SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SOUL EASEMENT AND WISDOM INCIDENTALLY.

Dr. Robertson Nicoll, of London, England, a good Scot, is the present day discoverer of Scotch genius, and Ian Maclaren is largely the creation of his splendid audacity of prophecy and executive ability.

Dr. Nicoll is a noticeable and interesting personality in contemporary literature. He fully deserves his wide celebrity, for he has put into the chronicling of monotonous literary news and criticism an element of newsyness and vim that is characteristic of the best American journalism. He has made mere literary news as exciting and mysterious as politics or horseracing. We now bet on the sales of new poets as well as on the Derby favorites. This adds a great deal to the picturesqueness and interest of “The Literary Show,” and Dr. Nicoll deserves the credit due to a bold innovator. He marks an epoch in literary journalism, and his “Scotch era” will be remembered in history. But fashions change and Ian Maclaren, and some of Dr. Nicoll’s other inventions and discoveries, will pass into well deserved oblivion, in a very little while.

They are significant simply as striking examples of the creative genius of criticism. As “famous authors” they are purely factitious. In a word, they must be considered at par amply as the shadows and phantoms of Dr. Nicoll’s picturesque power of criticism and great creative gifts.

The literature of the Kailyard is having its day, but happily it will not last forever. It will eventually go the way of negro dialect fiction, when its unique adaptability as a conveyance for the perfectly obvious and the perfectly absurd come to be more generally recognized than is possible in this hour of perfervid enthusiasm.

All the Scots who want to be in the Scotch Sweepstakes and win, had better mount their nags in this hour of favor and get away. A few discerning and canny critics are still alive, and the suspicion is gaining ground among them from a perusal of Ian Maclaren’s pages, that the great literary prophet of Paternoster-Row, while a delightful chroniqueur and a generous soul, is not altogether an infallible judge of the permanent and essential elements of robust and distinctive literature.

The one man of the Nineteenth Century who will be remembered when all others are forgotten, and whose name will go clattering down the Corridors of Time like a tin kettle to a dog’s tail, is Professor J. Dorman Steele. This man covers all Science and all Philosophy. He has compiled text books on seventeen subjects and over three million volumes of his works have been sold. Darwin, Humboldt, Spencer, Huxley—all fade into misty nothingness when we think of Steele, and bless my soul! what a suggestive name that is anyway!!

The Forum for March had an article concerning your Uncle Kruger and his folks. It was headed “Manners and Customs of the Boers.” But the compositor got it “Manners and Customs of the Boors,” just as if every one did not know only too well what they were already. I understand that nearly half of the edition was run before the mistake was discovered.

“If I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent Texas and live in Hell,” once said Phil Sheridan. But now comes The Fad, one of the Chip-Munk brood, printed on green paper at San Antonio, and claims that Texas has more real, sure-enough Culture than all of New England. This is only truism—Rodents!

Speaking of a certain very New Woman, Quilp says, “God made her, let her pass for a man.”

On sighting the Crookes tube in the direction of East Aurora we find there are some very choice things to appear in The Philistine within the next few months.—Exchange.

So far no charge has been made that the Philistines were mixing up in the theatrical business; but on every hand the air is full of complaints because the stage has fallen into the hands of the Children of Israel. Even Mr. Howells has turned Harper’s Weekly into a Periodical of Protest, and declares that the greed for dollars has dropped histrionics to a point where the drama is not only artistically decadent but positively demoralizing.

But a friend of mine takes issue with Silas Lapham and declares that there is a sure reaction just now in favor of plays with a strong ethical purpose. To prove his point he cites a certain curtain raiser called The Flea Hunt.

The scene opens, in this choice little fantasy, on the ennui of a pretty young woman, whose husband, a sea captain, is far across the water. The afternoons pass slowly for her; she cannot read and tosses on her boudoir lounge distressfully. To add to her uneasiness a young man across the way has had the impudence to send her flowers and a note, with a rendezvous for 3 o’clock. Indignation. Pride of conscious strength. Admiration. Curiosity. Hesitation. Remorse. Prayers to her husband’s portrait. Sighs. Wriggles. Pillowtossing. Thoughtfulness.

