All this sounds much as though it had been written by the keeper of _The
Literary Shop_, but I don’t believe it was. Supposing, however, such an
exhibit were held at Atlanta with the Fair now in progress. Imagine Mr.
Gilder and James Knapp Reeve, Mr. Le Gallienne and Laura Jean Libbey,
Count Tolstoi and Mrs. Mary Jane Holmes, each in his or her own coop
like a Leghorn chicken! Imagine Colonel S. S. McClure (Limited) with his
Menagerie of Trained Thoroughbreds, each one of them exhibiting by his
emaciation the horrible results of syndicate writing! Imagine Cy Warman
pawing madly at the bars of his cage trying to tell Sweet Marie about
the secret in his heart! Then imagine Little Tin God of Philadelphia,
cuddled up in his basket, writing his masterpiece, _How to Feed a Sick
Kitten!_ To them then would enter Major John Boyd Thacher, the pride and
joy of the Albany Democracy, and judge equally both the just and the
unjust. It’s a great idea.
* * * * *
One of my correspondents tells me that “the editor of the _Lark_ uses
execrable perfume on his note paper.” This item is for the future
reference of Mr. Burgess when he writes about his literary passions.
* * * * *
Several solemn newspapers have taken seriously to the extent of half a
column or so the proposal of a San Francisco publishing house to “bring
out good literature in a cheap form,” which sounds much like the advance
agent talk of most publishing houses. It isn’t a joke, to be sure, but a
good deal depends on what is meant by “good literature.” Thundering in
the prologue is not a novelty, but there may be a storm coming for all
that.
* * * * *
I note that the brilliant Bok has gone to writing proverbs. Here is one
culled at random from “A Handful of Laconics,” printed under his honored
signature in his September output:
It is singular and yet a fact that what we are most loath
to believe possessed by others is what we are incapable of
ourselves.
It is my wish to call the particular attention of my readers to
this nugget. From a literary and philosophic standpoint literature
contains nothing like it. Examine Rochefoucauld, Montaigne,
Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger or Solomon, and you
will not find its fellow. Read it again, and read it slowly:
“It-is-singular-yet-a-fact-that-what-we-are-most-loath-to-believe-
possessed-by-others-is-what-we-are-incapable-of-ourselves.”
This is undoubtedly the finest thing in the language and a reward of
one million dollars will be paid to any PHILISTINE who will furnish the
solution. There is no bar against reading it backwards. It reads a little
better backwards than forwards, but I do not think that is it.
* * * * *
I desire to record a discovery. I found a magazine the other day with the
advertising pages uncut.
* * * * *
I doubt if Bliss Carman has had a more enthusiastic admirer than I. When
his _Vagabondia_ appeared I sent a copy to Her, which was the greatest
compliment I could pay the book. In the magazines, notably in _Town
Topics_, he has printed verses that were well worth preserving as some
of the best of the decade. In the great mass, however, which he has
published, there have been lines which nobody on earth could understand.
They were worse than Stephen Crane’s, for he at least has a vague idea
somewhere, though he rarely does us the favor to express it in a seemly
manner. Now I want to protest, not only against Mr. Carman, but against
_Life_, which gave us _The Whale and the Sprat_ which Mr. Carman wrote
recently. Here are two of the stanzas:
My dear Mr. Sprat,
I really am grat-
Ified at your offer.
So down they both sat.
Said the Sprat to the Whale,
I admire your tail;
I should think it would be
Of great use in a gale.
How Mr. Metcalfe ever allowed such drivel to get into his columns I
cannot understand. Possibly while he was in Japan the compositor set the
stuff in the waste basket instead of that on the copy hook.
* * * * *
_Vogue_ asserts that “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” is the
ninth commandment. On information and belief, no doubt.
* * * * *
Because Mr. Rockefeller sneers at Mr. Pullman for giving but a paltry
hundred thousand for a church at Albion, Orleans County, New York, Mr.
Pullman retorts that Rockefeller is only a malmsey-nosed varlet anyway,
whose grease his axles are not worthy to unloose. I am not quite ready to
take George M. into the Philistinic fold, but he is surely coming my way.
* * * * *
I rejoice to find a thoughtful article by Richard Burton on the
“Renascence of Old English Expression” in the current _Forum_—and not
so much for what is in the article in detail as for its recognition of
the main fact that there is something besides Bunthornism in the harking
back to the simple dignity of early English. Our author, it will be
noted, has little use for the overflowing maimed vowels of Normanesque
“Renaissance.” Plain Latin renascence is good enough in a plea for the
Saxon. But it is odd if so simple a thing as a rising from death into new
life has no Saxon equivalent. Why not “re birth!”
