The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 3, August 1895)

Of course I know that Rousseau’s _Confessions_, Amiel’s _Journal_ and Marie Bashkirtseff’s _Diary_ have all been declared carefully worked out artifices. And admitting all the wonderful things that scheming man can perform, I still maintain that there are a few things that life and nature will continue to work out in the old, old way. I appeal to those who have tried both plans, whether it is not easier to tell the truth than to concoct a lie. And I assiduously maintain that if the case is to be tried by a jury of great men, that the shocking facts will serve the end far better than sugared half-truth.

When Richard Le Gallienne tells us of the birth of his baby and for weeks before how White Soul was sure she should die; and Marie Bashkirtseff makes painstaking note of the size of her hips and the development of her bust; and poor Amiel bewails the fate of eating breakfast facing an empty chair; and Rousseau explains the delicate sensations and smells that swept over him on opening his wardrobe and finding smocks and petticoats hanging in careless negligence amid his man’s clothes; and all those other pathetic, foolish, charming, irrelevant bits of prattle, one is convinced of the author’s honesty. No thorough-going literary man, hot for success, would leave such stuff in; he would as soon think of using a flesh brush on the public street; these are his own private affairs—his good sense would have forbade.

A good lie for its own sake is ever pleasing to honest men, but a patched up record never. And when such small men as Samuel Pepys and James Boswell can write immortal books, the moral for the rest of us is that a little honesty is not a dangerous thing.

And so I swing back to the place of beginning and say that while even a sham confession may be interesting to hoi polloi, yet to secure an endorsement from such minds as that of Emerson, George Eliot and Walt Whitman the confession must be genuine.

ELBERT HUBBARD.

THE SOCIAL SPOTTER.

“Why don’t the young folks marry?” continues, in the intervals of other jeremiad problems, to puzzle the good people who call themselves publicists, having a brevet authority to set everything right in the world. It is assumed that if the young people would only marry up to the full proportion, most of the ills that afflict an over-civilized and over-sensitized society would cure themselves. The young people would have something else to do besides “dabbling in the fount of fictive tears” and inventing new wants. The old ones would suffice, when multiplied in kind after the usual fashion.

It is an old story that young men are afraid of the cost of marriage. The girls are less simple than their mothers and complexity in matters of taste means expense. A clever verse writer has told of the hardships of a pair who wooed on a bicycle built for two and afterwards tried to live on a salary built for one. It is funny in the telling but tragic in the living. It is a trying business to keep up to concert pitch in these days.

[Sidenote: _But is she warranted harmless?_]

The complexity of social expression is not the only dragon in the way. We have adopted from abroad something French. It came via England, but France is its origin. It is the Chaperone. She is usually harmless personally, but she means a great deal. She stands for a state of society where marriage is always a failure. Ask Emile Zola if you don’t believe it. “Modern Marriage” has the specifications. We have good women and manly men in America. The grisette isn’t an institution with us. Neither is the man who supports her until he is rich enough to make a French marriage. We have him and we have her, but neither is universal. The _mariage de convenance_ and the institution which precedes it in France are not general with us. The chaperone is part of the system with them. The chaperone implies the others. She is a standing notice that young man and young woman are not to be trusted together. In some of our cities it is such very good “good form” to send a guardian with young people that a woman of over twenty-five has been known to cancel an engagement to attend a company which she had anxiously wanted to enjoy and for which she had made great preparation, because a married sister could not accompany her. She would not go without a chaperone. It was not “good form.”

O ye gods, Good Form! What was good form, and who promulgated its laws, when the father and mother of us all, better than any of us, walked with the Creator of the universe in the garden in the cool of the day? But “evil came into the world” and changed it. Yes, the evil of “good form,” the embodied self-consciousness which chains all the virtues and makes the decencies compulsory and puts on them the brand of the police blotter.

In the name of all that is good why should we watch the young people? The middle-aged need it more. Youth is chivalrous. Middle age is commonplace. It is not youth that

Eats for his stomach and drinks for his head, And loves for his pleasure—and ’tis time he was dead.

