The Philistine
A Periodical of Protest.

Let there be gall enough in thy ink.—Twelfth Night.

Printed Every Little While for The Society of The Philistines and Published by Them Monthly. Subscription, One Dollar Yearly

Single Copies, 10 Cents. April, 1896.

THE PHILISTINE.

CONTENTS FOR APRIL, 1896.

THE LOTOS.

A High Class Monthly Magazine of Art and Letters.

Cover and Poster by Arthur W. Dow.

CONTENTS FOR MARCH.

The Nature of Fine Art,	Ernest Francisco Frenollosa.
As to Stephen Crane,	Elbert Hubbard.
O Sada San, the Bride,	Mary McNeil Scott.
A Patron of Art,	Diana Archer.
Hawthorne, a character sketch,	May Alden Ward.
Altruism,	Emily S. Hamblen.
Etc., Etc.

Fifteen Cents a Number.
One Dollar a Year.

THE LOTOS.
No. 156 Fifth Avenue, New York.

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.

Philip Hale, the well known and brilliant literary and musical critic, writes: “Walter Blackburn Harte is beyond doubt and peradventure, the leading essayist in Boston to-day. For Boston, perhaps you had better read “The United States.” His matter is” original and brave, his style is clear, polished when effect is to be gained thereby, blunt when the blow should fall, and at times delightfully whimsical, rambling, paradoxical, fantastical.”

Mr. Harte is not always so good in the piece as in the pattern, but he is 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.

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ANNOUNCEMENT. The Society of the Philistines has made an arrangement with Mr. Walter Blackburn Harte, the Editor and Publisher of The Fly Leaf, Boston, Massachusetts, to acquire and incorporate The Fly Leaf with The Philistine.

Under this arrangement the services of Mr. Harte will be retained by the Society, and he will henceforth devote his time and efforts to furthering the interests of The Philistine and The Roycroft Printing Shop.

After April 1st Mr. Harte’s address will be East Aurora, N. Y.

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THE PHILISTINE,
East Aurora,
New York.

There lived once in the East, a great king; he dwelt far away, amongst the fragrant fields of roses, and in the light of suns that never set.

He was young, he was beloved, he was fair of face and form; and the people, as they hewed stone, or brought water, said amongst themselves, “Verily, this man is as a god; he goes where he lists, and he lies still or rises up as he pleases; and all fruits of all lands are called for him; and his nights are nights of gladness, and his days, when they dawn, are all his to sleep through or spend as he will.”

But the people were wrong. For this king was weary of his life.

His buckler was sown with gems, but his heart beneath it was sore. For he had been long bitterly harassed by foes who descended on him as wolves from the hills in their hunger, and he had been long plagued with heavy wars and with bad harvests, and with many troubles to his nation that kept it very poor, and forbade him to finish the building of new marble palaces, and the making of fresh gardens of delight, on which his heart was set. So he, being weary of a barren land and of an empty treasury, with all his might prayed to the gods that all he touched might turn to gold, even as he had heard had[139] happened to some magician long before in other ages. And the gods gave him the thing he craved; and his treasury overflowed. No king had ever been so rich as this king now became in the short space of a single summer day.

But it was bought with a price.

When he stretched out his hand to gather the rose that blossomed in his path, a golden flower scentless and stiff was all he grasped. When he called to him the carrier-dove that sped with a scroll of love-words across the mountains, the bird sank on his breast a carven piece of metal. When he was athirst and called to his cupbearer for drink, the red wine ran a stream of molten gold. When he would fain have eaten, the pulse and the pomegranate grew alike to gold between his teeth. And lo! at eventide, when he sought the silent chambers of his home, saying, “Here at least I shall find rest,” and bent his steps to the couch whereon his beloved was sleeping, a statue of gold was all he drew into his eager arms, and cold shut lips of sculptured gold was all that met his own.

That night the great king slew himself, unable any more to bear this agony; since all around him was desolation, even though all around him was wealth.

Now the world is like that king, and in its greed of gold will barter its life away.

[140]

Look you—this thing is certain—I say that the world will perish even as that king perished, slain as he was slain, by the curse of its own fulfilled desire.

The future of the world is written. For God has granted their prayer to men. He has made them rich, and their riches shall kill them.

When all green places have been destroyed in the builder’s lust of gain; when all the lands are but mountains of bricks, and piles of wood and iron; when there is no moisture anywhere, and no rain ever falls; when the sky is a vault of smoke, and all the rivers reek with poison; when forest and stream, the moor and meadow, and all the old green wayside beauty are things vanished and forgotten; when every gentle timid thing of brake and bush, of air and water, has been killed because it robbed them of a berry or a fruit; when the earth is one vast city, whose young children behold neither the green of the field nor the blue of the sky, and hear no song but the hiss of the steam, and know no music but the roar of the furnace; when the old sweet silence of the country-side, and the old sweet sounds of waking birds, and the old sweet fall of summer showers, and the grace of a hedgerow bough, and the glow of the purple heather, and the note of the cuckoo and cushat, and the freedom of waste and of woodland, are all things dead, and remembered of no man; then[141] the world, like the Eastern king, will perish miserably of famine and of drought, with gold in its stiffened hands, and gold in its withered lips, and gold everywhere; gold that the people can neither eat nor drink, gold that cares nothing for them, but mocks them horribly; gold for which their fathers sold peace and health, and holiness and beauty; gold that is one vast grave.

Ouida.

[This dainty poem first published in Scribner’s has been set to music by that brilliant woman, Mary Knight Wood. The Oliver Ditson Company are the publishers.]

Central Park on Saturday afternoon and the Tenderloin district on Saturday night give one different ideas of New York. Rather different ideas, too, of New York society, if one happens on a night when any of the Four Hundred bring up in the Thirtieth Street Police Station. Then you see him whom tailors do not bully as they do ordinary men, but bow down to as one whose whims are to set fashions, brought in, covered with mud, by some cab-driver who has failed to get his due from the drink-befuddled brain and the drink-emptied pocket.

Those who come into the station of their own accord act differently. They take off their hats and tiptoe across the room to ask if they may go upstairs to the sleeping room; and if it is full they tiptoe meekly out again. Misery is very unostentatious.

Worst of all are the old women, with their repulsiveness which almost prevents one from pitying them. I wondered, the other day, what became of all the pretty girls who walk Broadway and Sixth Avenue at night. I think I saw in the police station what became of some of them.

With the proud scions of aristocracy there is no humbleness. In some stages there is jocularity and affability; in some, haughtiness; but the end of both[144] is the same. When the scion understands that he is to spend a night in jail the horror of it appears to him something the gods cannot allow. He remonstrates with the police captain; he mentions his pride of birth and the shame that incarceration would be to such as he; he appeals to all the police captain’s higher feelings one after the other; he speaks to him as one gentleman to another. His ignorance of the vulgar world leads him into strange mistakes. And the policeman laughs and encourages him to talk, if the night has been dull, and finally putting him into a cell, examines the inside cover of his watch to see if he has given his right name.

About an hour after midnight Detective Dugan brought in a pretty, fair-haired girl.

“What is your name?” asked the sergeant.

The girl leaned forward and her lips moved, but they trembled so she could not answer for a moment. “Fanny Kellogg,” she said faintly at last.

“Kelly?” asked the sergeant.

“No; Kel—Kel—”

“Kellogg,” said the detective for her.

“What’s your age, Fanny?” asked the sergeant.

“Twenty-five.” She did not look more than twenty; so I suppose she spoke the truth.

“Your occupation?”

[145]

There were two or three reporters near her. She looked straight ahead and did not answer at all. The sergeant waited a minute; then he asked:

“The same old thing?”

She nodded, still looking straight before her.

“Married?”

Her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.

“That’s too bad, Fanny, you ought to get married.” He finished writing in his book, and then rang for the matron. The bell was out of order, so he sent a messenger. While waiting he said to the girl jokingly:

“Couldn’t you see that Dugan was a copper?”

She turned and looked at the detective, smiling. She looked at him from top to toe, as if to see whether her judgment had been at fault, or whether she had merely had a case of hard luck. Dugan began to blush and Fanny smiled still more. She had a pleasant face, but in the smile one could see things that the face in repose did not reveal.

