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Title: The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 1, June 1895)
Author: Various
Language: English
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OF PROTEST (VOL. I, NO. 1, JUNE 1895) ***
The Philistine
A Periodical of Protest.
“_Those Philistines who engender animosity, stir up trouble
and then smile._”—JOHN CALVIN.
[Illustration]
Vol. I No. 1.
Printed Every Little While for The Society
of The Philistines and Published
by Them Monthly. Subscription, One
Dollar Yearly
Single Copies, 10 Cents. June, 1895.
THE PHILISTINE.
Contents for June.
1. Quatrains,
E. R. White.
2. Philistines Ancient and Modern,
William McIntosh.
3. The Sanity of Genius,
Rowland B. Mahany.
4. English Monuments,
Elbert Hubbard.
5. Ballade des Écrivains du Temps Jadis,
G. F. Warren.
6. Philistinism in General,
Mark S. Hubbell.
7. Side Talks,
The East Aurora School of Philosophy.
COPYRIGHT 1895
THE PHILISTINE.
NO. 1. June, 1895. VOL. 1.
QUATRAINS.
If one could hear aright the murmurings
Of some shore-stranded sea-shell as it sings,
It might be then that he would come to know
An inkling of the Planner’s purposings.
The weary shuttle can no more divine
Of how its thread looks, in the whole design,
Than we poor shuttles, in the hand of Fate
Can fathom of the Plan a single line.
E. R. WHITE.
PHILISTINES ANCIENT AND MODERN.
“THE ANCIENT PHILISTINES.—The enemies of the children of
light.”—_International Cyclopedia._
“PHILISTINE.—A term of contempt applied by prigs to the rest of
their species.”—LESLIE STEPHEN.
A tiny spot on the map is the Philistia of Old Testament days—a way
station on the path of commerce between alphabet-building Phœnicia to
the north, and Canaan and predatory Arabia on the south. But long before
those hardy neighbors plagued Israel and made a hostage of the Ark
of the Covenant there were Philistines in the world, influencing its
destinies.
Tradition has been unkind to Philistinism as to many other good things.
The Serpent in the Garden is the earliest embodiment of the genius of
protest, unless we follow John Milton farther back to the rebellion in
the Court of Heaven, organized by the Sons of the Morning. Omnipotence
that founded order set in motion change also. The unrest that is the
electro-motor of progress is in nature as in man, and evolution is its
perpetual law.
Human society was ripe for Philistines when Noah launched his ocean
palace inland. Scarce a century later the egotism of man sought to scale
high heaven from a tower of brick and asphalt. Matter was deified with
the usual result, and a discordant medley of alien labor was all the
product of the giant enterprise.
Down through the patriarchal ages the conservative men who builded
cities and the sons of progress who balked established order and moved
on kept up the alternation of forces. Jacob wrung from an angel his
divine endowment and won his brother’s primogeniture when Esau, the
conservative, gave all the future for the good things near by. Joseph,
the dreamer, peddled like old clothes to a rag man, showed his thrifty
brothers a bunco trick worth learning when he had come, a stranger of a
despised race, to be all but a Pharaoh in the capital of civilization.
The trumpet blasts that felled Jericho, the vanquishing shouts of
Gideon, the sling of the shepherd stripling that freed a nation, tell of
seemingly inadequate means out of the conservative order that changed
history. Moses, prophet and lawgiver and priest, killed his man and was a
fugitive a generation before he abandoned his princely rank in Egypt to
lead a nation of slaves into the evolution of independence and mastery of
the world’s spiritual thought.
The ancient monarchies went to wreck when the social order had become
stationary—encrusted with custom and caste. But a few Philistines,
destroyers of arbitrary ranks, recreated the world in the democracy of
Chivalry, and that in turn went down when its vital purpose had been
achieved and its orders had become set and stifled progress.
It was a Philistine, a despised player and holder of horses, who gave the
modern world its literature. It was a heretic monk who threw ink-stands,
not only at Satan, but at embodied and enthroned religion, who gave the
modern world its impetus to freedom. The imaginative authors who most
strongly sway mankind today are Philistines. Thackeray smilingly lifted
the mask from aristocracy and exposed its sordid servility. Dickens threw
down the idols of pretentious respectability. Hugo taught the democracy
of virtue. Tolstoi dethroned convention in religion. Ibsen divorced
morality from law.