* * * * *
Since the Mule-Spinners at Cohoes and Fall River went out on a strike I
understand that subscriptions to _The Writer_ have fallen off one-third.
* * * * *
Neith Boyce is a poet who never beats the brush piles of thought without
starting good game. She writes good honest verse and she also writes
“Book Notes and News” and other things for the _New Cycle_. The _New
Cycle_, by the way, is not published by the Pope Manufacturing Company as
one might suppose, but it is a monthly magazine “devoted to Education,
Social Economics, Literature and Art.” I once edited a magazine devoted
to Education, but the subject proved too large for the brainful syndicate
that employed me; I have also written a book on Art; and once, having
nothing to do, I lectured for a space on Social Economics, but God help
me! I never in a small monthly magazine attempted to tell all about
Education, Social Economics, Literature _and_ Art.
But the _New Cycle_ is interesting, and if its various departments were
as well cared for as its Book Notes and News it would be a greater
success than it is. Neith Boyce has an unfailing insight and her touch is
as light and as sure as my own; and moreover there is a tang to her wit
that all bookish Philistines might well cultivate. In classic lore I have
always looked up to Miss Boyce as the Court of last Appeal, but is it not
possible that Minerva sometimes nods? Read this:
“An attraction of the eminently respectable _Harper’s Weekly_
will be a series of papers called ‘A Houseboat on the Styx’
by Mr. Bangs of Yonkers. Nothing is sacred to this funny man.
Not content with taking his fling at the defunct majesty of
Napoleon he now proposes to take Pluto by the beard and make
copy of the pale shadows that throng the Stygian shores.”
It may be so, but I did not know that Pluto had whiskers. And how does
Miss Boyce dispose of the legend concerning the smooth face and giddy
ways of old Mr. Pluto when he took to wife the young and blooming
Persephone? Charon wears a Vandyke as we well know; while Mephisto is
usually represented as clean-shaved or at best a moustache and goatee;
but hereafter I’ll never think of Pluto without calling up in mind Mr.
Peffer of Kansas. Go to, Fair Lady! think you because barber shops are
closed in York State on Sundays that they are shut in Hades all the week?
Next!
* * * * *
A lecturer on Egypt, telling the natives of Buffalo, N. Y., about the
marvels in stone built on that strip of mud, illustrated the proportions
of the Nile Valley by saying “It it eleven hundred miles long in Egypt
proper and seven miles wide for most of its length. If the city of
Buffalo were laid crosswise in the valley, it would bisect the kingdom.”
And a Rochester man who had strayed into the fold was mean enough to
add: “And if Buffalo was there, that’s the way it would lie—cross-ways.”
That’s the way they talk in Rochester.
* * * * *
I quote this paragraph from _Alice_ and respectfully refer it to the
editor of _Mlle New York_ with the hope that he can see the point as
plainly as he sees most things:
All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a
telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera
glass. At last he said, “You’re travelling the wrong way,” and
shut up the window and went away.
* * * * *
On his way to Montreal Mr. Hall Caine stopped off one day at East Aurora.
The Pink Tea given in his honor at the office of THE PHILISTINE was
largely attended by the farmers from both up the creek and down the
creek. In fact, as my old friend Billy McGlory used to say, “Ye cudden’t
see de street fer dust.”
* * * * *
The Boston _Commonwealth_ (what satire there is in that name!) is a nice
paper, but its editor has not smiled for forty years; and all of his
little writers carry so much culture that they are round-shouldered,
flat-chested, bow-legged and near-sighted. They belong to the large class
that invariably miss the point of things and use dignity for a mask to
hide their lack of a sense of fun. The _Commonwealth_ accuses us of
being envious of the _Chip-Munk_; of being violently prejudiced against
Mr. Cudahy’s book, and of speaking irreverently of Boston. Go to thou
old granny _Commonwealth_, why sit you like your grandsire carved in
alabaster and creep into the jaundice by being peevish?
* * * * *
The _Book-Peddler_ is doing great service in promotion of what passes
for literature in the paper and ink stores. I cannot but think what a
similar publication devoted to literature, not trade, could do to save
the valuable time of the reading public. Since Solomon’s time a good
many things have changed, but in one there is no improvement. “Of the
making of many books there is no end,” and that is a heap sadder than the
lamentation of Maud Muller and His Honor.