There was some delay before the matron came. After the little joke on the detective had passed, Fanny’s eyes again filled with tears, which she furtively wiped away with the tips of her fingers. Then the little plump matron appeared in the doorway, beckoned to Fannie with a stiff little finger of rectitude, and they went out of the room together.

[146]

“It’s a pity she shouldn’t marry; she’s a nice girl,” said the sergeant.

“She’s pretty, too,” said a reporter.

“Her figure isn’t good enough for me,” said another.

“Oh, I guess you’d take her fast enough,” answered the sergeant.

The talk was slipping down very rapidly. Few men consider chivalry a thing to be worn all the time.

Kenneth Brown.

A Monk who belonged to a very Wealthy Order went forth to beg, pleading great poverty and distress to those from whom he asked alms. He met a Butcher and a Baker to whom he said he had eaten nothing for many days, and that he was almost starved.

“How is it thou art so fat?” said they as they drove on their wagons.

He met a Tradesman and said he had not had any money for years, even from his youth, as he had long been a Monk.

“I have no money to give thee,” said the Tradesman, at the same time jingling a handful of gold coins in his pocket.

[147]

“I pray Jesus to forgive thee that lie,” said the Monk, “for I hear the coins jingling in thy pockets.”

“If thou hast seen so little money in thy life,” said the Tradesman, “how dost thou so well know its jingle?”

He met a Fishmonger carrying a basket of fish, coming from attending his nets, to whom he said: “I and my brothers are perishing for want of fish. Pray give us thy basket of fish and go thou and catch others.”

“Go and catch thy own fish,” said the Fishmonger, “the waters of the earth are as free for thee to fish in as for me.”

He met a Woman at her door, to whom he bowed low and made the sign of the cross:

“Kind Madam,” said he, “I and my brothers are perishing for want of food and money. I pray you give unto us according as the Lord hath prospered thee.”

“Come in, poor Monk,” said she, “we have not much except my husband’s wages, but to share with thee is to give unto the Lord.”

So saying she gave him half her savings, and when he made ready to depart she craved his blessing.

“You may kiss my Big Toe,” said he. Which[148] being done he departed, and with a shrug of his shoulders said to himself:

“Ah, if Women were not so easily beguiled, we should be compelled to work.”

John Bryan of Ohio.

And so old Clangingharp passed out. He did not die, and his case was not like Elijah’s or Enoch’s. Enoch left a spoor, while Clangingharp calmly and peacefully passed away, without striking a discord. Nobody had any idea where Clangingharp was. Frostembight had seen him the night before and they had drunk and been drunk; but where Clangingharp was Frostembight could not or would not say.

The Knittenpin woman, of course, acted like an idiot and went around to Frostembight’s house in the morning and threatened to kill Frostembight. Nothing prevented her but Frostembight. She afterwards told Shiningstar and Shiningstar’s little girl Eva, that Frostembight was not safe for dependence, even as a victim. Eva leered proudly and said she guessed it made very little difference anyway.

Eva was one of those frail, delicate little girls, happy for their years, who grow up into frail, delicate women, wretched for theirs. Sometimes they have blue eyes, sometimes black. Eva’s were green. Championoar liked green-eyed women, and half promised to wait till Eva was old enough to be married to him, when he could get her off the[150] stage. Shiningstar was his stepdaughter’s stepfather.

By the second night after Clangingharp had passed away the editor of The Evening Coat had gone back into society again, and was the center of a jostling cluster at the Opera. Madame Frustra, the prima donna, seemed to incline toward the editor, and when his flowers reached her in her dressing room she was heard to murmur, “Poor Clangingharp!” That was really all there was to connect The Evening Coat with the affair, and, indeed, Frustra wrote the editor a note saying that nowadays a successful actress had to forego wine suppers and skip to her hotel directly after the opera. She got out of town with her luggage before the stranding was discovered.