The note of protest resounds throughout history. Every age seeks in
material gratifications the realization of its destiny. Everywhere genius
becomes conservative and sterile; art grows self-conscious and measures
achievement by technical difficulties; ceremonial binds social life;
law protects artificial privilege; religion is refined into theology or
materialized into idolatry; hospitality becomes an exchange, and the
humanities are buried alive under their own machinery. They who protest,
who exalt purpose and measure achievement thereby, are called Philistines.
They realize the finiteness of all created things. They see evolution in
all, and hold naught that is finite to be final.
Philistinism is the world’s perpetual crusade. It reveres tradition, but
it despises commonplace in purple.
WILLIAM MCINTOSH.
THE SANITY OF GENIUS.
I talked with one who made a life “success”
Along convention’s smooth and hedge-trimmed road,
Type of that class who bear but their own load,
And “shrewdly” shun the fiery storm and stress,
When hearts and souls unselfish forward press
To mitigate oppression’s stinging goad;
Reformers he called geniuses, but showed
That genius is “a kind of foolishness.”
Well, when I thought how soon he would be cold,
How soon forgotten, and in how few years
His idiot heirs would spend his hoardings vain,
While “the eccentrics” would in ways untold
Make ever less the sum of human tears,
It seemed to me—genius alone is sane!
ROWLAND B. MAHANY.
Legation of the United States, Quito, 1893.
ENGLISH MONUMENTS.
England relegates her poets to a “Corner.” The earth and the fullness
thereof belongs to the men who can kill; on this rock have her State and
Church been built.
As the tourist approaches the city of London for the first time there
are four monuments that probably will attract his attention. They lift
themselves out of the fog and smoke and soot, and seem to struggle toward
the blue.
One of these monuments is to commemorate a calamity—the conflagration of
1666—and the others are in honor of deeds of war.
The finest memorial in St. Paul’s is to a certain Irishman, Albert
Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. The mines and quarries of earth have been
called on for the richest contributions; and talent and skill have given
their all to produce this enduring work of beauty that tells posterity of
the mighty acts of this mighty man. The rare richness and lavish beauty
of the Wellington mausoleum is only surpassed by that of a certain tomb
in France.
As an exploiter the Corsican overdid the thing a bit—so the world
arose and put him down; but safely dead his shade can boast a grave so
sumptuous that Englishmen in Paris refuse to look upon it.
But England need not be ashamed. Her land is spiked with glittering
monuments to greatness gone. And on these monuments you often get the
epitomized life of the man whose dust lies below.
On the carved marble to Lord Cornwallis I read that “He defeated the
Americans with great slaughter.” And so, wherever in England I see a
beautiful monument I know that probably the inscription will tell how
“he defeated” somebody. And one grows to the belief that, while woman’s
glory is her hair, man’s glory is to defeat someone. And if he can
“defeat with great slaughter” his monument is twice as high as if he had
only visited on his brother man a plain defeat. In truth I am told by
a friend who has a bias for statistics, that all monuments above fifty
feet high in England, are to men who have defeated other men “with great
slaughter.” The only exceptions to this rule are the Albert Memorial,
which is a tribute of wifely affection rather than a public testimonial,
so therefore need not be considered here, and a monument to a worthy
brewer who died and left three hundred thousand pound to charity. I
mentioned this fact to my friend, but he unhorsed me by declaring that
modesty forbade carving truth on the monument, yet it was a fact that
the brewer, too, had brought defeat to vast numbers and had, like Saul,
slaughtered his thousands.
When I visited the site of the Globe Theater and found thereon a brewery
whose shares are warranted to make the owner rich beyond the dream of
avarice, I was depressed. In my boyhood I had supposed that if ever I
should reach this spot where Shakespeare’s plays were first produced
I should see a beautiful park and a splendid monument; while some
white-haired old patriarch would greet me and give a little lecture to
the assembled pilgrims on the great man whose footsteps had made sacred
the soil beneath our feet.
But there is no park, no monument and no white-haired old poet to give
you welcome—only a brewery.
“Aye, mon, but ain’t ut a big ’un?” protested an Englishman who heard my
murmurs.
Yes, yes, we must be truthful. It is a big brewery, and there are four
big bulldogs in the court way; and there are big vats; and big workmen
in big aprons. And each of these workmen is allowed to drink six quarts
of beer each day without charge, which proves that the true Christian
spirit is not dead. Then there are big horses that draw the big wagons
and on the corner is a big tap room where the thirsty are served with big
glasses.
