It had become so vast now that Clangingharp had
long since stopped saving rough drafts, and the complete copy was piled
up neatly on his desk. There was so much that he had even ceased reading
the whole of it through after writing each new line. The evening came
when Clangingharp felt that he could finish the last canto. His heroine
was about to get her document so she could be married to the hero, and
Clangingharp felt that without stimulants he was scarcely up to writing
the heroine’s final spasm to the jury. It may as well be said here that
Clangingharp had been hearing from home lately, so he decided to go out
and have them for a last strain. He piled his manuscript fondly on a
corner of the desk, dipped his pen thoughtfully into the ink-well, and
gazing abstractedly at Marcus, plunked the whole penful into a mute
Aurelian eye.
When Clangingharp got back he had had several of them, so at first he did
not quite take in what had happened. It seemed to him as if much greater
cohesion and consistency had been imparted to the epic by the insertion
interlinearly as well as between the pages, of his pot of mucilage.
Illustrations had also been sketched over the sheets with the unbridled
ink-bottle. The work as a whole had begun to circulate, and was already
widespread in its influence. Much of it looked as if the critics had
already been at it. Clangingharp stepped to the window and looked out.
Golden light from the window in a first-floor flat shone brightly over
the bottom of the air-shaft. There, curled up on the cement, lay Marcus
Aurelius, a study in purple and dead.
“Dam that cat!” said Clangingharp.
FRANK W. NOXON.
HEART TO HEART TALKS WITH MEN
QUERY ONE.
Whom do you consider the greatest living _litterateur_?
Formerly, this matter was in doubt; but there can be no dispute over this
point in recent years. But, unfortunately, both good taste and modesty
prevent me from making a more definite reply.
QUERY TWO.
I notice you frequently refer to Henry Ward Beecher as a great man; will
you kindly state why you consider him such?
Mr. Beecher acquired some reputation in Brooklyn a few years ago as a
preacher; this contributed somewhat to his fame. His principal claim to
greatness, however, rests on his wonderful power of recognizing genius in
others. He early saw the advantage of seeking out and connecting himself
with the great geniuses of his neighborhood. I need scarcely add that I
was raised in Brooklyn, and that he was among my first admirers.
QUERY THREE.
Should a young man smoke cigarettes?
I notice on glancing over our advertisement columns, that the cigarette
trust has given up its devilish attempt to make our American women
nicotine _habitues_, so I will divert from my usual plan of never
referring to myself, and tell you my own experience as a reply to this
question.
Ten years ago this very day, a large cigarette firm in New York City
offered me ten thousand dollars a year if I would smoke their brand of
these death-dealing instruments of the evil one. I was very very young at
the time; this is my explanation of my only great temptation. I confess
that I did not see the horror, the degradation in this suggestion; I saw
only in the offer the gold. I am changed now, but, then, it was a fierce
battle. But my mother plead with me, and she made me promise never even
to think of such a wicked thing again. See the result. I now edit the
largest journal in the world, and am educating the women of America what
to do and how to do it. This lesson teaches you to do always as your
mother tells you. Some day you may edit the _Homely Ladies’ Journal_, and
then you can catch the sympathies of your readers with this sentiment,
without fear of your conscience keeping you awake at nights.
QUERY FOUR.
Which of our great poets do you consider led the happiest lives?
Whittier and Tennyson, because they were so blessed with great
friendships. I knew them both well myself.
I shall never forget that glorious day in London, when Tennyson told me,
with tears in his eyes, that his only regret was that he had written
himself out before I had taken charge of the _Homely Ladies’ Journal_;
while Whittier, the dear old chap, told me his fiery war songs that
brought him social ostracism, need never have been written had I edited
the _Woman’s House Journal_ during that period.
QUERY FIVE.
Do you find editing such a great journal as the _Woman’s House Journal_
hard work? It must be, for I find it very hard to edit properly my own
little country weekly.
This question it is almost impossible to answer; to you my work would
seem Herculean, unceasing, impossible; but to me it is so different that
I feel that I cannot answer this question to make myself intelligible.
This question is doubly difficult to answer, for I have systematized my
work by establishing a drag net for getting material. I will explain my
method. I take up the latest magazine; I see a story by some new great
writer, a society leader in the metropolis. Presto! I order a series of
articles on “How Women Should Behave at Teas” from her pen. I hear that a
great English novelist is coming over to seek the American dollar; again,
as with lightning, I order an article “How Your Women Impress Me.” It is
immaterial to me what they actually do write, or how far they wander from
their text, so long as they use my ready made titles. They look so nice
in the index.