Charmingbland, the hotel clerk, got himself into a devil of a fix, it was said, for hinting foul play and collusion between Little Eva and Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was a good enough fellow, though pale at times, and made a dramatic exit when the Chinaman lost his cue. Of course there was a tremendous sensation, and speculation of all sorts over what Clangingharp’s son would have done if Clangingharp had had one. That led Padmarx, dramatic editor of The Evening Coat, to put on a copy and go behind the scenes to interview Ellen Squigs.

“Say, Squigsy,” he wheedled, “where’s Clangingharp?”

[151]

Squigsy went right on frizzing her hair with a curling-iron, and said she wasn’t no slouch and wasn’t going to be bluffed by Championoar nor any other dude. That made Padmarx curious, and he asked Squigsy if she really thought she could act. Squigsy rushed at Padmarx and ran the hot curling-iron all over his dress shirt, making long, irregular scorches on the bosom. Padmarx buttoned up his ulster and went out after the ball. Late that night a stranger walked up to Charmingbland, pulled off a false mustache and said furtively:

“There, you idiot—dyuh recognize meh now?”

“Strings Clangingharp, by Gawd,” remarked Charmingbland, “where you been?”

Clangingharp put his mustache on crooked, and they sat down at a table in the bar-room from which Charmingbland could see anybody that tried to steal the silver card-platters off the desk. Clangingharp drank eleven cocktails before he said a word, then he put his finger to his mustache to enjoin maudlin secrecy upon Charmingbland and said:

“Shay, ol’ man. Want t’ know w’er I been? Been zh’ gol’ cure, ol’ man. Zhay wouldn’ take me. Gimme some pepper there!”

And he spread himself, like a green bay tree.

Frank W. Noxon.

[152]

[154]

I observe that the New Woman still sharpens her lead pencil with the scissors.

The Chicago Times-Herald, realizing that owing to emanations from the Stock Yards, the Pierian Spring might need a drainage canal, is making an effort to dam the obnoxious flow, by offering prizes for the very best machine-made prose and verse. The literary editor who was selected to do the damning has recently, in a marked manner, proved his competency for the “job.” He awarded the prize for the best original poem on the romantic subject, “Chicago,” to a young lady from Indianapolis who sent him a copy of B. F. Taylor’s Fort Dearborn, which was an original and a favorite twenty years ago. When the editor’s attention was called to the prehistoric flavor of the prize poem, he treated the matter with fine scorn, admitting that it was true, that there had been a “writer of some local reputation named Taylor who had originally written the poem.” He then intimated that any plumber’s daughter from Indianapolis, who would thus attempt[155] to deceive a guileless Chicago editor, ought to be well spanked. And straightway he impaled her on the turnspit of public opinion and “roasted” her like an articled literary chef, and in fact the girl deserved it for wasting her time in copying poetry when she could have employed it more profitably in making out her father’s bills. The literary editor handled this matter so diplomatically that the proprietors of the journal rewarded him with an order on McClurg for a copy of B. F. Taylor’s Old Time Pictures which contains the poem.

In China there is no copyright law. An author’s reward consists in the thought that he has expressed his idea and thereby benefitted mankind. My reward so far for good work has been the pure Chinese article.

Walter Blackburn Harte has engaged board at the Widow Blannerhassett’s, second door east of the blacksmith shop. At Johnson’s grocery last night Harte beat old Si Emery three straight games at checkers—and that is no small matter.

Aunt Polly, of the old school, lives with a niece who is a modern of the moderns. Hearing the expression “decadent” used in connection with sundry articles in The Yellow Book and The Chip-Munk, she looked into the matter herself when left[156] alone after dinner and the young folks had gone to see and hear The Scarlet Letter.

She read until her spectacles began to quiver and her cap strings heaved upon her breast like signals of distress in a brooding tempest.

The books suddenly fell with a dull thud.

“Decayed! well, I should say so!” groaned Aunt Polly, as she began rocking in her chair at the rate of a mile in two forty. What could she have been reading?