The founder of this brewery became very rich; and if my statistical
friend is right, the owners of these mighty vats have defeated mankind
“with great slaughter.”
We have seen that although Napoleon, the defeated, has a more gorgeous
tomb than Wellington, who defeated him, yet there is consolation in the
thought that although England has no monument to Shakespeare, he now
has the freedom of Elysium; while the present address of the British
worthies, who have battened and fattened on poor humanity’s thirst for
strong drink since Samuel Johnson was executor of Thrale’s estate, is
unknown.
We have this on the authority of a Spirit Medium, who says: “The virtues
essential and peculiar to the exalted station of the British worthy
debars the unfortunate possessor from entering Paradise. There is not
a Lord Chancellor, or Lord Mayor, or Lord of the Chamber, or Master of
the Hounds, or Beefeater in Ordinary, or any sort of British bigwig out
of the whole of British Beadledom, upon which the sun never sets, in
Elysium. This is the only dignity beyond their reach.”
This Mejum is an honorable person, and I am sure he would not make this
assertion if he did not have proof of the facts. So for the present we
will allow him to go on his own recognizance, believing that he will
adduce his documents at the proper time.
But still should not England have a fitting monument to Shakespeare? He
is her one universal citizen. His name is honored in every school or
college of earth where books are prized. There is no scholar in any clime
who is not his debtor.
He was born in England, he was never out of England, his ashes rest in
England.
But England’s Budget has never been ballasted with a single pound to help
preserve inviolate the memory of her one son to whom the world uncovers.
Victor Hugo has said something on this subject about like this:
Why a monument to Shakespeare? He is his own monument and England is its
pedestal. Shakespeare has no need of a pyramid; he has his work.
What can bronze or marble do for him? Malachite and alabaster are of no
avail. Jasper, serpentine, basalt, porphyry, granite; stones from Paros
and marble from Carrara—they are all a waste of pains; genius can do
without them.
What is as indestructible as these: _The Tempest_, _The Winter’s Tale_,
_Julius Cæsar_, _Coriolanus_? What monument sublimer than _Lear_, sterner
than _The Merchant of Venice_, more dazzling than _Romeo and Juliet_,
more amazing than _Richard III_?
What moon could shed about the pile a light more mystic than that of _A
Midsummer Night’s Dream_? What capital, were it even in London, could
rumble around it as tumultuously as Macbeth’s perturbed soul? What
framework of cedar or oak will last as long as _Othello_? What bronze can
equal the bronze of _Hamlet_?
No construction of lime, of rock, of iron and of cement is worth the
deep breath of genius, which is the respiration of God through man. What
edifice can equal thought? Babel is less lofty than Isaiah; Cheops is
smaller than Homer; the Colosseum is inferior to Juvenal; the Giralda at
Seville is dwarfed by the side of Cervantes; St. Peter’s at Rome does not
reach to the ankle of Dante.
What architect has the skill to build a tower so high as the name of
Shakespeare? Add anything if you can to mind! Then why a monument to
Shakespeare?
I answer, Not for the glory of Shakespeare, but for the honor of England!
ELBERT HUBBARD.
BALLADE DES ÉCRIVAINS DU TEMPS JADIS.
PUBLISHED IN CHICAGO _circa_ A. D. 1930, AND PRINTED BY THE PHILISTINE
FROM ADVANCE SHEETS.
In what Limbo, or Paradis,
Hides the bulge of his brainful brow
Ponderous Howells, W. D.?
Where vade Warner and Aldrich now,
Boyesen, knowful of why and how,
Skandine skald of the soulful sneer—
Light his pen as a sub-soil plow—?
_But where is the froth of yestreen’s beer?_
Where now drivels the droolful Bok?
Whither doth Harding Davis fare?
And Riley, best of the rhyming flock?
Where is the georgic Garland, where
Harte, tamed cub of the grizzly bear?
Ben Hur Wallace, whose style was queer?
Quipful Clemens, that jester rare?
_But where is the froth of yestreen’s beer?_
Where hies Hawthorne, last of the name?
Gamesome Stockton, where gambols he,
With lass and tiger, his fee to fame?
And Bunner, airful of Arcadie?
Whither doth Brander Matthews flee?
Slim, sad Gilder, sweet sonneteer,
Darling and pride of his Century?
