Title: The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 3, August 1895)
Author: Various
Language: English
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OF PROTEST (VOL. I, NO. 3, AUGUST 1895) ***



                             The Philistine:
                         A Periodical of Protest.

                 “_A harmless necessary cat._”—_Shylock._

                              [Illustration]

                Printed Every Little While for The Society
                     of The Philistines and Published
                    by Them Monthly. Subscription, One
                 Dollar Yearly; Single Copies, 10 Cents.
                         Number 3. August, 1895.



The Philistine.

Edited by H. P. Taber.



CONTENTS FOR AUGUST, 1895.


                       JEREMIADS:

    A Word About Art,                        Ouida

    The Confessional in Letters,    Elbert Hubbard

    The Social Spotter,           William McIntosh

                     OTHER THINGS:

    The Dream,                      William Morris

    Verses,                          Stephen Crane

    For Honor,                         Jean Wright

    The Story of the Little Sister,       H. P. T.

    Notes.

THE PHILISTINE is published monthly at $1 a year, 10 cents a single
copy. Subscriptions may be left with newsdealers or sent direct to the
publishers.

Business communications should be addressed to THE PHILISTINE. East
Aurora, New York. Matter intended for publication may be sent to the same
address or to Box 6, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

_Entered at the Postoffice at East Aurora, New York, for transmission as
mail matter of the second class._

_COPYRIGHT, 1895._



AND THIS, THEN, IS THE THIRD OF THE BOOK OF THE PHILISTINE AND FIRST HERE
IS PRINTED THE LINES CALLED

“THE DREAM”

WRITTEN BY MR. WILLIAM MORRIS: TO WHOM BE PRAISE AND REVERENCE AND MUCH
THANKFULNESS FOR MANY DEEDS.


    I dreamed
    A dream of you,
    Not as you seemed
    When you were late unkind,
    And blind
    To my eyes pleading for a debt long due;
    But touched and true,
    And all inclined
    To tenderest fancies on love’s inmost theme.
    How sweet you were to me, and ah, how kind
    In that dear dream!
    I felt
    Your lips on mine
    Mingle and melt,
    And your cheek touch my cheek.
    I, weak
    With vain desires and asking for a sign
    Of love divine,
    Found my grief break,
    And wept and wept in an unending stream
    Of sudden joy set free, yet could not speak:
    Dumb in my dream.

    I knew
    You loved me then,
    And I knew, too,
    The bliss of souls in Heaven,
    New-shriven,
    Who look with pity on still sinning men
    And turn again
    To be forgiven
    In the dear arms of their God holding them,
    And spend themselves in praise from morn
    ’Till even,
    Nor break their dream.
    I woke
    In my mid-bliss
    At midnight’s stroke
    And knew you lost and gone.
    Forlorn
    I called you back to my unfinished kiss,
    But only this
    One word of scorn
    You answered me, “’Twas better loved to seem
    Than loved to be, since all love is foresworn,
    Always a dream.”



A WORD ABOUT ART.


[Sidenote: _Is there_]

How can we have great art in our day? We have no faith. Belief of
some sort is the life-blood of art. When Athene and Zeus ceased to
excite veneration in the minds of men, sculpture and architecture both
lost their greatness. When the Madonna and her Son lost that mystery
and divinity, which for the simple minds of the early painters they
possessed, the soul went out of canvas and of wood. When we carve a Venus
now, she is but a frivolous woman; when we paint a Jesus now, it is but a
little suckling, or a sorrowful prisoner.

[Sidenote: _a woman, even in_]

We want a great inspiration. We ought to find it in the things that are
really beautiful, but we are not sure enough, perhaps, what is so. What
does dominate us is a passion for nature: for the sea, for the sky,
for the mountain, for the forest, for the evening storm, for the break
of day. Perhaps when we are thoroughly steeped in this, we shall reach
greatness once more. But the artificiality of all modern life is against
it, so is its cynicism. Sadness and sarcasm make a great Lucretius and as
a great Juvenal; and scorn makes a strong Aristophanes: but they do not
make a Praxiteles and an Apelles; they do not even make a Raffaelle or a
Flaxman.

[Sidenote: _Boston,_]

Art, if it be anything, is the perpetual uplifting of what is beautiful
in the sight of the multitude—the perpetual adoration of that loveliness,
material and moral, which men in the haste and greed of their lives are
everlastingly forgetting: unless it be that, it is empty and useless as a
child’s reed-pipe when the reed is snapt and the child’s breath spent.