In this way, I use the small talk of the writers as a soft food for my
readers. Just as you attempt, in your feeble way, to serve up the gossip
of your little hamlet in your weekly paper, so I do; for I tell you in
confidence what women want is not literature, not art, not science, but
gossip. So I make all the great writers of the day write gossip for them.
This is the secret of my success. You should feel very happy now, for,
although my thoughts and pen fly with lightninglike rapidity, I have
spent five hundred dollars’ worth of time in answering your inquiry.
I will answer the rest of my anxious readers as soon as I can systematize
other incidents in my very short but successward career. In the meantime,
young men by following the lines laid down in this paper cannot fail of
success, real, pure, noble success.
J. HOWE ADAMS.
PLOTS AND THINGS.
UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT.
I have a plot:—A man and a girl in a boarding house in Duesseldorf were
rather sweet on each other. It might have become love and a marriage,
since they were the only Americans there, were both to stay all summer,
and both attractive.
The romance began well, they even got so far that one day he held her
hand and leaned forward, gazing deeply into her eyes.
Just then the Frau Professorin who kept the _pension_ stepped suddenly
into the parlor, saw them, and retreated precipitately.
Here was a catastrophe. Her reputation according to German ideas, gone.
“Ein junges Maedchen sich se zu eenehmen—abschenlich!” Nothing but an
engagement could excuse the holding of the hand of a junges Maedchen by a
man.
They looked at each other and laughed, ruefully. Then they agreed to
become engaged, temporarily: what in Virginia is known as “just engaged,”
in contradistinction to “engaged to be married.”
For a time it was good fun. He was more devoted than ever; and they even
thought of making it permanent. But you know how people act in Germany.
Every time he came into the parlor, whoever was sitting beside her,
jumped up, and he had to go over and sit beside her. Then he had to make
pretty speeches to her while all the other boarders, with German tact,
stopped talking and listened.
The man and the girl carried out their roles well, though they drew the
line at having their picture taken with their arms around each other.
This was a great disappointment to the other boarders. Neither the man
nor the girl was able to talk to any one in the house except about the
girl and the man. It got to be boresome after a while.
When at last they left Duesseldorf, the joy with which they flew asunder
was something to see. There my plot and the romance end. Of course there
were to be chaperones and scenery.
WHICH SINNED?
I was confessor; my cousin or Miss Hart was sinner (each has confessed on
the other); the story is about this:—
He stood opposite her in the waltz quadrille. He did not know her, but
thought what a pretty girl that was in the pink dress, and wondered if I
knew her. (I was in one of the side couples.)
At “Ladies half change,” he reached out his hand with eagerness and she
gave hers without reluctance. When they stood in their places again, he
continued to hold hers, instead of dropping it as he might. (This may
have been absent-mindedness.) Presently she turned to him, smiling, and
glanced down at their hands. He smiled, too. Then she withdrew her hand,
but without apparent offense.
Just then the order came, “Forward and back.” He reached out his hand for
hers, saying, _sotto voce_, “You see, you might as well have let me keep
it.”
This was all the preliminary skirmishing. The question of veracity comes
next.
After the dance my cousin came to me.
“Who was that pretty girl opposite me?” He said.
“What girl?” I asked.
“The one in pink: who was to your right: and danced with the man in the
wilted collar.”
“Ah! That was Miss Hart. Nice girl.”
“Yes,” assented my cousin. “She squeezed my hand the second time we met
in the grand right and left. I wish you’d introduce me to her.”
The next dance happened to be the second extra, which I had with Miss
Hart. We had not gone half way around the room when she said:
“Why didn’t you introduce your cousin to me? He squeezed my hand in the
last quadrille.”
Of course it’s a simple matter of tact. I have my own opinion, but prefer
to allow the sentimental reader to judge for himself. I have known Miss
Hart a long time and she never has squeezed my—however I don’t suppose
that really bears on the point.
THE UNUSABLE PLOT.
Here is another plot, but unfortunately it belongs to a friend of mine,
so that I cannot use it.
If is half past four in Paris—stories of this class are always put in
Paris—and the hero, who is also the villain, goes into a church. He stops
at one of the chapels and looks in. A woman is there, but the light is
dim and he cannot at first be sure that it is she whom he seeks, women’s
backs being all somewhat alike.
She is kneeling, and she has been crying, though the hero cannot see
that. He speaks to her and thanks her for giving him this opportunity of
seeing her, and is going to take her hand; but she interrupts him and
tells him that it is all a terrible mistake, that she cares for him to be
sure, but that it is in a platonic way as a brother, that she truly loves
her husband, and is sorry for all that has happened.