* * * * *
Concerning Mr. Grant Allen’s book and the manner in which its title has
been made the basis of several others more or less reminiscent, my most
valued correspondent writes me that the novelists are missing much by
not calling a story _The Woman Who Is Simply Dying To_. In my well known
philanthropic way I throw out this suggestion hoping that somebody may
make many dollars by the adoption of the title for a decadent tale.
* * * * *
The Vanastorbilts are really under great obligations to Mrs. Rorer’s
_Household News_ for the simple daily menus for poor folks which are a
feature. There’s nothing so cheap as good living—in a magazine. When
bread sticks and banana chutney and peaches and rice and cantaloupe
can be mowed away by a poor man before the seven o’clock whistle
blows no hard worker ought to lack muscle for his daily toil. We have
printed assurance of Mrs. Bellow that “These menus have been arranged
on a scientific plan, are thoroughly hygienic, and contain all that
is necessary for proper living.” It is luck after all that man does
not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
hygienic mouth aforesaid.
* * * * *
Messrs. Lo & Behold, publishers of works on moral pathology, Boston,
are making great efforts to club the _Arena_. I understand they propose
offering season tickets to museums of morbid anatomy as prizes.
* * * * *
I note a somewhat guarded statement by Dr. Swan M. Burnett denying
that he and his wife have separated or are undergoing that mutually
humiliating process. All there is of it, he says, is that her work keeps
her abroad and his keeps him in Washington. The doctor’s friends say,
however, that the doctor and the writist live apart and have done so for
years and that he is tired of being referred to as Mrs. Frances Hodgson
Burnett’s husband. I think more likely he objects to being identified at
the banks and elsewhere as the father of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
* * * * *
The _Pell Mell Gazette_ of last Saturday contains a cablegram from Mr.
Hall Caine, dated at East Aurora, N. Y., wherein the author of _The
Manxman_ reports that the prospect for next year’s crop of ginger is very
promising.
* * * * *
I suppose it’s all right for the publisher of _Munsey’s_ to tell how he
made that magazine jump from 20,000 to half a million copies a month
by shutting out middlemen and reaching the hungering and thirsting
public direct. That’s his cue. If the publisher didn’t blow his horn
who would? I opine, however, that the fish would sell without it, and
that the editor of _Munsey’s_ could tell them something a good deal more
interesting in the same space. What does the great public, with its
multitude of aims and desires, care how such an effect was accomplished?
All that could safely remain within the veil. It would be more to the
point if the editor or publisher of Mr. Bok’s collection of wax works
would tell by what miracle he got a circulation. It is easy in the other
case, regardless of the smart publisher. The time passed long ago when a
horse being led to water could be forced to drink. The public must have
wanted _Munsey’s_ when it was shut out by the middleman or they wouldn’t
have compelled the dealers to send for it, and that implies that there’s
something in it besides self-consciousness and the publisher’s tactical
brilliancy. But how on earth came the embodied ego and its sisters and
cousins and aunts to get a hearing anywhere? Is Ruth Ashmore, _alias_
Bab, at the bottom of it?
* * * * *
A certain gentleman of my acquaintance, having heard until he is sick of
it that it takes nine Taylors to make a man, continues to boldly assert
that it takes two Chatfields to make a Taylor.
* * * * *
When the PHILISTINE was started six months ago I had no idea that it
would now have half a million subscribers.
* * * * *
I am reminded by a Boston newspaper of the continued existence of a
belief that criticism of books and other things more or less remotely
connected with literature is largely a matter of prejudice and that the
imprints on title pages determine the authors’ fate. Yet the same article
goes on to quote the _Chip-Munk_ firm as proof that merit will win
sometimes in spite of such drawbacks. It seems to me the instance proves
too much.
* * * * *
And here, just at the last, I want to set down what I have just read
in a delightful book written by Katherine Cheever Meredith—Johanna
Staats—because it seems to fit one’s mood at this time of year. This is
it:
“Oh, I play with Miss Gray Blanket and I play with Fanny.”
“Fanny? The little girl?”
“Yes. After it’s dark, you know, I play with her. Then I talk
to her. She never answers. But I play she’s so tired she can’t.
Of course I can’t play _that_ when it’s light. For then I could
_see_ that she wasn’t there. But in the dark she _might_ be.”
“Exactly,” responded Poole abstractedly. He was thinking that
many men and women indulge in the same game. Sometimes with
their faith in each other; but more often, though, with their
creeds.