[Sidenote: _who can_]

It must have been such a good life—a painter’s in those days: those early
days of art. Fancy the gladness of it then—modern painters can know
nothing of it.

[Sidenote: _produce literature_]

When all the delicate delights of distance were only half perceived; when
the treatment of light and shadow was barely dreamed of; when aerial
perspective was just breaking on the mind in all its wonder and power;
when it was still regarded as a marvellous boldness to draw from the
natural form in a natural fashion—in those early days only fancy the
delights of a painter!

[Sidenote: _equal_]

Something fresh to be won at each step; something new to be penetrated
at each moment; something beautiful and rash to be ventured on with each
touch of colour—the painter in those days had all the breathless pleasure
of an explorer; without leaving his birthplace he knew the joys of
Columbus.

[Sidenote: _to this?_]

And one can fancy nothing better than a life such as Spinello led for
nigh a century up on the hill here, painting because he loved it, till
death took him. Of all lives, perhaps, that this world has ever seen, the
lives of painters, I say, in those days were the most perfect.

In quiet places such as Arezzo and Volterra, and Modena and Urbino, and
Cortona and Perugia, there would grow up a gentle lad who from infancy
most loved to stand and gaze at the missal paintings in his mother’s
house, and the coena in the monk’s refectory, and when he had fulfilled
some twelve or fifteen years, his people would give in to his wish and
send him to some bottega to learn the management of colours.

[Sidenote: _No, not even_]

Then he would grow to be a man; and his town would be proud of him, and
find him the choicest of all work in its churches and its convents, so
that all his days were filled without his ever wandering out of reach of
his native vesper bells.

[Sidenote: _in Boston!_]

He would make his dwelling in the heart of his birthplace, close under
its cathedral, with the tender sadness of the olive hills stretching
above and around in the basiliche or the monasteries his labor would
daily lie; he would have a docile band of hopeful boyish pupils with
innocent eyes of wonder for all he did or said; he would paint his wife’s
face for the Madonna’s, and his little son’s for the child Angel’s; he
would go out into the fields and gather the olive bow, and the feathery
corn, and the golden fruits, and paint them tenderly on ground of gold or
blue, in symbol of those heavenly things of which the bells were forever
telling all those who chose to hear; he would sit in the lustrous nights
in the shade of his own vines and pity those who were not as he was; now
and then horsemen would come spurring in across the hills and bring news
with them of battles fought, of cities lost and won; and he would listen
with the rest in the market-place, and go home through the moonlight
thinking that it was well to create the holy things before which the
fiercest rider and the rudest free-lance would drop the point of the
sword and make the sign of the cross.

It must have been a good life—good to its close in the cathedral
crypt—and so common too; there were scores of such lived out in these
little towns of Italy, half monastery and half fortress, that were
scattered over hill and plain, by sea and river, on marsh and mountain,
from the daydawn of Cimabue to the after-glow of the Carracci.

And their work lives after them; the little towns are all grey and still
and half peopled now; the iris grows on the ramparts, the canes wave
in the moats, the shadows sleep in the silent market-place, the great
convents shelter half a dozen monks, the dim majestic churches are damp
and desolate, and have the scent of the sepulchre.

But there, above the altars, the wife lives in the Madonna and the child
smiles in the Angel, and the olive and the wheat are fadeless on their
ground of gold and blue; and by the tomb in the crypt the sacristan will
shade his lantern and murmur with a sacred tenderness:

“Here he sleeps.”

                                                                    OUIDA.



FOR HONOR.


By a turn of chance a father and son were thrown together in one of the
Western frontier posts, the father as colonel in command, the son as a
second lieutenant in one of the four companies quartered there. When the
order came which had brought them together after the three years which
had gone by since the boy left West Point, it brought great, but silent,
happiness to the stern and gloomy old soldier, and a light-hearted
pleasure to the young man; once more he would be with “dear old dad,” and
besides, life must be rather exciting out there, and altogether worth
a man’s while. And so he packed his traps in double-quick time, as a
soldier must, and was off in twenty-four hours. The meeting between the
two was a strange one. Effusive and very gay on the part of the young
man, who made no effort to conceal his delight; stiff, even cold, on the
part of the old man, whose very heart quivered with joy; and on whose
stern and bronzed face a light came which the boy did not even see.

The colonel was not a popular man, hard and cold, rigid in the
performance of his own duty, and with little sympathy for failure on the
part of his men, he was respected, and, in a certain sense, admired,
but not loved; sternly just according to his own light, but narrow and
intolerant. With two passions—the exaggerated, hide-bound honor of a
soldier who believes his profession to be the only one; the honor of a
strictly honest and very proud man, jealous of the slightest stain upon
his unimpeachable integrity. The other passion a carefully hidden but
almost idolatrous love for his son. There had been one other passion, but
she died.