The clock strikes 2. Zut! She starts up guiltily, tiptoes across the room, and turns her husband’s picture to the wall. Now she is in a tempest of preparation with her street toilette. The time is growing short. She has her gloves, her hat, her cloak, her muff, her veil, her parasol, and stands at the open door to give a last apologetic look. Ouch! What is that! Can it be! Ouch! again. Certainly a flea is biting her neck—she reaches for it! Then the trouble begins. In the search for the nimble flea nearly everything the lady has on is cast aside. At last she finds it. But by this time she has revealed a very roly-poly tenement of clay with a center of gravity like a sofa pillow. Lingerie is strewn over chairs, tables, sofa and floor. She is clad only in very scanty, but dainty dimity. The clock is striking 3. Too late! she looks at the flea, first revengefully, then thoughtfully, then gratefully. Hesitatingly she slips across the room and turns her husband’s portrait to the light. Saved—providentially saved, saved by a flea! Curtain.

In 1859 there lived three miles north-east of Skowhegan an Old Farmer, and he subscribed for the New York Tribune. The reason he subscribed was because the Editor, one Horace Greely, wrote Hot Stuff. Now the Old Farmer was a great admirer of Mr. Greely and of the Hot Stuff and he induced several of his neighbors to subscribe for the Tribune on account of the Hot Stuff and the greatness of Mr. Greely. Now it chanced that Mr. Greely wrote on many themes and on a certain day he produced Hot Stuff on a certain subject about which no man should write unless he has had a Call. When the Old Farmer read that particular editorial he was very wroth and he wrote a very angry personal letter to Mr. Greely, cancelling his subscription; and he also induced his neighbors to cancel theirs.

About a year after this the Old Farmer went to Skowhegan with a load of slipperyellum, and walking into a grocery he found the Grocer reading the New York Tribune. The Old Farmer started, stared, and exclaimed, “What er—eh—what er that paper you be readin’?”

“The New York Tribune,” was the answer.

“My! Judas Priest—that can’t be—me and three other fellows ordered it stopped a year ago!”

I hear that an article by Mr. Cudahy is soon to appear in The Ladies Home Journal. The subject is not yet announced but it probably will be “The Pigs that Have Helped Me.”

Latest advices from the Librarian of Congress confirm the report that Mr. Brander Matthews’ whiskers are fully covered by copyright.

Who says that woman has more feeling than man? Her feelings are more shallow, and this being so more ripple on the surface is seen, that’s all. So says Nax Moredough.

No doubt but that Mr. Howells is a great man, but he would be a greater if he never used in print those tattered and attenuated expressions, “so to speak” and “as it were.” These ancient terms belong with the hoary oratorical, “If I may be allowed the expression.” Further than this, I have gibes and jeers in store for any man who says “from time immemorial.”

In the Forum for April Mr. Brander Matthews has a preachment entitled, On Pleasing the Taste of the Public. No man has made more anxious efforts to do it than Mr. Matthews.

I certainly have nothing against Mr. MacArthur nor against Mr. Dodd, who hires him. They are both nice men, and as an advertising sheet the Bookman is certainly skilfully conducted. But they shall not mislead the dear public if I can help it. On page 36 of the March issue the Bookman makes bold to tell us that Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married “in September of 1866.” And then in the next column “on March 9th, 1869, was born their son.” If James Russell Lowell were alive today I can imagine him saying, “I may be a bookman, but by the eternal I’m not the kind issued by Dodd, Mead & Company.”

Philosopher and prophet, Edward S. Martin, avers that when the Chip-Munk doubled its size it reduced its value one-half.

Way & Williams, Chicago, the publishers of Mrs. Wynne’s book, The Little Room and Other Stories, say that The Philistine’s mention of the volume sold seven thousand copies. Advertising rates made known on application.

“Should we have an Eleventh Commandment?” asked a youth of the Greatest Living Actress. “Most assuredly, no—we have ten too many now!” answered the divine Sara.

The fact that we have no “serving class” in America, and that some of us (or you) have wealth and insist on being waited upon, is a stream of tendency that makes for misery. The wives of very many of our rich men make a business of keeping up an establishment. They are not producers in any sense, and their one excuse for living is put out of court when we consider that “society” to them means neither affinity nor friendship. Their woes are in exact proportion to the number of servants that play tennis with their peace of mind. Or, more strictly speaking, the size of the house, showing the bigness of their cares, their happiness is in inverse ratio to the square of the domicile.