_But where is the froth of yestreen’s beer?_
Sought ye, gentles, a year and day
Tidings of these, ye still must hear
The doleful burden of this poor lay,
_But where is the froth of yestreen’s beer?_
G. F. W.
PHILISTINISM IN GENERAL.
I doff my hat to THE PHILISTINE and hail it “Brother well met.”
In the name of all who have hated shams, in the name of all brave knights
whose lances have shivered against the dead walls of human stupidity,
ignorance, malice and convention; in the name of every stifled and
unuttered song that should have mounted like a meadow lark’s to heaven;
in the name of every pilloried hope and dead ambition killed in the long
battle with the Mediocrities and the Banalities greet thee, Knight Errant
from Philistia, and bid thee God speed.
And having,“hailed,” and “bade,” and “greeted,” let me say that though
the world is wide and shams are many, and the race, to the swift usually,
and the fight to the strong almost always, and though the God of battle,
is according to Napoleon, whom it is fashionable to quote “on the side of
the big battalions,” yet strong blows for truth are cumulative and THE
PHILISTINE’S bright blade must be dyed often with the blood of Error ere
it be sheathed and every lie sooner or later driven to its sure end of
bankruptcy.
I will not hail you Reformer, for that old and honorable name like that
older and still more honorable one of “gentleman” has fallen recently
into disrepute and at last reports was still falling; besides reformers
are often failures, and too often after a brief career are found taking
tea with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, having assumed their discarded
role originally rather for “what there was in it,” than from exalted
or high-minded motives or to improve the condition of their respective
healths.
A young man called once on the great Voltaire, and besought his
encouragement in projects he had conceived for a reorganized and better
scheme of human society, The philosopher leaned his head upon his hand
and thought a minute, then rising, led the way to an inner room, where,
against the velvet-hung wall, was an ivory figure of the Redeemer on the
cross; he pointed to it with warning forefinger. “Young man,” he said,
“behold the fate of a reformer.”
When I see the little things many men strive and cavil over and the great
ones they disregard or ignore I know that the kingdom of Liliput was not
a figment of the imagination of the genial Swift but a lesson from real
life. And when I consider how they swarm like water-bugs and quarrel over
the pronunciation of words and bicker with their neighbor to make him or
her use the sharp “a” in “squalor” so as to make it “squaylor,” I think
sensible people might be excused for weeping or even swearing.
Little people these, say I, and I would wager a dollar to nothing that
William Dean Howells is their prophet and that they all venerate his
works.
The mere fact that Howells is, is a proof that there are those who want
Howells besides himself, and while not entirely subscribing to the saying
that “whatever is is best,” it must be recognized that it has its _raison
d’être_, and we all know Howells has his readers or he would not have his
publishers.
One can almost tell what a man’s opinions will be by knowing what he
reads or has read, just as I once heard it said of a tuft-hunting editor
that it could be predicated with absolute certainty what position he
would take on a public question by learning with whom he walked down
town in the morning or with what wealthy parvenu he passed the previous
evening. This is but a modern application of the old saw, “a man is known
by the company he keeps,” and mentally he may be known by the books he
reads or the magazines he skims through. I shudder for Richard Watson
Gilder, John Brisben Walker, E. Bok, and others of the Mutual Admiration
Society style of periodical makers if they are to be believed to keep
the company or read the lucubrations of the contributors to the dreary
masses of illustrated inanities they edit, publications which have claims
to interest, based alone upon the merit of their illustrations and the
perfection of their typographical beauty.
But to recur to the line of romance and digress from the magazines which
need so much attention, and from “Bartley” and the other counter jumping
namby-pamby, goody-goodies of the Howells stripe, including his own weary
history of himself, and the “Books Which Most Influence Him,” the baleful
effects of which are legitimately and plainly perceptible in his works.
There are shams in literature more dreadful than Mr. Howells, who is a
turgid fact and no sham. For instance;
I know of one evanescently popular young creature who chronically
contributes to the magazines, whose mother it is said, writes his tales
which, she being a clever woman and he an uncommonly stupid man, appears
credible to say the least; and there is another “man” I am told of whose
sister is said to write his poems and modestly efface herself, and as
the stories are good and the poems fairly readable, it should be the
part of THE PHILISTINE to disclose to the world the real authors and
chastise these and other shams, for shams are the hardest hurdles in the
steeplechase which Truth has to make in this world, since they substitute
the false for the real and crown the fool with the laurels of the genius.
How much more might be said of the tasks you have to accomplish, brave
PHILISTINE with your brawny arm and your good naked sword! So much that
the very thought of it fatigues one and that, hailing you as the latest
and best contestant in the tourney of Knighthood and yet, considering you
as a publication in an embryonic stage, I am compelled to quote these
lovely lines of Longfellow:
“Oh, little feet that such long years
Must wander through this vale of tears,
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where travail ends and rest begins,
Grow weary thinking of your road.”
MARK S. HUBBELL.
SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SUNDRY BITS OF WISDOM WHICH HAVE
BEEN HERETOFORE SECRETED, AND ARE NOW SET FORTH IN PRINT.
It is a land of free speech, Philistia, and if one of us chooses to make
remarks concerning the work of the others no sense of modesty keeps us
quiet. It is because we cannot say what we would in the periodicals which
are now issued in a dignified, manner in various places, that we have
made this book. In the afore-mentioned periodicals divers men chatter
with great fluency, startling regularity and “damnable complacency,” each
through his individual bonnet. Edward W. Bok, evidently assisted by Mrs.
Lydia Pinkham and W. L. Douglas, of Brocton, Massachusetts, prints the
innermost secrets of dead women told by their living male relatives for
six dollars a column. Thereby the authors are furnished with the price of
a week’s board, and those of us who may have left some little sense of
decency, wonder what manner of man it may be who sells his wife’s heart
to the readers of Bok. But the “unspeakable Bok” is “successful.” His
magazine flourishes like a green bay tree. Many readers write him upon
subjects of deportment and other matters in which he is accomplished. So,
the gods give us joy! Let him drive on, and may his _Home Journal_ have
five million readers before the year is out—God help them!
Mr. Gilder dishes up monthly beautifully printed articles which nobody
cares about, but which everybody buys, because _The Century_ looks well
on the library table.
Mr. Howells maunders weekly in a column called “Life and Letters” in
Harper’s journal of civilization. This “Life and Letters” reminds me
of the Peterkin’s famous picnic at Strawberry Nook. “There weren’t any
strawberries and there wasn’t any nook, but there was a good place to tie
the horses.”
So it goes through the whole list. There are people, however, who believe
that Romance is not dead, and that there is literature to be made which
is neither inane nor yet smells of the kitchen sink. This is a great big
merry world, says Mr. Dana, and there’s much good to be got out of it, so
toward those who believe as we do—we of Philistia—this paper starts upon
its great and perilous voyage at one dollar a year.
It was Balzac, or some one else, who used to tell of a flea that lived
on a mangy lion and boasted to all the rank outside fleas that he met: I
have in me the blood of the King of Beasts.
* * * * *
It is a comforting thought that somewhere, at some time, every good thing
on earth is brought to an accounting of itself. Thereby are the children
of men saved from much tyranny. For the good things of earth are your
true oppressors.
For such an accounting are Philistines born in every age. By their audit
are men perpetually set free from trammels self-woven.
Earnest men have marvelled in all times that convention has imputed to
husks and symbols the potency of the things they outwardly stand for.
Many also have protested, and these, in reproach, have been called
Philistines. And yet they have done no more than show forth that in all
things the vital purpose is more than the form that shrines it. The
inspirations of to-day are the shams of to-morrow—for the purpose has
departed and only the dead form of custom remains. “Is not the body more
than raiment”—and is not life more than the formulæ that hedge it in?
Wherefore men who do their own thinking, and eke women betimes, take
honor rather than disparagement in the name which is meant to typify
remorseless commonplace. They hesitate not to question custom, whether
there be reason in it. They ask “Why?” when one makes proclamation:
“Lo! Columbus discovered America four hundred years ago! Let us give
a dance.” There have been teachers who sought to persuade mankind that
use alone is beauty—and these too have done violence to the fitness of
things. On such ideals is the civilization of Cathay founded. Neither
in the grossness of material things nor in the false refinements that
“divorce the feeling from its mate the deed” is the core and essence of
living.
It is the business of the true Philistine to rescue from the environment
of custom and ostentation the beauty and the goodness cribbed therein.
And so the Philistines of these days, whose prime type is the Knight of
La Mancha, go tilting at windmills and other fortresses—often on sorry
nags and with shaky lances, and yet on heroic errand bent. And to such
merry joust and fielding all lovers of chivalry are bidden: to look
on—perhaps to laugh, it may be to grieve at a woeful belittling of lofty
enterprise. Come, such of you as have patience with such warriors. It is
Sancho Panza who invites you.