Within a month after his coming, the young lieutenant was the most
popular man at the post. He sang, he danced, he rode, and he played
cards; he also drank rather more than was necessary.

Within two months it all palled upon him. Deadly ennui took possession
of him. The great sunlit barren plains stretched out interminable.
There were no Indians even to break the monotony. The iron routine of
one day followed upon another with what seemed to him a stupid, trivial
and meaningless regularity. So he stopped singing and dancing, and went
on playing cards and drinking. Another thing that annoyed him was his
father’s suppressed but uncompromising disapproval. Inward the colonel’s
soul writhed that his boy should blemish his record as a soldier in this
way; he did not doubt his courage should the time come for proving it,
but in the meantime to show himself a weak and foolish man was almost
unbearable. He could not understand the boy, and he said nothing, which
was perhaps unfortunate.

Three weeks went by and the young lieutenant was deep in debt to the
captain of another company. A sneering, black faced fellow, who had
risen from the ranks; gaining his promotions during the last fifteen
years for acts of dare-devil bravery. He was not a pleasant man to owe
to; particularly if one was not too sure of being able to pay up when
the notes fell due. Another month, and things were no better. It was in
the early part of September, and the flat plains stretched out parched
and arid, the sun beat down pitilessly on the treeless little post, and
the money to the captain had to be paid to-morrow. It was certainly a
disagreeable situation. But they played hard and drank hard, and the
young lieutenant almost forgot that to-morrow was coming.

[Sidenote: _Is cheating at cards so rare as this?_]

But about one o’clock in the morning there was a row, and before many
hours the whole post knew what was the matter. It does not take long for
news to travel among a few hundred people, particularly so interesting
and exciting a bit as this. For this gay young fellow, this dashing young
soldier, this son of the stern old martinet of a colonel, had been caught
cheating at cards, and was disgraced forever.

The news got round and finally reached the colonel. It was a brave man
who told him. He waited an hour, and then putting a pistol in his
holster, he went across to his son’s quarters. There was no answer to
his knock, so he opened the door and went in. The boy was sitting by the
table, with his head buried in his arms. He did not look up when his
father spoke, “My son, there is but one thing for you to do. You know
what it is,” and he laid the pistol on the table. There was no reply;
and the colonel stood silent, straight and stern, but his face was gray,
and his iron mouth was drawn. Presently the boy raised his head and
looked straight into his father’s eyes. For the first time in his life he
understood. “Yes, father,” he said. The colonel stood a moment, and then
went out and shut the door. When he was half way across the parade ground
he heard a pistol shot, but he did not go back.

                                                              JEAN WRIGHT.



THE CONFESSIONAL IN LETTERS.


In the year 1848 Ralph Waldo Emerson of Concord, Mass., made a lecturing
tour through England. Among the towns he visited was Coventry, where he
was entertained at the residence of Mr. Charles Bray. In the family of
Mr. Bray lived a young woman by the name of Mary Ann Evans, and although
this Miss Evans was not handsome, either in face or figure, she made a
decided impression on Mr. Emerson.

A little excursion was arranged to Stratford, an antiquated town of
some note in the same county. On this trip Mr. Emerson and Miss Evans
paired off very naturally, and Miss Evans of Coventry was so bold as to
set Mr. Emerson of Concord straight on several matters relating to Mr.
Shakespeare, formerly of Stratford.

“What is your favorite book?” said Mr. Emerson to Miss Evans, somewhat
abruptly.

“Rousseau’s _Confessions_,” said the young woman instantly.

“And so it is mine,” answered Mr. Emerson.

All of which is related by Moncure D. Conway in a volume entitled
_Emerson at Home and Abroad_.

A copy of Conway’s book was sent to Walt Whitman, and when he read the
passage to which I have just referred he remarked, “And so it is mine.”

Emerson and Whitman are probably the two strongest names in American
letters, and George Eliot stands first among women writers of all time;
and as they in common with many Lesser Wits stand side by side and salute
Jean Jacques Rousseau, it may be worth our while to take just a glance at
M. Rousseau’s book in order, if we can, to know why it appeals to people
of worth.