Writers who can gain an audience in a foreign and distant country reap some of the advantages of the cool and impartial interest of posterity. The English authors enjoy this advantage, and something more with the contemporary American reading public; but the English critics and public do not reciprocate our hospitality and impartiality in any degree, though there is a reported demand in England for American text books on electric lighting and improved methods of agriculture.

However, the future of the English speaking race is with us on this continent, and in Australia and in Africa, and so certain characteristics of the English mind and English literature will be remolded and touched and broadened by other racial influences. They have already been so modified and changed here since Emerson’s day. So, eventually, instead of Americans looking obsequiously over to Paternoster Row and Fleet street in all intellectual concerns, England will shrink into a small and insignificant provincial community, cut off from the rest of the race and its great centres of thought. Modern civilization will upset all the traditions of the old intellectual centres by making new ones. Thus our posterity will have a revenge on British condescension we can only enjoy in anticipatory imaginings. I wish I could live as long as Methusaleh to be alive then. England and English’ literature will perhaps finally hold the importance of the Provencal literature in France—it will be an archaic survival in the midst of the great throbbing heart of a great modern people. Our descendants will roar over our adulation of English female theological novelists.

The Chip-Munk “Notes” are all long past due; and most depressing to contemplate. It was after trying to make sense of them that Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote:

Here is a true story that I have pinched for the benefit of the Hivites, the Moabites, the Hittites and the Parasites: A nice young man in Scranton called on a nice young lady and spent the evening. When he arrived there was not a cloud in the sky, so he carried no umbrella and wore neither goloshes nor mackintosh. At ten o’clock when he arose to go, it was raining cats and dogs; the gutters o’erflowed and if it had been in Johnstown, it could properly have been called a Johnstown flood.

“My, my, my!” said the nice young lady, “if you go out in all this storm you will catch your death a’ cold!”

“I’m afraid I might!” was the trembling answer.

“Well, I’ll tell you what—stay all night; you can have Tom’s room, since he’s at college. Yes, occupy Tom’s room—excuse me a minute and I’ll just run up and see if it’s in order.”

The young lady flew gracefully up the stairs to see that Tom’s room was in order. In five minutes she came down to announce that Tom’s room was in order, but no Charles was in sight. Like old Clangingharp, he had passed out—no one knew where or how. But in a very few moments he appeared, very dripping and out of breath from running, a bundle in a newspaper under his arm.

“Why, Charles, where have you been?” was his greeting.

“Been home after my night shirt,” was the reply.

One dollar will secure this magazine for one year and twelve Little Journey booklets, which will be sent in a complete package, charges prepaid. Each of the Little Journey books treats of recent visits made by Mr. Elbert Hubbard to the homes and haunts of various eminent persons. They are delightfully unconventional sketches of places forever associated with the lives and works of some of the greatest names in English art and literature. The subjects are:

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. Shakspeare.

This complete set of twelve dainty booklets and The Philistine for one year for One Dollar is the most attractive offer that could be made to a Bookman for the price. The Little Journeys form an introduction to the master minds of our century which will lead many younger readers to make wider excursions into the best literature. For the busy man or woman here is a small library complete in itself. These are the unexacting books that solace us for the harrassments of active life.

Address THE PHILISTINE, East Aurora, N. Y.

THE AMERICAN.

The Leading Exponent of Bimetallism and Protection in the United States.

A national weekly journal, Truthful, Fearless and Aggressive in the discussion of Public Affairs and other events of general interest, in which those who are literary, as well as those who desire to be fully informed on current events of Public Importance will find what they want.

WHARTON BARKER, Editor.

The American is fighting the battle of the masses against those who would fix the gold standard permanently upon the country; holding that the supreme duty of the American People is to conserve, protect and fortify the interests of the United States. $2.00 per annum. Sample copies free.

$3.00 for $2.00.

JUST THINK OF IT! For $2, the regular price of subscription, we will send The American and any one of these well-known periodicals:

To Date.

Munsey’s.

Cosmopolitan.

The Black Cat.

McClure’s.

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Book Buyer.

Godey’s.

Romance.

American Sentinel.

Farm Journal.