The hero who is also a villain listens with half a smile: he has seen
women repent before, and it adds zest to the chase. His manner warms and
he makes love admirably.
The heroine is nice—so the person who made this plot told me—and the hero
is horrid. His hair is a little thin on the top of his head, and his
boots are carefully polished, and he is a little fat. He is always polite
to a pretty woman, but his politeness is something of an insult.
It is because the heroine is really nice, I suppose, that she at last
persuades him that she does love her husband and not him. Then he goes
away, and she, sinking down on the _priedieu_, listens to the click of
his polished heels on the marble floor of the church. She sees at her
feet the flowers which he had worn in his button-hole, and she picks them
up and kisses them passionately. She is going to hide them in her bosom:
but then being really nice she lays them before the figure of the Virgin,
with a little prayer and then goes away.
As for the hero who is also the villain, he is piqued that it should be
she that has stopped loving first; but is perhaps as well, he reflects,
for she was beginning to bore him.
He looks at his watch and jumps into a cab. The horse goes fast, for the
hero has an engagement at half-past five o’clock with Therese and has
offered the cabman fifty centimes _pour-boire_ if he will get to her
house on time.
“SANS WINS, SANS SONG, SANS SINGER, AND—SANS END.”
I have another plot, but I do not expect ever to do anything with it. It
is about the Man in the Iron Mask. Somebody is to be handling the iron
mask—it is kept, I think, in the Invalides at Paris—when upon pressing
a certain knob a hidden recess is to be revealed, constructed with
marvelous ingenuity (as they always are you know) wherein is to be a
paper telling all about the man in the iron mask.
There is nothing very original so far; but as I recollect this plot—I
thought of it four years ago—the denouement was very striking.
Unfortunately I have forgotten it.
KENNETH BROWN.
SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SOUL EASEMENT AND WISDOM
INCIDENTALLY.
Subscribers to the PHILISTINE not fully understanding my jokes will be
supplied with laughing gas at club rates.
* * * * *
_The St. Louis Mirror_ is flashing the light on to one W. J. Arkell, who
it says has a habit of carrying on a brilliant conversazione with himself
through his chapeau. Just what this means I do not know, but Arkell is
not the only man in this country who owns an Unjust Judge.
* * * * *
The city of Cork in Ireland has one hundred thousand inhabitants,
one-half of whom can neither read nor write. Able-bodied men can be hired
for forty cents a day, and women who get a dollar a week and board are
very fortunate. The city of Cork has no street cars, nor electric lights;
the best hotel has no elevator, nor gas; so you can neither fall down
the shaft nor asphixiate. At bed-time you are given a candle which is
duly charged in your bill. Three-fifths of the citizens are Catholics and
yet the city of Cork boasts the finest Protestant Episcopal church of
its size in the United Kingdom. I refer to the Church of St. Fin Barre.
It cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The bronze gates that
separate the chancel from the nave, alone cost twenty thousand dollars;
sixteen thousand dollars were paid for one window, and the grill-work,
hand carved, in the choir, took two men five years to make. The building
of this beautiful temple was made possible only through the generosity
of one Mr. Guinness, manufacturer of a certain “stout” that is known as
“XXX.” This mixture is highly recommended for nursing mothers and those
in need of a tonic.
And now a resident of Chicago proposes to build in the Windy City a
church patterned after the beautiful church at Cork, but whose steeple is
to be twice as high, and which is to cost a full million dollars. Cork
can keep her rags and illiteracy; she may continue sending her guests to
bed with a candle; but no longer shall she be able to boast her supremacy
in things ecclesiastic—not by a dam sight!
* * * * *
THE EAST AURORA SUMMER SCHOOL OF LITERATURE: The season of 1896 opens
July 1st, and will last for two months. The idea of the course being to
prepare beginners that they may score a success in the fall publishing
season.
A feature of our system is the Art of Sonneting which is imparted in
three lessons, leaving the pupil then free to take up Novel Writing,
Essay Composition or Dramatic Construction. The Modern Sex Novel
Department is under the special care of the Matron.
For prospectus, address with stamp,
Doctor John Peascod, D. D., Principal,
Room 1001, Philistine Building,
East Aurora, New York.
* * * * *
A small but lusty Philistine is now following Strange Gods in one of the
Buffalo (N. Y.) newspapers. In his “Philistine Talk” he cites certain
authors who he claims have an itch for fame; and for their benefit and
the benefit of Organized Charity he gives the following Fable:
The Emperor Claudius on going up the steps of the Capitol at
Washington one day found a Beggar who had a bad case of Eczema.