The first thing about the volume that attracts is the title. There is
something charmingly alluring and sweetly seductive in a confession. Mr.
Henry James has said: “The sweetest experience that can come to a man
on his pilgrimage through this vale of tears is to have a lovely woman
‘confess’ to him; and it is said that while neither argument, threat,
plea of justification, nor gold can fully placate a woman who believes
she has been wronged by a man, yet she speedily produces, not only a
branch, but a whole olive tree when he comes humbly home and confesses.”

Now here is a man about to ’fess to the world, and we take up the volume,
glance around to see if any one is looking, and begin at the first
paragraph to read:

“I purpose an undertaking that never had an example and the execution of
which will never have an imitation. I would exhibit myself to all men as
I am—a man....

“Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book in
my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will boldly
proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I. With equal
frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have omitted nothing
bad, added nothing good. I have exhibited myself, despisable and vile
when so; virtuous, generous, sublime when so. I have unveiled my interior
being as Thou, Eternal One, hast seen it.” Now where is the man or woman
who could stop there, even though the cows were in the corn?

And as we read further we find things that are “unfit for publication”
and confessions of sensations that are so universal to healthy men that
they are irrelevant, and straightway we arise and lock the door so as to
finish the chapter undisturbed. For as superfluous things are the things
we cannot do without, so is the irrelevant in literature the necessary.

Having finished this chapter, oblivious to calls that dinner is waiting,
we begin the next; and finding items so interesting that they are
disgusting, and others so indecent that they are entertaining, we forget
the dinner that is getting cold and read on.

And the reason we read on is not because we love the indecent, or because
we crave the disgusting, although I believe Burke hints at the contrary,
but simply because the writing down of these unbecoming things convinces
us that the man is honest and that the confession is genuine. In short we
come to the conclusion that any man who deliberately puts himself in such
a bad light—caring not a fig either for our approbation or our censure—is
no sham.

And there you have it! _We want honesty in literature._

The great orator always shows a dash of contempt for the opinions of his
audience, and the great writer is he who loses self consciousness and
writes himself down as he is, for at the last analysis all literature is
a confession.

The Ishmaelites who purvey culture by the ton, and issue magazines that
burden the mails—study very carefully the public palate. They know full
well that a “confession” is salacious: it is an exposure. A confession
implies something that is peculiar, private and distinctly different from
what we are used to. It is a removing the veil, a making plain things
that are thought and performed in secret.

And so we see articles on “The Women Who Have Influenced Me,” “The Books
that Have Made Me,” “My Literary Passions,” etc. But like the circus
bills, these titles call for animals that the big tent never shows; and
this perhaps is well, for otherwise ’twould fright the ladies.

Yes, I frankly admit that these “confessions” suit the constituency of
_The Ladies’ Home Journal_ better than the truth; and although its editor
be a Jew, the fact that the writers of his confessions practice careful
concealment of the truth that they have hands, senses, eyes, ears,
organs, dimensions, passions, is a wise commercial stroke. You can prick
them and they do not bleed, tickle them and they do not laugh, poison
them and they do not die; simply because they are only puppets parading
as certain virtues, and these virtues the own particular brand in which
the subscribers delight.

That excellent publication, _The Forum_, increased its circulation by
many thousand when it ran a series of confessions of great men wherein
these great men made sham pretense of laying their lives bare before
the public gaze. Nothing was told that did not redound to the credit of
the confessor. The “Formative Influences” of sin, error and blunders
were carefully concealed or calmly waived. The lack of good faith was as
apparent in these articles as the rouge on the cheek of a courtesan: the
color is genuine and the woman not dead, that’s all.

And the loss lies in this: These writers—mostly able men—sell their souls
for a price, and produce a literature that lives the length of life of a
moth, whereas they might write for immortality. Instead of inspiring the
great, they act as clowns to entertain the rabble.

Of course I know that Rousseau’s _Confessions_, Amiel’s _Journal_ and
Marie Bashkirtseff’s _Diary_ have all been declared carefully worked out
artifices. And admitting all the wonderful things that scheming man
can perform, I still maintain that there are a few things that life and
nature will continue to work out in the old, old way. I appeal to those
who have tried both plans, whether it is not easier to tell the truth
than to concoct a lie. And I assiduously maintain that if the case is to
be tried by a jury of great men, that the shocking facts will serve the
end far better than sugared half-truth.

When Richard Le Gallienne tells us of the birth of his baby and for weeks
before how White Soul was sure she should die; and Marie Bashkirtseff
makes painstaking note of the size of her hips and the development of her
bust; and poor Amiel bewails the fate of eating breakfast facing an empty
chair; and Rousseau explains the delicate sensations and smells that
swept over him on opening his wardrobe and finding smocks and petticoats
hanging in careless negligence amid his man’s clothes; and all those
other pathetic, foolish, charming, irrelevant bits of prattle, one is
convinced of the author’s honesty. No thorough-going literary man, hot
for success, would leave such stuff in; he would as soon think of using a
flesh brush on the public street; these are his own private affairs—his
good sense would have forbade.