It’s a curious comment on our civilization that a priest in the Catholic Church should (or could) make himself obnoxious to a very large number of his townsmen by advocating total abstinence from strong drink. Yet this is exactly what the Rev. Father George Zurcher of Buffalo has done. It seems some merry brewers have been playing pranks on the good Father by sending him cases of bottled lager with four-horse teams, brass bands and decorated vehicles. It was awfully funny to see the big wagons rattle up to the little house that stands beside the church and then behold fat men with faces like full moons and noses like glowing oriflammes lug in the lager and deposit it on the priestly steps. Then other jokers took the matter in hand and sent hurry-up telephone orders for wet goods to be delivered at the Rectory. But Father George is a bit of a joker himself and at[157] the same time is dead in earnest as the true humorist always is. And now when invoices of “Old Tom,” or “Triple XXX,” or “Monongahela” arrive Father George walks out in sight of the people who have gathered to see the fun, solemnly crosses himself, murmurs a prayer and proceeds to slam the bottles against the side of the pretty brick church. Slap-dash, spang, bang, zipp they go! Corks fly, red moisture flows and glass covers the sidewalk like hail after a Kansas blizzard. Some of the assembled citizens laugh, some cheer, others look solemn and deprecate the waste of valuable goods that might be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Still others, sadder still, with sensitive spirits, deem it sacrilege to throw things at a sacred edifice, and ask for Bible justification.

But Father George, being a most unreasonable man, and a perverse, says that the best use a church can be put to is that of a barricade on which to smash bottles of Extra Triple XXX. In fact, he earnestly declares that his church was built with this special idea in mind and that the foundation is so deep and the walls so solid that if all the demijohns in Buffalo were banged plumb against it, it would still stand secure.

And the upstart of it all is that over a hundred bicycle tires have been punctured in that block during[158] the last month and no wheelman feels safe from broken glass within a mile limit in any direction of St. Joseph’s church. So the police have notified the Father that he must smash no more bottles in the street on penalty. And furthermore, on the statute books of the State of New York is a law known as “The Bottlers’ Protective Act.” This law makes it a misdemeanor to wilfully break a beer bottle in the great Empire State. The Beer Bottlers’ Association, in order to uphold its dignity, is about to bring action against Father George under this law, all as legally provided, and the end is not yet.

We now have the Lotus, the Lotos and the Lettuce. The latest is The Prairie Dog. Its hole is in Lawrence, Kansas, and it is patterned after the Chip Munk. Verily, like begets like.

The Drumtochty folks are both good and witty. And it looks a bit as if that old idea that a joke cannot be gotten into the head of a Scotsman without trepanning is a mistake. Some say, though, that there is no such place as Drumtochty; yet the same remark has been made about East Aurora. But Dodd, Rott & Company declare that Drumtochty exists, and in their last Price List they insert this poem, which they say fitly describes the Land of parritch:

[159]

No Scot has arisen so far to deny the allegations set forth; but an Englishman has, and he winds up with this:

And now Mr. H. O. Mac Arthur, who edits The Bookman, has offered a reward of seven dollars and fifty cents for the name and address of the Englishman aforesaid.

If Rider Haggard had been Lew Wallace what would She have been?

Conan Doyle used to print good things before he made a success; but now that he has found a market, what’s the use!

[160]

I have wrestled patiently and mightily with a volume called A Study of Death, by H. M. Alden, and have been worsted. Any man who will chase Mr. Alden into a corner and get a plain simple answer to anything shall be crowned with honor.

“You may talk of all subjects save one, namely, your maladies,” said Emerson. Yet in each issue of the Cosmopolitan Andrew Lang takes the public into his confidence concerning his bodily ills.

The tendency to play flim-flam with their names is a penchant of the Inklings. No sooner does a mortal have a bit of manuscript accepted than he gives himself a middle name if he hasn’t one, and drops it out if he has. Some in fact petition the legislature for brand new handles and have themselves rechrisumed by a priest, as recently was the case in Boston; the man’s age being thirty-six. Others add a hyphen and join two names with a philological integument that makes one think of the Siamese twins.

The queerest freak of this kind perhaps is the case of the Gilder-Family-Robinson. The name as it first appears on the Parochial Register is Gildersleeve. But when Judge Gildersleeve shot in the American Rifle Team and made a bad score at Wimbledon, the sleeve was cut off in certain instances. In[161] other words, the name was raveled and worn with short sleeves—or no sleeves at all, like a bodice or stomacher.

