IN SLIPPERY PLACES.

“Publish it not in the streets of Askelon lest the daughters of The Philistines rejoice.”

The publishers of the Chap Book of July 15th have kept their promise to furnish original matter in one way perhaps not contemplated when they made mention of that booklet in their catalogue.

We can rest assured that Tacitus never wrote “emperasset” in the sentence quoted on page 174; we shall be slow to believe that the author of The Children of the Ghetto, in confusion of mind was referring empire and empirical to a common origin, mixing up the sons of Aeneas and Danaos after the fashion of Little Buttercup.

With perhaps a trifle less confidence we may acquit him of dragging into notice as a prominent name in English letters the hitherto obscure or wholly mythical “Carlysle,” who figures on page 177. But in excusing the writer from the fatherhood of these literary foundlings we are compelled to look to the publishers or at least to their proof-reader as the responsible man, a sense of decency no less than the requirements of this metaphor, repudiates the suggestion that he might after all turn out to be a woman, and whether the reproach belong at the door of the principals or of the workman is quite immaterial to us, the house must stand the breakage of glassware, not the bartender.

A matter of two typographical errors within the space of a single short article may seem but trifling subject for comment in a world where the surest footed at times slip, but one or two considerations make even such venial sins fit objects for animadversion. The publishers of the little fortnightly, in the manner of their issues if not in so many words, set themselves up, in a fashion, as guides in the matter of literary elegance, it behooves them therefore to take heed that the unwary be not led astray. “Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat,” nor should the venerable name of Caxton be made a laughing-stock in the mouths of scoffers.

W.

San Francisco, August, 1895.

To Mark Twain: I am awfully sorry you have lost all your money. I am in the same boat, but let’s not talk about it all the time.