* * * * *
_The Chip-Munk_ has a bright reference in the issue of May 15 to
Coventry, Patmore, Pater and Meredith. These are four great men, as _The
Chip-Munk_ boldly states.
_The Chip-Munk_ further announces that the Only Original Lynx-Eyed Proof
Reader has not gone on a journey. Really, I supposed of course he had
been gone these many moons!
* * * * *
I wonder if Carman is still upon a diet of Mellin’s Food that he imagines
people do not know that this poem
LITTLE LYRICS OF JOY—V.
Lord of the vasty tent of Heaven,
Who hast to thy saints and sages given
A thousand nights with their thousand stars,
And the star of faith for a thousand years.
Grant me, only a foolish rover,
All thy beautiful wide world over,
A thousand loves in a thousand days,
And one great love for a thousand years.
—BLISS CARMAN in _The Chap Book_, May, 1895.
was written years and years ago as follows:
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
—FRANCIS W. BOURDILLON.
I desire to swipe him after this manner:
LITTLE DELIRICS OF BLISS.
MDCCCXCIV.
Lord of the wires that tangle Heaven,
Who hast to thy brake-persuaders given,
The longest of days to ring and grind,
And no least screen from the winter’s wind.
Grant me, only, a summer lover,
Sunshiny days the long year over,
A thousand whirls and a thousand fares,
And one long whirl of a thousand hours.
JOY TROLLEYMAN.
IV-XI-XLIV.
White and rose are the colors of strife,
What care I for the crimson and blue?
Greater than football the battle of life
And tragic as aught the gods may view,
The clutch and the gripe of inward ills;
Pallid the People and Pink the Pills.
JOY CARTMAN.
* * * * *
Mark Twain says he is writing “Joan of Arc” anonymously in _Harper’s_
because he is convinced if he signed it the people would insist the stuff
was funny. Mr. Twain is worried unnecessarily. It has been a long time
since any one insisted the matter he turns out so voluminously was or is
funny.
* * * * *
The amusing William Dean Howells writes that he is so bothered by
autograph seekers that he will hereafter refuse to send his signature
“with a sentiment” unless the applicant for his favor produces
satisfactory evidence he has read all of his works, “now some thirty or
forty in number.” When this proof has been sent if Mr. Howells does not
return his autograph on the bottom of a check for a large amount, he
deserves to be arrested for cruelty to his fellows.
* * * * *
There is no doubt that a teacher once committed to a certain line of
thought will cling to that line long after all others have deserted it.
In trying to persuade others he convinces himself. This is especially so
if he is opposed. Opposition evolves in his mind a maternal affection for
the product of his brain and he defends it blindly to the death. Thus
we see why institutions are so conservative. Like the coral insect they
secrete osseous matter; and when a preacher preaches he himself always
goes forward to the mourners’ bench and accepts all of the dogmas that
have just been so ably stated.
* * * * *
Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or
at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the
painter’s colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its
pedestal and is broken into fragments; but the _Index Expurgatorius_ is
as naught, and the books burned by the fires of the _auto da fe_ still
live. Literature is reproduced ten thousand times ten thousand and lodges
its appeal with posterity. It dedicates itself to Time.
* * * * *
The action of various theatrical managers in cutting from their
programmes the name of the author of the plays running at their houses
and the similar action of numerous librarians in withdrawing his books
from their shelves is simply another proof of the marvellous powers
of stultification possessed by the humans of the present time. These
managers, having the scattering wits of birds, do not seem to appreciate
that, whatever the character of the author, the plays he has written
were as bad before they were produced as they are now that he has been
so effectually extinguished; and these librarians cannot comprehend,
evidently, that his books were fully as immoral as they are now when they
were first put on the shelves. Would it not be a refreshing thing to
find a theatrical manager who managed a theater because he had an honest
purpose of elevating, perpetuating, purifying and strengthening the
drama, instead of speculating in it as a Jew speculates in old clothes?
And would it not be a marvel to discover librarian who knew something
about books?
* * * * *
Buffalo, New York, is getting to be very classic in some things. It
tolerated the nude with great equanimity in the recent Art Exhibition
and exhibits the female embodiment of everything ideal, from the German
muse of song to the still more German muse of barley products, at the
great variety of fests, more or less related to beer, that follow in
swift succession in that town. But the classic climax was reached on
Good Friday of this year, when the Venus of Milo, mounted on a Bock beer
pedestal, was the center piece of an Easter symbol picture in a Hebrew
clothing advertisement. The limit of Buffalo congruity seems to have been
reached.