Now that William Watson has been knighted we see it is spelled Watson-Guilder. But the latest development in this peculiar evolution is a letter from Sir William Watson disclaiming all relationship with the Watsons of America. The closing paragraph of this epistle is worthy of note: “It is true that I was caught and knighted by the Queen, as a certain flippant American paper has put it; but any American who hopes to add lustre to his name by claiming kinship with me should be caught and knouted.”

The London Graphic thinks that Judge Grant is not so great a man as his father, the General. That’s a matter of opinion.

The Frederick A. Stokes Company has issued a pretty book, written by Mrs. Walford, entitled A Bubble. I will prick it in my next number.

If literature does not pay, we can still beg—if to dig we are ashamed!

Union Down by Mr. Scott Campbell is not an imitation of Thistle Down, as has been sometimes stated. And furthermore is the Boston Library right in classing Thistle Down as light literature?

[162]

The Lynx-Eyed being yet on a journey the Chip-Munk spells it “Carlysle.” Or is it only a pricking of conscience for quoting in dead earnest from the works of Carlisle, who now is only spoken of by scholars in connection with Imogen Such, Abe Slupsky, Thomas Collins and Wigelow Vorse?

William Marion Reedy, who holds The St. Louis Mirror up to Nature, is one of the strongest writers that this glorious Republic contains. He has wit and better still he has humor. He writes with a pen that does not scratch; and in his ink there is a goodly dash of Attic salt but no vitriol. Yet when Reedy declined the Ph. D. offered him by the Chicago University, and said in his letter “I hardly consider myself worthy to be so honored by Chicago’s great institution of learning,” was it tincture of iron or what? Anyway, Rockefeller’s mad.

A Boston paper describes Mr. Hornaday’s book, The Man Who Became a Savage, as “an artistic romance, penned by a man who believes in art for art’s sake.” From other sources I hear it spoken of as “a novel with a purpose, written by a crank with a tandem hobby.” The National Brewer’s Gazette calls it “a musty piece of bombastic fustian, written by a ranting Methodist preacher.”

I understand that a movement is on foot in Chicago[163] to treat divorce as a sacrament. And as a straw that tells which way the wind blows in the Windy City, please note that Judge Gibbons has recently issued an order that a certain man shall be paid twenty-five dollars per week alimony by his former wife.

Last week all of the Boston papers contained a large picture of J. Stilman Smith, secretary to Dr. Edward Everett Hale. It was explained that Dr. Hale is the author of etc., etc., etc., and the reason that Smith is shown to the world is because he had a severe attack of influenza coupled with poster-mania, and was cured by taking two boxes of Dr. Muckyroot’s pills. Great is Dr. Hale! Great is Dr. Muckyroot! Great is Smith!

I warn the public against a book called Youth: A Poem of Soul and Sense, by Mr. Michael Monahan. It is dedicated to “The True and the Chaste,” which evidently was an attempt to flatter me. But I’m not for sale. Still, I read the book—read it to Her—read it through, and we two voted that it could not be safely recommended: for many people on reading it would be very much shocked and the dear public shall not be shocked if I can help it. Portions of the book are addressed to the poet’s wife, and several of the poems (the best) I believe were written by her.[164] Now a man who is not enough of a man to do his work without calling in his wife to help him is not much of a man after all—that’s just what I mean and I don’t care who knows it!

And here comes from Emma Eggleson, Sumner, Iowa, something that is too choice even for my Waste Basket:

I welcome David B. Hill to the ranks of the Philistines. There are some things about the more or less disingenuous David that I don’t like, but when he slings a pebble at the gluttony that calls itself public life in Washington, he strikes twelve. It was Emerson who spoke of “the riot of the senses to be seen in American Hotels,” and when Mr. Hill stands in the gilded bar-room of the Ebbitt House and asks “Are we a Christian people?” the question is in order.