A good lie for its own sake is ever pleasing to honest men, but a patched
up record never. And when such small men as Samuel Pepys and James
Boswell can write immortal books, the moral for the rest of us is that a
little honesty is not a dangerous thing.

And so I swing back to the place of beginning and say that while even
a sham confession may be interesting to hoi polloi, yet to secure an
endorsement from such minds as that of Emerson, George Eliot and Walt
Whitman the confession must be genuine.

                                                           ELBERT HUBBARD.



THE SOCIAL SPOTTER.


“Why don’t the young folks marry?” continues, in the intervals of
other jeremiad problems, to puzzle the good people who call themselves
publicists, having a brevet authority to set everything right in the
world. It is assumed that if the young people would only marry up to
the full proportion, most of the ills that afflict an over-civilized
and over-sensitized society would cure themselves. The young people
would have something else to do besides “dabbling in the fount of
fictive tears” and inventing new wants. The old ones would suffice, when
multiplied in kind after the usual fashion.

It is an old story that young men are afraid of the cost of marriage. The
girls are less simple than their mothers and complexity in matters of
taste means expense. A clever verse writer has told of the hardships of
a pair who wooed on a bicycle built for two and afterwards tried to live
on a salary built for one. It is funny in the telling but tragic in the
living. It is a trying business to keep up to concert pitch in these days.

[Sidenote: _But is she warranted harmless?_]

The complexity of social expression is not the only dragon in the way.
We have adopted from abroad something French. It came via England, but
France is its origin. It is the Chaperone. She is usually harmless
personally, but she means a great deal. She stands for a state of society
where marriage is always a failure. Ask Emile Zola if you don’t believe
it. “Modern Marriage” has the specifications. We have good women and
manly men in America. The grisette isn’t an institution with us. Neither
is the man who supports her until he is rich enough to make a French
marriage. We have him and we have her, but neither is universal. The
_mariage de convenance_ and the institution which precedes it in France
are not general with us. The chaperone is part of the system with them.
The chaperone implies the others. She is a standing notice that young man
and young woman are not to be trusted together. In some of our cities
it is such very good “good form” to send a guardian with young people
that a woman of over twenty-five has been known to cancel an engagement
to attend a company which she had anxiously wanted to enjoy and for
which she had made great preparation, because a married sister could not
accompany her. She would not go without a chaperone. It was not “good
form.”

O ye gods, Good Form! What was good form, and who promulgated its laws,
when the father and mother of us all, better than any of us, walked with
the Creator of the universe in the garden in the cool of the day? But
“evil came into the world” and changed it. Yes, the evil of “good form,”
the embodied self-consciousness which chains all the virtues and makes
the decencies compulsory and puts on them the brand of the police blotter.

In the name of all that is good why should we watch the young people? The
middle-aged need it more. Youth is chivalrous. Middle age is commonplace.
It is not youth that

    Eats for his stomach and drinks for his head,
    And loves for his pleasure—and ’tis time he was dead.

Chaperon the married victims of the French system. Put the spotter on the
track of the woman who was taught she couldn’t trust herself when she
was young and the man was complacently branded a roue when his heart was
fresh and warm.

It is time for a new declaration of independence, and the youth of our
land should make it. Let Young America say this: “The woman I cannot
honorably woo, whose care at a social gathering is denied me without a
policeman and a spy, may find another knight.” Let the maidens of our
day, better cultured than their mothers, broader in their training, surer
of their social footing, stronger in their poise and presence of mind,
bar out the man who comes into their presence under a ban.

How long would the hollow mockery of “good form” endure such a strike?
As many minutes as it should take to show its utter falsehood and the
cruel slander it implies. Until the young people so assert themselves
the imitated bars sinister of the most corrupt social heraldry of
Europe will be ours—worn with an affectation of pride in the dishonor
they blazon. Till then men will be equalized down, not up; and the talk
of “emancipated woman” will be an insult. When it is done there will
be more marriages of the kind to be desired—the union of true men and
self-respecting women.

                                                         WILLIAM MCINTOSH.



THE CHATTER OF A DEATH-DEMON FROM A TREE-TOP.