American Agriculturist.

Rural New Yorker.

Art in Advertising.

Ladies’ Home Journal.

Sunday School Times.

American Gardening.

National Temperance Advocate.

American Woman’s Magazine.

The name of the subscriber must be one not now on our list. Mention this advertisement.

THE AMERICAN, No. 119 SOUTH FOURTH St., PHILADELPHIA.

Little Journeys

SERIES FOR 1896

Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors.

The papers below specified were, with the exception of that contributed by the editor, Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late G. P. Putnam, in 1853, in a book entitled Homes of American Authors. It is now nearly half a century since this series (which won for itself at the time a very noteworthy prestige) was brought before the public; and the present publishers feel that no apology is needed in presenting to a new generation of American readers papers of such distinctive biographical interest and literary value.

No. 1, Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis.

” 2, Bryant, by Caroline M. Kirkland.

” 3, Prescott, by Geo. S. Hillard.

” 4, Lowell, by Charles F. Briggs.

” 5, Simms, by Wm. Cullen Bryant.

” 6, Walt Whitman, by Elbert Hubbard.

” 7, Hawthorne, by Geo. Wm. Curtis.

” 8, Audubon, by Parke Godwin.

” 9, Irving, by H. T. Tuckerman.

” 10, Longfellow, by Geo. Wm. Curtis.

” 11, Everett, by Geo. S. Hillard.

” 12, Bancroft, by Geo. W. Greene.

The above papers will form the series of Little Journeys for the year 1896.

They will be issued monthly, beginning January, 1896, in the same general style as the series of 1895, at 50 cents a year, and single copies will be sold for 5 cents, postage paid.

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

We make a specialty of Dekel Edge Papers and carry the largest stock and best variety in the country. Fine Hand-made Papers in great variety. Exclusive Western Agents for L. L. Brown Paper Company’s Hand-mades.

GEO. H. TAYLOR & CO., PAPER DEALERS, 207-209 Monroe Street, Chicago, Ill.

A MOUNTAIN WOMAN. By Elia W. Peattie. With cover design by Mr. Bruce Rogers. 16mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25.

The author of “A Mountain Woman” is an editorial writer on the Omaha World-Herald, and is widely known in the Middle West as a writer of a number of tales of Western life that are characterized by much finish and charm.

THE LAMP OF GOLD. By Florence L. Snow, President of the Kansas Academy of Language and Literature. Printed at the De Vinne Press on French hand-made paper. With title-page and cover designs by Mr. Edmund H. Garrett. 16mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25.

PURCELL ODE AND OTHER POEMS. By Robert Bridges. 16mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25 net.

Two hundred copies printed on Van Gelder hand-made paper for sale in America.

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 remain for sale at $3.50. Vellum copies all sold.

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

WAY & WILLIAMS, Monadnock Block. Chicago.

1. RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY EDWARD FITZGERALD.

This is not a mere reprint of “The Bibelot” edition, but has been edited with a view to making FitzGerald’s wonderful version indispensable in its present old world shape.

The following are special features that as a whole can only be found in the old world edition:

I. An entirely new biographical sketch of Edward FitzGerald by Mr. W. Irving Way of Chicago.

II. Parallel texts of the First and Fourth editions, printed the one in Italic and the other in Roman type on opposite pages, the better to distinguish them.

III. Variorum readings giving all textual changes occurring in the Second, Third and Fourth editions.

IV. The omitted quatrains of the rare Second Edition of 1868. To the student of literature these cancelled readings are of the greatest interest and value.

V. A bibliography of all English versions and editions revised to date.

VI. Finally, three poems upon Omar and FitzGerald, not generally known, are here given, just as in The Bibelot Edition, two poems were there reprinted as fitting foreword and finale.

925 copies on Van Gelder’s hand-made paper at $1.00 net.

100 ” ” Japan Vellum (numbered) at 2.50 ”

Address THOMAS B. MOSHER, Portland, Maine.

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 × 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 are 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.

Bound in buckram and antique boards. The seven hundred copies that are printed on Holland hand-made paper are offered at two dollars each, but the twelve copies on Japan Vellum at five dollars are all sold. Every book will be numbered and signed by Mr. Hubbard.

The Roycroft Printing Shop, East Aurora, N. Y.