My brother Anthony’s little girl calls all medicine[166] Nasty Stuff. The little girl much resembles her uncle. Not many grown-ups know as much as she. She is very smart, which surely is better than to be big, for instance like Conan Doyle, who was described by that Barnum of Art, James B. Pond, in his catalogue as “a large man, weighing full two hundred and twenty pounds.” Now the distinguished Veterinary, just named, besides lecturing, also writes on medical topics, putting his theses in form of novels. He just grovels in pathology and wallows in therapeutics. He is ever administering boluses to his heroes and emetics to his heroines—and readers. In that story of a box-stall, The Stark-Monroe Letters, he displays vials, bottles, droppers, corks, iodoform gauze, trepanning tools, silver treacheas, catgut thread, antiseptic cotton and scalpels. The man who can read two of the Stark-Monroe Letters without being salivated shall have The Philistine gratis for a year. I beg of Dr. Doyle that he will read Science and Health by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and forever eschew Nasty Stuff in literature.

Brander Matthews’ little tinkle is heard again in Harper’s this month. He arrives with a belated Vignette, in which he tells as usual all about Many Things. The Maverick’s plan is simple. It doesn’t tax the inventive powers and at the same time it is capable of almost infinite extension, for it consists[167] merely in describing the places of amusement and the familiar parks and street corners of the metropolis. Slight variations in the attenuated love story are necessary and care must be taken to work in something appropriate to the season or that has a newspaper vogue, but all the rest is purely topographical. There is absolutely no end to it, for the hero can be made to have his emotion of triumphant or disappointed love at the football game, at the opening night at the opera, at a chrysanthemum show, at St. Thomas church or at the Duke’s wedding, and in each case there is material for a separate story. It is a limitless sausage with link added to link so it can go clear around the world, and the Maverick’s world is small, anyway. The scheme is glorious; it is limitless. All up and down Fifth Avenue bits of romance can be woven into every block. A case of disappointed affection at Washington Square for story No. 1; true love at the Brevoort House for No. 2; hopeless longing at the corner of Tenth street for No. 3, and so on up to Harlem. Call these Vignettes of Fifth Avenue. They would be the first of The Avenue Series, which when completed, would be followed by The Side Street Series, and this in turn by a set of sketches arranged according to wards or voting precincts in the lower part of the city. Then take up all the parks[168] in order, the theaters, the hotels, the music halls.

You see, the breezy Brander is doing in fiction what has so often been done with success in our recent drama. His description of Carmencita’s dancing, of a Broadway cable car, or Macy’s by moonlight, corresponds exactly to the introduction on the stage of a live baby, or a really and truly fire engine, or a genuine puddle of water into which one of the characters falls with a bona fide splash, to the great delight of the galleries. The reader’s simple heart rejoices at the recognition of familiar lamp posts and L stations as the hero walks through Twenty-third street and takes the Sixth avenue car to Herald Square. He loves to hear how the electric lights flicker and sputter, how the clock on the Herald Building strikes nine and how the cabs drive up and down, for sakes alive! he has seen these very things with his own eyes.

He is clever—is the unbranded Maverick—to have hit on this method. It is a mine that can be worked without effort. To twaddle lucratively and prattle with profit, ah! that is an art worth knowing! It brings the Harper smiles and the soft sinecures of literature.

Of this issue there have been printed, in addition to the regular edition, one hundred copies of The Philistine on Ruisdael hand-made paper, with the advertising pages on Japanese Vellum. These numbers are stitched with silk, have extra wide margins and are bound in a special Holland paper, purposely imported by John Dickinson & Company, Limited, for this issue. Each copy will be numbered and signed by one of the editors. The price of these de luxe numbers is one dollar each. Address

THE PHILISTINE,
East Aurora,
New York.

Quarterly. Illustrated.

“If Europe be the home of Art, America can at least lay claim to the most artistically compiled publication devoted to the subject that we know of. This is Modern Art.”—Galignani Messenger (Paris).

“The most artistic of American art periodicals. A work of art itself.”—Chicago Tribune.

Fifty Cents a Number. Two Dollars a Year.
Single Copies (back numbers) 50 Cents in Stamps.
Illustrated Sample Page Free.