    BLOOD—BLOOD AND TORN GRASS—
    HAD MARKED THE RISE OF HIS AGONY—
    THIS LONE HUNTER.
    THE GREY-GREEN WOODS IMPASSIVE
    HAD WATCHED THE THRESHING OF HIS LIMBS.

    A CANOE WITH FLASHING PADDLE,
    A GIRL WITH SOFT, SEARCHING EYES,
    A CALL: “JOHN!”

    ...

    COME, ARISE, HUNTER!
    LIFT YOUR GREY FACE!
    CAN YOU NOT HEAR?

    THE CHATTER OF A DEATH-DEMON FROM A TREE-TOP.

                                   STEPHEN CRANE.



THE STORY OF THE LITTLE SISTER.


When I first knew her she was a very little girl in a white
dress—starched very stiff—and she might have reminded me of Molly in the
diverting story of _Sir Charles Danvers_.

I was devoted to her sister and I remember her galumphing into the room
at a most inopportune time, and staring for a moment with eyes very wide
open. Then she ran away and I heard her outside giggling quietly all by
herself.

When the big sister went away for the summer I went out to the house to
tell her good-by. The great trunk stood in the hall waiting for Charlie
Miller’s man. Seated on top of this was the little sister with two round
bottles held close to her eyes. She said she was playing theater, and
that the bottles made a lovely opera glass.

I asked her what the play was and she said about a pretty lady who was
pursued by lions and dragons and things. Then there was a man—a big, nice
man—who came with guns and swords and spears and killed all the dragons
and lions and then he married the pretty lady.

This was her imagination.

Then I went away—I forget where—and was gone many years. I came back to
be best man at the wedding of my cousin Anthony. I found that the little
sister was to be the maid of honor, and at the various functions before
the wedding I saw much of her.

After the ceremony we walked down the aisle together, and as she took my
arm her hand trembled. When we reached the entrance I turned and looked
square into her glorious eyes. They told me many things that I was glad
to know.

Now—after a year—I am trying to live up to the ideal man she imagined me
to be.

And that’s what makes it hard.

                                                                  H. P. T.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many of the newspapers which have noticed THE PHILISTINE have expressed
their inability to find East Aurora on the map. All the map makers are
hereby authorized to print a large red ring around the name of the home
of THE PHILISTINE hereafter, but for the benefit of those who pine for
immediate knowledge, I clip the following from _Bradstreet’s_:

    EAST AURORA, Erie Co., pop. 2000, 1880. Bank 1, newspapers
    2, Am. Ex., W. N. Y. & P. R. R., 17 miles fr. Buffalo.
    Headquarters Cloverfield combination of cheese factories. Home
    of Mambrino King.[1] Product: ginger.

[1] _Mambrino King is a horse._



[Illustration: THE BLUFF.

DRAWING BY PLUG HAZEN-PLUG.]



SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SUNDRY BITS OF WISDOM WHICH HAVE
BEEN HERETOFORE SECRETED, AND ARE NOW SET FORTH IN PRINT.


If I had seen it announcing a special feature in the _World_ or _Herald_
for a coming Sunday, I would not have been surprised, but to find the
following paragraph in the editorial columns of _The Land of Sunshine_
fills me with wonder:

    Up to date _The Land of Sunshine_ is the only periodical in the
    world whose cover is embellished with drawings by the Almighty.

It would be interesting to know what the Recording Angel thinks of Mr.
Lummis’s coupling of the High Court of Heaven and Aubrey Beardsley. Now
if Mr. Lummis could only get his editorials from the same source——

       *       *       *       *       *

When Shem Rock, Ham Garland and Japhet Bumball conspired to spring on
an unsuspecting world that three-cornered story entitled _The Land of
the Straddle Bug_, they bought two whole bushels of hyphens. In one
chapter, by actual count, forty-seven compound words are used. They have
even hyphenated such words as dod-rot, dodd-mead, slap-jack, goll-darn,
do-tell and gee-whiz. Ham’s own pet “yeh” is used in the story
sixty-four times, which does not include four plain “you’s” and three
“ye’s,” where the Only Original Lynx-eyed Proof-reader nodded.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is published that the _Post_ contemplated a change in the appearance
and make-up of the paper, but gave up the scheme lest it shock the
readers of Mr. Godkin’s _Evening Grandmother_. What would shock the
readers more would be the appearance of life somewhere about the sheet. I
would respectfully call the attention of the editors of the _Post_ to the
fate which befell the Assyrians. It is written in Isaiah XXXVII—36: Then
the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians
a hundred and four score and five thousand; and when they arose in the
morning: behold, they were all dead corpses.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE PHILISTINE’S plea is for the widest liberty to individual genius.
Perhaps no living man has presented this plea so strongly in his life and
work as William Morris. The poem herein printed is a taste of this strong
man’s quality. It is taken from that dainty bundle of beautiful things
entitled, _Love Lyrics_.