* * * * *
_The Chip-Munk_ for May has a bit of folk-lore about a man who advised
another to join a conspiracy of silence. This item appeared in 1893 and
during 1894 was published by actual count in one hundred and forty-nine
newspapers. The editors of _The Chip-Munk_ are a bit slow in reading
their exchanges.
* * * * *
The Two Orphans at the Kate Claxton Building, Chicago Stockyards, have
a motto on their letter heads that reads, “We are the people and wisdom
will die with us.”
* * * * *
The editor of _The Baseburner_, who claims to be a veritist, states that
it is not true that the Garland stoves were named after Ham Garland of
Chicago Stockyards; but the fact is Garland named himself after the
stoves.
* * * * *
_Current Literature_ recently had a long article on Louise Imogene
Guinly. Doubtless the spelling of the name was a typographical error,
as the editor probably refers to Miss Louisa Imogene Quinney, who is
postmistress at Auburn, New York, and daughter of Richard Quinney,
manufacturer of the famous Quinney Mineral Water.
* * * * *
Judge Robert Grant has in preparation a series of articles called “How to
Live on a Million a Minute and Have Money to Burn.”
* * * * *
I hear the voice of the editors of _The Chip-Munk_ complaining that
_Little Journeys_, _The Bibelot_, _Chips_ and other publications are
base, would-be imitators of their own chaste periodical. Why, you sweet
things, did you know that many hundred years ago a great printer made a
book which was printed in black inside with a cover in red and black. I
believe this is the thing which you claim is original with yourselves.
So far as the rest of the periodicals are concerned I have no means of
knowing whether they are imitations or not, but _Little Journeys_ was in
type and printed long before _The Chip-Munk_ came out of its hole.
* * * * *
Messrs. Copeland & Day of Boston recently published for Mr. Stephen
Crane a book which he called “The Black Riders.” I don’t know why; the
riders might have as easily been green or yellow or baby-blue for all the
book tells about them, and I think the title, “The Pink Rooters,” would
have been better, but it doesn’t matter. My friend, The Onlooker, of
_Town Topics_, quotes one of the verses and says this, which I heartily
endorse:
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never”——
“You lie,” he cried.
And ran on.
This was Mr. Howells proving that Ibsen is valuable and interesting. It
is to be hoped that Mr. Crane will write another poem about him after his
legs have been worn off.
* * * * *
I was moved to read Mr. Hermann Sudermann’s diverting novel, “The Wish,”
upon observing an extended notice in the “Sub Rosa” column of the Buffalo
_Courier_. The writer therein alleged that the novel taught a great moral
lesson, and desiring to be taught a great moral lesson I bought the book.
It treats of the wish of a girl for her sister’s death in order that she
might marry the husband. I suppose the great moral truth is that one
should not wish for such things, but I supposed that had been taught in
one of the Commandments, which tells of coveting thy neighbor’s wife,
and my Sunday School teacher used to tell me that it referred equally
to husbands. I was evidently mistaken, and Hermann Sudermann is hereby
hailed as a teacher of morals. I should think, from the style of the “Sub
Rosa” article, that the writer is a woman. If she is, I’ll bet her feet
are cold if she enjoys such things as this:
When Old Hellinger entered the gable room he saw a sight which
froze the blood in his veins. His son’s body lay stretched on
the ground. As he fell he must have clutched the supports of
the bier on which the dead girl had been placed, and dragged
down the whole erection with him; for on the top of him,
between the broken planks, lay the corpse, in its long, white
shroud, its motionless face upon his face, its bared arms
thrown over his head. At this moment he regained consciousness,
and started up. The dead girl’s head sank down from his and
bumped on the floor.
This cheerful book is translated from the German by Lily Henkel and
published by the Appletons. I commend it to Mr. Bliss Carman and his
shroud washers.
* * * * *
Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, of Portland, Maine, deserves the thanks of the
reading public for the issuing of _The Bibelot_. Each month this
dainty periodical comes like a dash of salt water on a hot day, and
is as refreshing. After reading the longings and the heartburnings of
the various degenerates who inflict their stuff on us these days, Mr.