Now the Eczema had staked off its claim on that particular
spot on the Beggar’s back where he could not scratch it. The
Emperor being a tenderhearted man, and a generous, acceded to
the fellow’s prayer and ordered a slave to scratch the Beggar’s
back. Next morning on mounting the Capitol steps the Emperor
found two Beggars in place of one. But instead of assigning two
slaves to scratch the backs of the two Beggars, he remarked
in a sweet imperial falsetto: “Here you shabby sons of guns!
scratch each other!!” and passed on in maiden meditation fancy
free.
* * * * *
To Jehn Z.—No, Way & Williams do not publish _The Short Horn Register_.
* * * * *
I descend again to Mr. Bok, and apologize to the Philistines for having
once seemingly coupled his name with that of Mr. Howells. That particular
issue of the PHILISTINE is now listed at seven dollars with no copies
to be found. Whether the scarcity arises from the agents of Mr. Howells
having bought up all obtainable copies and destroyed them, or whether Mr.
Bok’s emissaries scoured the book stalls for them, to keep as precious
heirlooms, or both, I cannot say.
* * * * *
_The New York World_ recently gave two full columns to old epitaphs, and
how the writer missed this, the choicest of them all, I know not. I hope,
by the way, that none of the enemy will be deceived by its typographical
form and quote it as a Stephen Crane poem:
Here lies,
Foundered in a fathom and a half,
The shell
Of
Hawser Trunnion, Esq.,
Formerly Commander of a Squadron
In his Majesty’s service;
Who broached to, at 5 P. M., Oct. 10th
In the year of his Age
Three-score and nineteen.
He kept his Guns always loaded,
And his Tackle ready manned,
And never showed his poop to the enemy,
Except when he took him in tow.
But,
His shot being expended,
His Match burnt out,
And his upper works decayed,
He was sunk
By Death’s superior weight of metal.
Nevertheless,
He will be weighed again
At the Great Day,
His rigging re-fitted,
And his Timbers repaired;
And with one broadside
Make his old Adversary
Turn tail.
* * * * *
When George Haven Putnam said, “The chief business of the True Publisher
is to discourage the publication of books,” he made a strong bid for
immortality. The mot deserves to rank with Tallyrand’s concerning the
gift of language.
* * * * *
In a recent issue of _Harper’s_, “the pastor of Mt. Clemens” has
something to say. And who would ha’ thought Mark Twain had a pastor?
* * * * *
Any writer who poses before the country as being the winner of A Big
Prize is no longer like Caezar’s wife.
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
The ROYCROFT Printing Shop has in preparation GLYNNE’S WIFE, a story in
verse by Mrs. Julia Ditto Young.
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 books written by modern versifiers. The delicacy
of touch, the faultless rhythm, the splendid vocabulary and the gentle
tho’ sure insight into the human heart, make a combination of qualities
very, very seldom seen. The author _knows_, and knowing blames not: a
sustained sympathy being the keynote of it all.
The publishers have endeavored to give the story a typographical setting
in keeping with the richness of the lines. Five hundred and ninety copies
are being printed on smooth Holland hand-made paper, and twenty-five on
Tokio Vellum. The copies on Holland paper will be bound in boards covered
with antique watered silk; the Vellum copies are bound in like manner
save that each will bear on the cover a special water-color design done
by the hand of the author.
The price of the five hundred and ninety copies is two dollars each; the
Vellum copies five dollars each. Every copy will be numbered and signed
by Mrs. Young. Orders are now being recorded and will be delivered on
September 1st, numbered in the order received.
THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP,
East Aurora, New York.
[Illustration: MODERN ART
Edited by J. M. BOWLES.]
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.
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.
_Have you seen the Roycroft Quarterly? The May issue is a “Stephen Crane
Number.” 25c. a copy or one dollar a year._
The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora,
New York.
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 are
special designs. After seven hundred and twelve copies were printed the
types were 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.
_Bound in buckram and antique boards. The seven hundred copies that are
printed on Holland hand-made paper are offered at two dollars each, but
the twelve copies on Japan Vellum at five dollars are all sold. Every
book will be numbered and signed by Mr. Hubbard._
The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora, N. Y.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
“An Honest Lawyer”—book just out—
What can the author have to say?
Reprint perhaps of ancient tome—
A work of fiction any way.
—GRACE HIBBARD.
[Illustration]
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