       *       *       *       *       *

In that very charming article by Mr. Zangwill in the last _Chap Book_,
mention is made of the utter impossibility of stating a truth so that
the majority will remember or recognize it when they see it again—so
shallow is human wit. In THE PHILISTINE for July I made bold to insert
an extract from the Bible. No credit was given, however, and the matter
was re-paragraphed. And now, behold, a Chicago paper arises and calls
the quotation rot; several other publications refute the scriptural
statements and a weekly that is very wise in its day and generation
refers to my irreverence in writing in Bible style.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the _Popular Science Monthly_ for July a Dr. Oppenheimer announces the
interesting discovery why children lie. It has been supposed that they
lie, as a general thing, because they want something, but it appears that
it is because they have something, in the French sense. It isn’t inherent
viciousness but disease. The doctor says:

    The children usually are suffering from disorders of mind or
    body, or both, which radically interfere with the transmission
    of conceptions and perceptions from the internal to the
    external processes of expression, so that they really are
    unable to be more exact than they seem.

This seems to explain several things about our good friends Landon and
Townsend—G. A.

       *       *       *       *       *

The London _Athenæum_ says “Stephen Crane is the coming Boozy Prophet of
America; his lines send the cold chills streaking up one’s spine, and
we are in error if his genius does not yet sweep all other literary fads
from the board.”

All of which strikes me as a boozier bit of cymbalism than any of Mr.
Crane’s verses.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the authority of the New York _Sun_, afternoon teas are growing more
and more realistic. That arbiter of etiquette says:

    The formality of bidding adieu to the hostess at an afternoon
    tea is now dispensed with; the omission is considered
    with favor and in good taste. No after calls are made in
    acknowledgement of a tea.

The little trifle of ceremony that stood for courtesy is about all cast
aside. The program now is—Greet, Eat and Git.

       *       *       *       *       *

I observe that Mr. Andrew Lang is to write some verses to be read at a
dinner of the Omar Club in London “on some future occasion.” I shall
watch for these with much interest, remembering, meanwhile, these verses
recently read before that remarkable organization:

    We envy not the saint what bliss he hath:
    Still let him cheer his puritanic path
      With what of joy his joyless rules permit:
    The beer of ginger and the bun of Bath.

    We plunder not the Pharasaic fold
    Whose drinks are new, whose jests and maidens old;
      Content to cherish what the Dervish hates,
    The cup of ruby and the curls of gold.

It is noted that Mr. W. Irving Way of Chicago was present at the last
Omar club dinner. He should give us some notable reminiscences of the
feast.

Speaking of Way, I hear that he has gone into the publishing business
in Chicago. As a critic of the mechanical construction of books he is
supreme, but I wonder will his publishing be that of literature or wool
from the wild west.

       *       *       *       *       *

“You have us down one dollar for dog tax. I’d have you know we keep no
dog,” said the man to the tax gatherer.

“I understand,” answered the publican, “but you subscribe to the Albany
_Argus_!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Buffalo, N. Y., has a _Young Ladies’ Magazine_. It has a beautiful
picture of a skirt dance on the cover of its prospectus, which is ever
so much more interesting than Mr. Bok’s Bermuda lily gatherer seven feet
tall.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now that Robert Louis Stevenson’s will has been published in full text
as a feature story, perhaps Mr. So So McClure may desist. The will is
almost as thrilling as a market report. Its publication explains in part,
however, how the cheap magazine movement is founded. Next we shall
see the weather and a Congressional debate among the contents of the
cheap-books.

       *       *       *       *       *

Prizes are offered in Judge Tourgee’s _Basin_ to preachers, women and
“colored writers,” for short stories. The Judge is bound to keep solid
with the three sexes as he understands them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is matter of record in _McClure’s_ that Edmund Goose’s poem on Samoa,
which it prints, “reached Robert Louis Stevenson three days before his
death.” There is a horrible suggestion in the little nonpareil footnote
that the poem may have hastened that sad event. It’s bad enough.


A LYRIC OF JOY.

    Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune
      I saw the white daisies go down to the sea.

                 —Bliss Carman, in July _Century_.

