PHILISTINISM IN GENERAL.

I doff my hat to The Philistine and hail it “Brother well met.”

In the name of all who have hated shams, in the name of all brave knights whose lances have shivered against the dead walls of human stupidity, ignorance, malice and convention; in the name of every stifled and unuttered song that should have mounted like a meadow lark’s to heaven; in the name of every pilloried hope and dead ambition killed in the long battle with the Mediocrities and the Banalities greet thee, Knight Errant from Philistia, and bid thee God speed.

And having,“hailed,” and “bade,” and “greeted,” let me say that though the world is wide and shams are many, and the race, to the swift usually, and the fight to the strong almost always, and though the God of battle, is according to Napoleon, whom it is fashionable to quote “on the side of the big battalions,” yet strong blows for truth are cumulative and The Philistine’s bright blade must be dyed often with the blood of Error ere it be sheathed and every lie sooner or later driven to its sure end of bankruptcy.

I will not hail you Reformer, for that old and honorable name like that older and still more honorable one of “gentleman” has fallen recently into disrepute and at last reports was still falling; besides reformers are often failures, and too often after a brief career are found taking tea with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, having assumed their discarded role originally rather for “what there was in it,” than from exalted or high-minded motives or to improve the condition of their respective healths.

A young man called once on the great Voltaire, and besought his encouragement in projects he had conceived for a reorganized and better scheme of human society, The philosopher leaned his head upon his hand and thought a minute, then rising, led the way to an inner room, where, against the velvet-hung wall, was an ivory figure of the Redeemer on the cross; he pointed to it with warning forefinger. “Young man,” he said, “behold the fate of a reformer.”

When I see the little things many men strive and cavil over and the great ones they disregard or ignore I know that the kingdom of Liliput was not a figment of the imagination of the genial Swift but a lesson from real life. And when I consider how they swarm like water-bugs and quarrel over the pronunciation of words and bicker with their neighbor to make him or her use the sharp “a” in “squalor” so as to make it “squaylor,” I think sensible people might be excused for weeping or even swearing.

Little people these, say I, and I would wager a dollar to nothing that William Dean Howells is their prophet and that they all venerate his works.

The mere fact that Howells is, is a proof that there are those who want Howells besides himself, and while not entirely subscribing to the saying that “whatever is is best,” it must be recognized that it has its raison d’être, and we all know Howells has his readers or he would not have his publishers.

One can almost tell what a man’s opinions will be by knowing what he reads or has read, just as I once heard it said of a tuft-hunting editor that it could be predicated with absolute certainty what position he would take on a public question by learning with whom he walked down town in the morning or with what wealthy parvenu he passed the previous evening. This is but a modern application of the old saw, “a man is known by the company he keeps,” and mentally he may be known by the books he reads or the magazines he skims through. I shudder for Richard Watson Gilder, John Brisben Walker, E. Bok, and others of the Mutual Admiration Society style of periodical makers if they are to be believed to keep the company or read the lucubrations of the contributors to the dreary masses of illustrated inanities they edit, publications which have claims to interest, based alone upon the merit of their illustrations and the perfection of their typographical beauty.

But to recur to the line of romance and digress from the magazines which need so much attention, and from “Bartley” and the other counter jumping namby-pamby, goody-goodies of the Howells stripe, including his own weary history of himself, and the “Books Which Most Influence Him,” the baleful effects of which are legitimately and plainly perceptible in his works. There are shams in literature more dreadful than Mr. Howells, who is a turgid fact and no sham. For instance;

I know of one evanescently popular young creature who chronically contributes to the magazines, whose mother it is said, writes his tales which, she being a clever woman and he an uncommonly stupid man, appears credible to say the least; and there is another “man” I am told of whose sister is said to write his poems and modestly efface herself, and as the stories are good and the poems fairly readable, it should be the part of The Philistine to disclose to the world the real authors and chastise these and other shams, for shams are the hardest hurdles in the steeplechase which Truth has to make in this world, since they substitute the false for the real and crown the fool with the laurels of the genius.

How much more might be said of the tasks you have to accomplish, brave Philistine with your brawny arm and your good naked sword! So much that the very thought of it fatigues one and that, hailing you as the latest and best contestant in the tourney of Knighthood and yet, considering you as a publication in an embryonic stage, I am compelled to quote these lovely lines of Longfellow:

Mark S. Hubbell.