A handsome method for keeping track of manuscripts. Contains
space for recording one hundred manuscripts, showing title,
where sent, number of words, when returned or accepted, when
paid for and amount, when published, postage account, etc. Each
page a complete history of one manuscript, from the time it is
first sent out, until published and paid for. Price, $1.25.
Sent postpaid to any address on receipt of price.
THE BOHEMIAN PUBLISHING CO.,
Pike Building, Cincinnati, O.
I have sent for this book, as it is my intention to write one hundred
manuscripts, and I desire to keep track of them until published and paid
for. I have therefore ordered the book bound in cast iron.
* * * * *
In a recent number of _Modern Art_ protest is filed against the editor of
the _Chip-Munk_ continuing to ask that startling question “Do You Keep
a Dog?” In God’s name, what right have the Chicago Decadents to thus
pry into our private affairs? Is it not bad enough when the _Chip-Munk_
advises us to drink Guzzle’s beer and use Culby’s soap without being
interrogated as to what we “keep?”
* * * * *
Among the revivals which occur now and then in everything is a discussion
of an old “science” of reading characters by the hair. I don’t know much
about it, but from what I have heard I believe a pair of old she-bears
set back the theory for a few centuries when they chewed up the small
boys that poked fun at Elijah. The old man would be rated as having
no character, according to these “readers,” for he had no hair, but
Providence and the early Ursulines vindicated him.
* * * * *
A new woman who has been reading _God’s Fool_ laid it down at the last
chapter with a long sigh. “What do you think of it,” I asked. “It is
dramatic,” she said, “terribly dramatic at the end,” and then added,
after a pause, “I wonder what the reading of the next generation will
be like. We have reached a force and directness of narration that seems
to me to be pretty near the limit of possibility. What will we have
next?” “What do you think?” I asked. “I think,” she said, “we will have
a reaction. We will take in more and give out less. We are near one of
the great periods of what has been called revelation in the past. Our
literature is shallow but perfect, relatively, in expression. Our art is
the same throughout. Our politics are personal. Our religion is liberal,
and loose in the joints. Our social life is insincere and imitative.
Our lives have nothing in them to stir the deeps. There will be a
reaction. The finesse of expression will be set aside for the tremendous
earnestness that accompanies great events and prints their lessons on
receptive minds. A break-up in Europe it may be, or some other social
convulsion, that will change the tide. We are pretty near at the top of
the flood now.” That’s the new woman’s view. I wonder how near she’s
right?
* * * * *
Three hundred and twenty-seven thousand of my friends have individually
sent to me a recent number of my Philadelphia contemporary, _Footlights_,
in which it refers to THE PHILISTINE variously as a crow, a dicky bird
and “a birdie of the jackass breed.” I am glad to be catalogued in this
ornithological manner, and my friends may accept the listing as they
please. As for myself, I’d rather be a good honest wild ass of the desert
with long fuzzy ears than a poor imitation bird-of-paradise—stuffed by
one hundred and seventeen geniuses.
* * * * *
A matter of architecture has been involved in the social problem which
the _Arena_ has ever with it—like a stutter or a beer breath. According
to an alleged novel recently published by the Arena Company and called
_Edith, a Story of Chinatown_, a feature of the tabooed district of Los
Angeles, California, is a bay window projection on the houses devoted
to vice, wherein beauty spreads lures for the eyes of passers-by. The
heroine of this lovely romance is one of these persons, sinned against in
the prologue and sinning in the present, but discovered by a miraculous
New York reporter on a vacation and returned to her broken-hearted
parents and a good life. A benediction, with a remote hint of the
Lohengrin march, ends the story. The _Arena_ gives two pages to a review
of the book, which is very kind of the publisher, and tells us therein
that a description of Alameda street and of Dupont street, San Francisco,
which is worse, is its purpose. The _Arena_ can be depended on for a full
stock of “terrible examples.”
* * * * *
The _Literary Digest_ is falling into line admirably. Recently it printed
a translation from some French source from which I clip the following:
A Parisian literary man has been complaining that authors are
not represented at international expositions in the same sense
as are painters and sculptors. The complaint has provoked
sarcastic comment from M. Maurice Goncourt, who, in _Charivari_
(Paris), suggests that, since an exhibition of their works
would not be sufficiently striking, the authors themselves
should be put on show in cages!
“All the writers who are at present the incontestable masters
of romance and journalism will transport, during the period
of the Exposition, their working rooms to a section specially
provided for them.
“The public will see them there as they really are at home,
surrounded with their furniture, their books, all their
accessories, and in working costume.
“From such an hour to such an hour—as at home—they will work on
their articles, poems, or novels.
“That would draw a crowd; that would be truly interesting!
“They could be looked at through a sheet of glass or a
lattice—silently, so as not to interfere with their inspiration.
“The administration could even put up signs like this: