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When THE PHILISTINE said some time ago that hospitality had become an exchange he meant an exchange of food. There is no plainer way to state the fact—short of nausea. Of course hospitality does not start at eating. That is where it ends. The starting point is the purest courtesy—the _caritas_ that “seeketh not her own,” “is not puffed up” and “abideth” as the head of the trinity of eternal virtues. But on the most generous of virtues grows the most selfish of vices, and ostentation is the death-dealing parasite that destroys primitive hospitality.
Mrs. Moor Gage lives in the suburbs. It is the proper place to live—if you can. She has neighbors and likes them. She calls, swaps cards with the ladies, imbibes a little hot water, and then gets along where her social position requires somebody should be fed. She is just as good as Mrs. Taxsale on the other avenue, so hospitality alone won’t fill the bill. A caterer must mince this dinner. Mr. Moor Gage must perspire later on, but now is feeding time. At much expense the food is arranged for. At more expense virgin dresses must be gotten together, if all hands stitch and try on till the hour the dinner comes. When they are gone, feeders and fed draw one breath of content. “It’s all over.”
Or, is it a reception. The hospitality is all in the front of the house. That’s where the receiving party are. But the procession doesn’t linger there. It moves rearward. The animals are to be fed. If one doubts the sincerity of this movement let him recall the comments of those who “couldn’t get to the dining room” at the last distribution of eatables.
Of course when Mrs. Taxsale opens her larder to her friends she will have a little better “stuff”—they really do call it by that name in competent society—and so the auction goes on. Sometimes card parties and other social efforts not primarily connected with digestion get mixed up with catering. The result is usually disastrous. Bidding gets too high for some of the members. The bargain day pace is too fast. There ends the card club.
There are persons, here and there, who think there is something finer than feeding in courtesy. They are Philistines. They object to materialism, even when it swamps only the things of this world. It is also reported, on somewhat vague evidence, that refined literary people are not so given to feeding as the common folks of Mr. Du Maurier’s world. It is to bear a suggestion to these that this is written. Literary persons being functionally the makers of custom have a great glory within easy reach. Let them crystallize their scattered atoms of protest in an Anti Free Lunch League. It may take some self denial, but there is the compensating pleasure of mutual admiration when they gather at a call like this:
+--------------------------------------------+ | _Miss Basbleu will be pleased to welcome | | you at her residence | | Tuesday evening | | to meet Mr. Patemback. | | Nordau at 11._ | +--------------------------------------------+
Contemplation of the infinite fall will take the place of supper in a most edifying way. It is to be presumed that literary people have had something to eat at home.
The segregation of society thus begun will leave the materialists who compose its majority to follow out their instincts, and it will be reasonable to look for a vast improvement in eating entertainments in consequence. Mrs. Moor Gage and Mrs. Taxsale will then be freer to advertise their attractions—as thus:
+--------------------------------------------+ | _Your company is requested on | | Wednesday evening | | at the residence of Mrs. Moor Gage, | | Five Per Cent Avenue, | | Syndicate Park. | | | | H. L. at 11._ | +--------------------------------------------+
“H. L.” means hot lunch, which may be varied indefinitely. It is plainly a great improvement on “Dancing at 9.” You get dancing everywhere. Specifications may be introduced. For those who don’t like bread pencils and ice cream shingles something more solid may be put on the bill of fare, which will in time serve as the invitation also.
The suggestion is made in the interest of sincerer living. If we are to “feed the brute,” why not say so?
W. M.
THE NEW HAHNEMANN.
The taste for literature in homeopathic doses seems to be growing. If this thing keeps on, the time may come when knowledge will be put up like pills or wafers or tablets. And a great convenience it would be to the busy sons of American toil. If one wished to prepare an article on some historical subject, for instance, he could buy a box of Motley’s American Pills or Gibbon’s Roman Tablets, and take one after another until the requisite amount of historical information were absorbed. It would also be pleasant, if a gentle titillation of the literary senses were desired, to buy a few Richard Harding Davis wafers and lie down to delightful dreams. Or in case one’s conscience became unusually obstreperous, he could take Biblical tabules till his system was soaked with sanctity. If one’s pessimism were temporarily upmost, he could find plenty of Nordau’s pillules to help him enjoy his misery while the fit lasted. It’s a great scheme. Methinks the dim distant future holds a publisher’s announcement similar to this:
_JUST ISSUED_:
“SOME IMPRESSIONS AND A FIT.”
By Mark Nye Bunner. In twelve pills and two boxes. In plain pasteboard boxes, $1.00 per box. In gilt edge boxes, uncut, $2.00 per box. By all means the strongest work of this popular condenser. It is not too much to say that there is more giggle in each pill than can be found in any similar work. And the fit at the end—well, it is wholly indescribable. Long Greens & Co., Literary Dispensatory, Chicago and London. Sent prepaid by telepath, on receipt of price.
A FEW CRITICISMS.
_Washington Roast_: “Not a dull pill in the box.”
_New York Rostrum_: “Very clever. After taking one pill, the reader cannot put down the box until he has taken all its contents.”
_Chicago Between-Seas_: “Cannot contain our disgust. Tried to digest the contents of these boxes, but threw up the job after taking one pill.”
_New Orleans Pickatune_: “The pills lead gently and pleasantly up to the final mystery when the Fit clears everything up in a very sensational manner. More such pills would have a highly beneficial effect upon modern literature.”
HERBERT L. BAKER.
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DEVIL.
It is only during inclement weather that writers who cannot command the oracular and prophetic freedom, which is the proud possession of the morning and evening journals, can hope to gain even the smallest audience; for the masses are more hungry for facts which lie, than for the truth, or even those fine fantasies that afford us some surcease of wide-open eyed sorrow. If this paper is ever read at all, it should be read in gloomy weather. Indeed, it is intended to be read on a gray day, as it was written on a wild night. Only very robust imaginations feel the fascination or the eternal questions of life and death in the wide ample world of broad, white sunlight; for their animal spirits get the better of their reason. In rainy weather we writers flatten our noses against the panes of strange windows, lost to all sense of propriety, in the wild hope that some one within is reading one of our amusing works. In the case of the present writer, however, it is all proper to say that he has suffered disillusionment so often that he has espoused a chill dignity, and sits at home and reads his own works in a spirit of grim appreciation. Indeed, accepting the appalling vacuity of the million noisy heads as an incurable fact—a fact that should chasten the vanity of those whose hopes and ambitions and thought are borne and blown hither and thither, like puff-balls upon the acclaiming wind of ten thousand pairs of lungs—it may be said with perfect propriety that it is nothing less than impertinence for any writer, who aims to rise above the biting lechery of the common imaginations, to expect to find readers under clear skies. Even the midsummer sun, which is surely innocent of any such evil intention, seems to only ripen distracting noises in the minds of the vast majority sunk in the turgid mean of commonplace; for how many good souls can be bothered with anything more abstract than the very latest soggy novel, just hot and dirty from the press, in sunshiny weather? Even moonshine is wasted upon all but those feather-brains on the lookout for ghosts.
And it may be noted, although it is not strictly relevant, that, with the multiplication of periodicals of one sort and another, even stormy weather is beginning to fail the few writers in our day who are audacious enough to still cling to the old ambitions of letters, in spite of worldly prudence and all the warnings of the literary tip-staffs who infallibly know “the market”—for in the periodical world it is raining hot-baked sensations and novelties every hour in the twenty-four—the depressing vulgar commonplaces that have made up the round of human existence from the dawn of history and always will. But we must make up our minds to accept this as one of the small ironies of life: thought is smothered in an immense spawn of crocodile words. The newspapers we have always with us; and they succeed in making such an unceasing and damnable din that only an insignificant minority of exceptionally cool heads can hear themselves think.
It is worthy of remark that the printing press has contributed in no small degree toward driving the Devil out of orthodox theology. This is a fact, although Atheists, Rationalists and Materialists claim the credit of it. Indeed, His Eminence confessed to me, over a bottle of Lachryma Christi at the Theological Club, that he was completely discouraged, and he announced that he was revolving in his mind the expediency of abandoning the long and honorable career, which he has enjoyed in the polity of human life. He said that he had found his old-fashioned and painstaking tortuous methods of depraving men’s minds suddenly rendered absolutely puerile, ridiculous and contemptible by comparison with the unwearied and stupendous operations of the steam-presses of journalism. The meeting depressed me greatly; for whatever opinions other folk may profess to hold of the Devil, the more sober imaginations, the humorous writers, will always be glad to testify to the ungrudged and inestimable services he has continually rendered them in their arduous and ill-paid calling. I have since learned definitely that the Devil was in good earnest, and has retired into a voluntary exile, whence endless deputations of learned, suppliant, apologetic and furious theologians have endeavored to coax him, but entirely in vain. He has abdicated, he replies steadfastly, forever; and the desperate situation of the theologians, whose calling and character is seriously imperiled by his obstinacy, leaves him perfectly unmoved. He declares he has been long abandoned by those who flourished upon the pleasantries which he devised to make life amusing, and being under no sort of moral obligation to ingrates who have publicly held his name and character in abhorrence, he cheerfully abandons them to their wretched fate. He himself is humbled; let them taste of his bitterness, as they have shared in his prosperity, without any honest acknowledgment of his benefaction. He is still great enough to preserve his dignity; let them preserve their own as best they can. And this ought not to be a difficult business; for there are still a multitude of fools in the world, and any new noisy dogma is not more than twenty-four hours old before a million credulous heads believe it embodies the immanent truth of the universe. Such subtle wits as the theologians, and those whom they serve, can assuredly find a way out of the mire of misfortune, as the multitude is always hospitable to miracle workers, though deaf and blind to facts and truth.
The Devil himself, however, has discovered the ironies of the ambition that can only prosper upon the folly of fools. He recognizes the omnipotence of his rivals, the omniscient journalists, in this vineyard, and is content to let them discover in due time that wisdom does not consist in the counting of noses, and that mere bawdy optimism brings its own dissatisfaction. And, moreover, in retiring, the Devil is sustained by the firm conviction that his old laborious schemes for the befuddlement and bewilderment and corruption of mankind will not only be ably continued, but improved and surpassed in subtlety and thoroughness by these audacious and unscrupulous successors. So his decision is irrevocable; he has abdicated forever. Emulation would but emphasize the futile and ludicrous pretensions of his old ingrate protegees, the theologians; and the Devil is not ungenerous, even in misfortune, even to those base hypocrites who have enjoyed his protection and reviled him. Then, retirement with dignity is better than embittered ambition and a fall without dignity. As he points out—and those who have known him in better days should assuredly sustain him in his noble and philosophic humility, so rare among the great of fallen fortunes—it is worse than useless for him to labor painfully to cultivate a deep and stirring delight in original sin in one promising little urchin, spending weary days and anxious and tender solicitude on the hard benches of the public schools, when the great and omniscient newspaper press can at any given moment set a whole nation, or even the whole civilized world, crawling upon all fours, nosing and wallowing in filth. Only a few aboriginal tribes escape, and the Devil does not deem these worthy of cultivation, since civilization is encroaching upon them and their days are already numbered.
The Devil was always notoriously an abandoned pessimist, and his dismal view of the outcome of the great modern passion for literacy is probably due to disappointed ambition and malevolence; for, granting all the suffocating triviality and vulgarity of the Sabbatical literature dished up in the seventh day’s newspapers, it must always in strict justice be remembered that long and beautiful abstracts of sermons of soporific platitude, and charmingly convincing illogic, appear regularly in the Monday morning issues. And so optimists may feel that the morals of civilization are safe.
But, on the other hand, evil tongues cannot be silenced. If the accumulation of facts were not such a patently depraved, atrabilious and libellous business, there would be fewer cynics, and cheerful, good natured optimism would expire for want of that venomous opposition which contracts hopeless stupidity into stony and barren virtue. Epigrams would become dissipated in the most undivided passion for truth, in order to diffuse it again into commonness among eager and hungry ears; but the fact is, these ears are now enamored of such noises as cost them no sort of intellectual effort.
It may as well be stated here that the Devil has somehow lost a great deal of his popularity in the congregations of the elect, through the continual assaults of Philistines and the unfortunate discovery of natural facts, that have taken catastrophe out of the Devil’s hands and transferred it to the domain of inflexible and insensible law. But the moral cowardice revealed in this abandonment of the Devil is certainly pathetic. Yet we must remember that it is ever so—for the people who turn on us first are the ones we have most benefited. And this seems to be one of Nature’s devices for diverting our energies into new channels of well doing.
WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE.
SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SUNDRY BITS OF WISDOM WHICH HAVE BEEN HERETOFORE SECRETED, AND ARE NOW SET FORTH IN PRINT.
_Bot._ Let me play the lion, too. I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the duke say, “Let him roar again. Let him roar again.”
_Quin._ An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.
_All._ That would hang us, every mother’s son.
_Bot._ I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us; but I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.
* * * * *
To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven.
There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away; a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.
I have seen the tribulation that God has given to the sons of men; yet He has made everything beautiful in its time: and I know that there is no good but for a man to rejoice and to do the good that he can in life: and I would have every man eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of his labor, for this is the gift of God.
* * * * *
Our neighboring city of Buffalo is to be congratulated. The International League of Press Clubs will convene there next summer. A plumber who was accidentally blackballed by the Buffalo club writes me that they will come “some in rags and some in jags.”
* * * * *
If the women who wheel did but know it they would undoubtedly be influenced by the fact, patent to all men, that all the compromise garments for bicycle wear are hideous. There is no beauty in and of any of them. The more cut off they are the worse. There is only one element of grace about drapery, and that is in its flowing lines. The cut-off Russian blouses are no lovelier than a high hat or a hydrant cover. By and by, when Philistine good sense shall have won dominion over the ladies who bike, it will be discovered by them that there is no essential impurity in dress. The woman who does masculine things should wear masculine covering. Why not? Is it to be assumed that the pedal branches of the human form divine are by any natural law under ban? Or is it custom that makes the difference? If so, it will be deemed indecent one of these days to drape the arms, now hidden in balloons, in the tight sleeves of our elder sisters.
It may be guessed at a venture, there being no authority except that nebulous tyranny that controls all matters of feminine custom, that the difficulty would be met in some measure if the fair wheelers did not have to get off the machine in public view. Even a man is apt to be embarrassed when he walks the pavement with a clamp around his nether drapery, both looking and feeling as if he had been through burdocks and come away loaded. It is of easy recollection how one feels on the board walk with clinging garments that were all right in the water a moment ago. The ladies might be willing to wear knickerbockers—and they ought to be told that in nothing else would they look so well—if by some contrivance a fall of drapery sheltered the too-freely evidenced pedestals of beauty when off the wheel. What Felix will invent such a curtain and a way of keeping it out of the way when not wanted? Here is an opening for genius—and a beneficent one, for by such devices is civilization advanced.