       *       *       *       *       *

    Over the ballast, the ropes and the chairs,
      I see the fat picnicers clamber galore,
    And struggle for seats by the rail near the stairs,
      To fry in the sun when they steam from the shore.
    The barker has rallied them out of the town
      To sands stretching white in the pitiless glare;
    And all of their talk as the calm night comes down
      Is the crush going back and the bargain day fare.

                                         M’LISS COWBOY.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ham Garland has gone up the coulee to his farm near La Crosse and is
writing another novel. He is daily in receipt of letters and telegrams
from people in all parts of the country asking him to pull the coulee up
after him.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a recent number of the _Chip-Munk_ it is said the intelligent
compositor set it Charles G——d— Roberts; and the Only Original Lynx-Eyed
being on a journey the whole edition was printed. It was one of those
very aggravating mistakes that will occasionally occur even in printerys
which print things on the finest paper.

       *       *       *       *       *

I greet with exceeding joy the name of a new writer of stories which
appeal to me as being above the plane of universal grayness which we have
viewed for many months, and for this reason I am glad to see _A Very
Remarkable Girl_ in the quarterly issued by _Town Topics_. The author
of this story is Mr. L. H. Bickford of Denver, and the editor of _Town
Topics_ says that he has heretofore been unacquainted with Mr. Bickford’s
work. For many years I have watched the development of this young author,
and if I am not much mistaken he will yet be heard from in no uncertain
way. I do not believe that the public has any business with the private
life of writers, but it may be said that Mr. Bickford is twenty-six,
and was born in Leadville, Colorado. For a half hour’s entertainment,
reading aloud in a hammock, I know of nothing better than _A Very
Remarkable Girl_. It is suggestive of the signs of the times.

       *       *       *       *       *

Good form has determined that special attentions at a time of bereavement
are to be recognized by sending engraved cards. Some people used to send
letters of thanks for sympathy, but of course cards are more impressive.
A coupon scheme has been suggested, the thanks to be attached to a ticket
to the funeral.

       *       *       *       *       *

And furthermore be it known that the marginal notes opposite articles in
THE PHILISTINE are never supplied by the authors thereof.

       *       *       *       *       *

A man in Paris sends me the following delicious bit clipped from the
Paris edition of the New York _Herald_ of April 1:

    NEW YORK, March 31.—The _Herald’s_ leading editorial to-day
    says that many surprises await us in heaven.

I regret not seeing this editorial of March 31. I imagine, however, that
it related to Reginald de Koven and his surprise—when he gets there—at
finding he cannot write all the choir music.

       *       *       *       *       *

But then—is Egotism Art?

       *       *       *       *       *

_MEDITATIONS IN MOTLEY._

By WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE

“Meditations in Motley” reveals a new American essayist, honest and
whimsical, with a good deal of decorative plain speaking. An occasional
carelessness of style is redeemed by unfailing insight.—I. ZANGWILL in
_The Pall Mall Magazine_ for April, 1895.

A series of well written essays, remarkable on the whole for observation,
refinement of feeling and literary sense. The book may be taken as a
wholesome protest against the utilitarian efforts of the Time-Spirit,
and as a plea for the rights and liberties of the imagination. We
congratulate Mr. Harte on the success of his book.—_Public Opinion_,
London, England.

Mr. Harte is not always so good in the piece as in the pattern, but he
is often a pleasant companion, and I have met with no volume of essays
from America since Miss Agnes Repplier’s so good as his “Meditations in
Motley.”—RICHARD LE GALLIENNE, in the London _Review_.

PRICE, CLOTH $1.25.

For sale by all Booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by THE
PHILISTINE.

       *       *       *       *       *

_LITTLE JOURNEYS_

To the Homes of Good Men and Great.

_A series of literary studies published in monthly numbers, tastefully
printed on hand-made paper, with attractive title-page._

By ELBERT HUBBARD

The publishers announce that Little Journeys will be issued monthly and
that each number will treat of recent visits made by Mr. Elbert Hubbard
to the homes and haunts of various eminent persons. The subjects for the
first twelve numbers have been arranged as follows:

     1. George Eliot
     2. Thomas Carlyle
     3. John Ruskin
     4. W. E. Gladstone
     5. J. M. W. Turner
     6. Jonathan Swift
     7. Victor Hugo
     8. Wm. Wordsworth
     9. W. M. Thackeray
    10. Charles Dickens
    11. Oliver Goldsmith
    12. Shakespeare

_LITTLE JOURNEYS: Published Monthly, 50 cents a year. Single copies, 5
cents, postage paid._

Published by G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS,

                   27 and 39 West 23d Street, New York.
                    24 Bedford Street, Strand, London.



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