Mosher’s “Sappho” comes and makes us really believe that there is a man
up on the coast of Maine who has the salt of the sea and the breath of
the pines in him, and is willing to think that there are other people who
care for purity and sweetness, rather than such literature as “Vistas”
and the plays of Maeterlinck.
* * * * *
When in five consecutive stories, printed in the same periodical, the
hero or heroine has ended the narrative by shooting himself or herself,
is it not about time to hire somebody to invent some other denouement?
* * * * *
Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the
street.
* * * * *
To be stupid when inclined and dull when you wish is a boon that only
goes with high friendship.
* * * * *
Every man has moments when he doubts his ability. So does every woman
at times doubt her wit and beauty and long to see them mirrored in a
masculine eye. This is why flattery is acceptable. A woman will doubt
everything you say except it be compliments to herself—here she believes
you truthful and mentally admires you for your discernment.
* * * * *
STIGMATA.
“Behold the miracle!” he cried—
The sombre priest who stood beside
A figure on whose snowy breast
The outlines of a cross expressed
In ruddy life-drops ebbed and flowed;
“Behold th’ imprimatur of God!”
A kneeling woman raised her eyes;
Lo! At the sight, in swift surprise,
Ere awe-struck lips a prayer could speak
Love’s stigma glowed on brow and cheek;
And one in reverence bent his head—
“Behold the miracle?” he said.
WILLIAM MCINTOSH.
* * * * *
THE MAGAZINES.
_Kate Field’s Wash_ is dry.
_The Arena_ has sand.
“Sub-Tragic” is the latest description of Vic. Woodhull’s _Humanitarian_.
_McClure’s_ is getting a little weary with its living pictures.
_Scribner’s_ has a thrilling article on “Books We Have Published.”
_Godey’s_ is very gay in its second childhood.
Judge Tourgee’s _Basis_ isn’t business. “It’s pretty, but it isn’t war.”
_The Century_, it is said, will insert a page or two of reading matter
between the Italian art and the ads.
_The Basis_ is out with prizes for poets and sermon writers. It was
as certain as the law of nature makes the filling of every vacuum at
some time, that somewhere and at some time these people would get their
reward. It seems to be coming now. But where and when will be the reward
of the people who read what they write? The thought of their fate is all
shuddery.
Ginger used to be in evidence in magazines and pumpkin pies. Squash is a
prominent ingredient now.
If _Peterson’s_ wouldn’t mix ads. and reading matter in their books and
on title pages the cause of current literature would be advanced.
Between Grant’s essays on the art of living and the mild satire of “The
Point of View,” it really looks as if the Tattler had come again—a little
disembodied for Dick Steele, but in character.
* * * * *
THE BOK BILLS OF NARCISSUS.
“Narcissus is the glory of his race,
For who does nothing with a better grace.”
YOUNG—_Love of Fame._
_Narcissus: or, The Self-Lover._
JAMES SHIRLEY, 1646.
* * * * *
PHILADELPHIA, June 1, 1895.
W. D. HOWELLS:
TO EDWARD W. BOK, DR.
42 sq. inches in Boiler Plate. “Literary Letter,” on What I
Know of Howells’s Modesty $4 20
Mentioning Howells’s name, 730,000 times in same (up to date) 7 30
Cussing _Trilby_ (your suggestion) 20
------
$11 70
Less 2 per cent. for cash.
Please remit.
* * * * *
Die Heintzemannsche Buchdruckerei
In Boston, Mass., empfiehlt sich zur geschmackvollen und preiswerten
Herstellung von feinen Druckarbeiten aller Art, als: Schul- und
Lehrbucher in allen Sprachen, Schul-Examinationspapiere, Diplome,
Zirkulare, Preisverzeichnisse, Geschafts-Kataloge u. s. w. Herstellung
von ganzen Werken mit oder ohne Illustrationen, von der einfachsten bis
zur reichsten Ausfuhrung.
Carl H. Heintzemann, 234 Congress Street, Boston, Mass.
* * * * *
WANTED—Books on the History and Mythology of =Sweden=, =Denmark=,
=Norway=, =Lapland=, =Finland=, =Greenland=, =Iceland=, =etc.=, in
any language. Also maps, pamphlets, manuscripts, magazines and any
work on Northern Subjects, works of General Literature, etc. Address,
giving titles, dates, condition, etc., with price,
JOHN A. STERNE, 5247 Fifth Avenue, Chicago, Ill.
All kinds of Old Books and Magazines bought.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 1, June 1895)" ***
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