Arthur W. Dow has designed a new poster for Modern Art. It is exquisite in its quiet harmony and purely decorative character, with breadth and simplicity in line and mass, and shows the capacity of pure landscape for decorative purposes.—The Boston Herald.

Price, 25 Cents in Stamps,
Sent Free to New Subscribers to Modern Art.

L. Prang & Company, Publishers.
286 ROXBURY STREET, BOSTON.

RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES: Translated by R. Nisbit Bain. Illustrated by C. M. Gere. 8vo., Ornamental Cloth, gilt top, $1.50.

OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES: By S. Baring Gould. With illustrations by F. D. Bedford. Octavo. Cloth, $2.00. London: Methuen & Co.

SHELLEY’S TRANSLATION OF THE BANQUET OF PLATO: A dainty reprint of Shelley’s little-known translation of “The Banquet of Plato,” prefaced by the poet’s fragmentary note on “The Symposium.” Title-page and decorations by Mr. Bruce Rogers. 16mo., $1.50. Seventy-five copies on hand-made paper, $3.00 net.

HAND AND SOUL: By Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Printed by Mr. William Morris at the Kelmscott Press.

This book is printed in the “Golden” type, with a specially designed title-page and border, and in special binding. “Hand and Soul” first appeared in “The Germ,” the short-lived magazine of the Pre-Raphælite Brotherhood. A few copies also on Vellum.

For sale by all booksellers, or mailed postpaid by the publishers, on receipt of price.

WAY & WILLIAMS,
Monadnock Block. Chicago.

A SHELF OF BOOKS.

LITTLE JOURNEYS.

To the Homes of Good Men and Great.

By Elbert Hubbard. Series 1895, handsomely bound. Illustrated with twelve portraits, etched and in photogravure. 16mo., printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top. $1.75.

THE ELIA SERIES.

A Selection of Famous Books, offered as specimens of the best literature and of artistic typography and bookmaking. Printed on deckle-edge paper, bound in full ooze calf, with gilt tops, 16mo., (6½ x 4½ inches), each volume (in box), $2.25.

⁂ There are three different colors of binding—dark green, garnet and umber.

First group: The Essays of Elia, 2 vols. The Discourses of Epictetus. Sesame and Lilies. Autobiography of Franklin. Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius.

NO ENEMY: BUT HIMSELF.

The Romance of a Tramp. By Elbert Hubbard. Twenty-eight full-page illustrations. Second edition. Bound in ornamental cloth, $1.50.

EYES LIKE THE SEA.

By Maurus Jokai. (The great Hungarian Novelist.) An Autobiographical Romance. Translated from the Hungarian by Nisbet Bain. $1.00.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS,
NEW YORK AND LONDON.

FOOTLIGHTS,

that weekly illustrated paper published in Philadelphia (pity, isn’t it?), is a clean (moderately so) paper, chock full of such uninteresting topics as interviews with actor and actress (bless ’em); book gossip, news from Paris and London, (dear, old Lunnon), woman’s chatter, verse and lots more of idiocy that only spoils white paper. It sells for five cents a copy, or $2.00 a year.

VERY SPECIAL: Send two dollars and Footlights and The Philistine will be sent you for one year. Address

THE PHILISTINE,
East Aurora, N. Y.

THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP at this time desires to announce a sister book to the Song of Songs: which is Solomon’s. It is the Journal of Koheleth: being a Reprint of the Book of Ecclesiastes with an Essay by Mr. Elbert Hubbard. The same Romanesque types are used that served so faithfully and well in the Songs, but the initials, colophon and rubricated borders art special designs. After seven hundred and twelve copies are printed the types will be distributed and the title page, colophon and borders destroyed.

In preparation of the text Mr. Hubbard has had the scholarly assistance of his friend, Dr. Frederic W. Sanders, of Columbia University. The worthy pressman has also been helpfully counseled by several Eminent Bibliophiles.

The seven hundred copies that are printed on Holland hand-made paper are offered at two dollars each, and the twelve copies on Japan Vellum at five dollars. Every book will be numbered and signed by Mr. Hubbard. Orders are now being recorded, but Book Lovers are requested not to send remittances until the volume is in their hands.

THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP,
East Aurora, New York.