Stealing Our Thunder.

Boston has been making a great palaver over her “Longfellow memorial readings.” These readings were given in the Boston Dime Museum last Thursday, and the persons who participated were as follows: Col. J. R. Lowell, the Shakespearian lecturer; Mr. Mark Twain, the Missouri humorist; Mr. W. D. Howells, the New-York novelist; Mr. G. William Curtis, the New-Jersey Mugwump; the Rev. E. Everett Hale, editor of “The Lending Hand;” Col. Thomas B. Aldrich, editor of “The Atlantic Monthly;” Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the eminent surgeon; Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, mother of Miss Maud Howe; the venerable John G. Whittier, author of the New-Hampshire idyl, “Joaquin Miller;” and Col. T. Wentworth Higginson, the friend of the late James T. Fields. “The Boston Globe” publishes the pictures of these littérateurs, and we observe that five of them (including Mrs. Howe) part their hair in the middle. But this is neither here nor there. What we wish to say, and what we wish the public at large to believe, is, that Boston stole this idea of giving memorial-fund readings: she stole it from Chicago. Two months ago, a movement was set on foot in this city to secure a fund for the purpose of erecting on the lake-front a splendid monument to the memory of “The 283Literary Life,” that never-to-be-forgotten literary journal, which, under the inspired genius of Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, waxed and waned in the midst of us one all-too-brief year ago. Professor Henry T. Bosbyshell, analytical chemist for Byers & Co., the eminent soap-manufacturers, conceived the laudable plan of securing this monument-fund by giving in Central Music Hall a grand symposium at which Chicago littérateurs would read from their original works. The date fixed for this unique performance was May 28; and the following local authors were bespoken, and promised to participate:—

Professor H. T. Bosbyshell, author of “American Soaps Analyzed,” “The Secret of Perfuming Revealed,” “The Boss Baking Powder,” and “How to Remove Paint Stains.”

Col. T. Shelby Sothers, author of the “Chicago Directory for 1859,” “The Travellers’ Guide to Chicago,” “Compendium of Railroad Information,” and “Chicago Trade Statistics for 1883.”

Professor William Mathews, author of “How to get on in the World.”

Miss Tryphena Cora Swartwout, author of “West-Side Poems,” “Ode to the Chicago River and Other Sonnets,” “An Analysis of Browning,” and “A Complete Cook Book.”

Col. Peter G. Hobby, author of “The New Baconian Theory; or, A Modern Method of Smoking Sidemeats.”

284Mr. Wellington Boothkins, author of “Handbook of Etiquette; or, Ten Years a Chicago Clubman,” and “A Review of the Linseed-Oil Trade in the West.”

Mrs. Martha W. Lester-Tubbs, author of “The Dawn of Chicago Literature,” “The Mother’s Companion,” and compiler of “Epics of the Hennepin Valley.”

Professor Thomas O’B. Swigert, author of “The Art of Composition; or, The Manufacture of Press-Rollers Made Easy.”

Mr. DeLancey Morris Sowerby, author of “Noctes Ambrosianæ; or, Ten Nights in the Chicago Literary Club,” and compiler of “The Record of the Chicago Races for 1886.”

Mrs. Minerva J. Peabody, the Calumet poetess, whose nautical poems, “Will Henry Come when Navigation Opens?” and “Aboard the Three-Mast Schooner when the Shingle Crop Comes In,” are sung in every Chicago household.

Col. James Russell Lowell was let into this secret when he was here last February; and it is probable that he went right back to Boston, and betrayed the whole scheme. It is very aggravating to have our original ideas snapped up in this piratical manner by the conscienceless Yankees; but we hope that our littérateurs will stick to their programme, and show the false Bostonians that here, in the home of the muses, and in this wallow (if we may so term it) of culture, we can prepare 285and execute a literary programme which will put the presumptuous Bostonians to the blush. We can do this, too, without calling on Missouri, New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire for help.