Chaperon the married victims of the French system. Put the spotter on the track of the woman who was taught she couldn’t trust herself when she was young and the man was complacently branded a roue when his heart was fresh and warm.

It is time for a new declaration of independence, and the youth of our land should make it. Let Young America say this: “The woman I cannot honorably woo, whose care at a social gathering is denied me without a policeman and a spy, may find another knight.” Let the maidens of our day, better cultured than their mothers, broader in their training, surer of their social footing, stronger in their poise and presence of mind, bar out the man who comes into their presence under a ban.

How long would the hollow mockery of “good form” endure such a strike? As many minutes as it should take to show its utter falsehood and the cruel slander it implies. Until the young people so assert themselves the imitated bars sinister of the most corrupt social heraldry of Europe will be ours—worn with an affectation of pride in the dishonor they blazon. Till then men will be equalized down, not up; and the talk of “emancipated woman” will be an insult. When it is done there will be more marriages of the kind to be desired—the union of true men and self-respecting women.

WILLIAM MCINTOSH.

THE CHATTER OF A DEATH-DEMON FROM A TREE-TOP.

BLOOD—BLOOD AND TORN GRASS— HAD MARKED THE RISE OF HIS AGONY— THIS LONE HUNTER. THE GREY-GREEN WOODS IMPASSIVE HAD WATCHED THE THRESHING OF HIS LIMBS.

A CANOE WITH FLASHING PADDLE, A GIRL WITH SOFT, SEARCHING EYES, A CALL: “JOHN!”

...

COME, ARISE, HUNTER! LIFT YOUR GREY FACE! CAN YOU NOT HEAR?

THE CHATTER OF A DEATH-DEMON FROM A TREE-TOP.

STEPHEN CRANE.

THE STORY OF THE LITTLE SISTER.

When I first knew her she was a very little girl in a white dress—starched very stiff—and she might have reminded me of Molly in the diverting story of _Sir Charles Danvers_.

I was devoted to her sister and I remember her galumphing into the room at a most inopportune time, and staring for a moment with eyes very wide open. Then she ran away and I heard her outside giggling quietly all by herself.

When the big sister went away for the summer I went out to the house to tell her good-by. The great trunk stood in the hall waiting for Charlie Miller’s man. Seated on top of this was the little sister with two round bottles held close to her eyes. She said she was playing theater, and that the bottles made a lovely opera glass.

I asked her what the play was and she said about a pretty lady who was pursued by lions and dragons and things. Then there was a man—a big, nice man—who came with guns and swords and spears and killed all the dragons and lions and then he married the pretty lady.

This was her imagination.

Then I went away—I forget where—and was gone many years. I came back to be best man at the wedding of my cousin Anthony. I found that the little sister was to be the maid of honor, and at the various functions before the wedding I saw much of her.

After the ceremony we walked down the aisle together, and as she took my arm her hand trembled. When we reached the entrance I turned and looked square into her glorious eyes. They told me many things that I was glad to know.

Now—after a year—I am trying to live up to the ideal man she imagined me to be.

And that’s what makes it hard.

H. P. T.

* * * * *

Many of the newspapers which have noticed THE PHILISTINE have expressed their inability to find East Aurora on the map. All the map makers are hereby authorized to print a large red ring around the name of the home of THE PHILISTINE hereafter, but for the benefit of those who pine for immediate knowledge, I clip the following from _Bradstreet’s_:

EAST AURORA, Erie Co., pop. 2000, 1880. Bank 1, newspapers 2, Am. Ex., W. N. Y. & P. R. R., 17 miles fr. Buffalo. Headquarters Cloverfield combination of cheese factories. Home of Mambrino King.[1] Product: ginger.

[1] _Mambrino King is a horse._

[Illustration: THE BLUFF.

DRAWING BY PLUG HAZEN-PLUG.]

SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SUNDRY BITS OF WISDOM WHICH HAVE BEEN HERETOFORE SECRETED, AND ARE NOW SET FORTH IN PRINT.

If I had seen it announcing a special feature in the _World_ or _Herald_ for a coming Sunday, I would not have been surprised, but to find the following paragraph in the editorial columns of _The Land of Sunshine_ fills me with wonder:

Up to date _The Land of Sunshine_ is the only periodical in the world whose cover is embellished with drawings by the Almighty.

It would be interesting to know what the Recording Angel thinks of Mr. Lummis’s coupling of the High Court of Heaven and Aubrey Beardsley. Now if Mr. Lummis could only get his editorials from the same source——

* * * * *

When Shem Rock, Ham Garland and Japhet Bumball conspired to spring on an unsuspecting world that three-cornered story entitled _The Land of the Straddle Bug_, they bought two whole bushels of hyphens. In one chapter, by actual count, forty-seven compound words are used. They have even hyphenated such words as dod-rot, dodd-mead, slap-jack, goll-darn, do-tell and gee-whiz. Ham’s own pet “yeh” is used in the story sixty-four times, which does not include four plain “you’s” and three “ye’s,” where the Only Original Lynx-eyed Proof-reader nodded.

* * * * *

It is published that the _Post_ contemplated a change in the appearance and make-up of the paper, but gave up the scheme lest it shock the readers of Mr. Godkin’s _Evening Grandmother_. What would shock the readers more would be the appearance of life somewhere about the sheet. I would respectfully call the attention of the editors of the _Post_ to the fate which befell the Assyrians. It is written in Isaiah XXXVII—36: Then the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five thousand; and when they arose in the morning: behold, they were all dead corpses.

* * * * *

THE PHILISTINE’S plea is for the widest liberty to individual genius. Perhaps no living man has presented this plea so strongly in his life and work as William Morris. The poem herein printed is a taste of this strong man’s quality. It is taken from that dainty bundle of beautiful things entitled, _Love Lyrics_.

* * * * *

In that very charming article by Mr. Zangwill in the last _Chap Book_, mention is made of the utter impossibility of stating a truth so that the majority will remember or recognize it when they see it again—so shallow is human wit. In THE PHILISTINE for July I made bold to insert an extract from the Bible. No credit was given, however, and the matter was re-paragraphed. And now, behold, a Chicago paper arises and calls the quotation rot; several other publications refute the scriptural statements and a weekly that is very wise in its day and generation refers to my irreverence in writing in Bible style.

* * * * *

In the _Popular Science Monthly_ for July a Dr. Oppenheimer announces the interesting discovery why children lie. It has been supposed that they lie, as a general thing, because they want something, but it appears that it is because they have something, in the French sense. It isn’t inherent viciousness but disease. The doctor says:

The children usually are suffering from disorders of mind or body, or both, which radically interfere with the transmission of conceptions and perceptions from the internal to the external processes of expression, so that they really are unable to be more exact than they seem.

This seems to explain several things about our good friends Landon and Townsend—G. A.

* * * * *

The London _Athenæum_ says “Stephen Crane is the coming Boozy Prophet of America; his lines send the cold chills streaking up one’s spine, and we are in error if his genius does not yet sweep all other literary fads from the board.”

All of which strikes me as a boozier bit of cymbalism than any of Mr. Crane’s verses.

* * * * *

On the authority of the New York _Sun_, afternoon teas are growing more and more realistic. That arbiter of etiquette says:

The formality of bidding adieu to the hostess at an afternoon tea is now dispensed with; the omission is considered with favor and in good taste. No after calls are made in acknowledgement of a tea.

The little trifle of ceremony that stood for courtesy is about all cast aside. The program now is—Greet, Eat and Git.

* * * * *

I observe that Mr. Andrew Lang is to write some verses to be read at a dinner of the Omar Club in London “on some future occasion.” I shall watch for these with much interest, remembering, meanwhile, these verses recently read before that remarkable organization:

We envy not the saint what bliss he hath: Still let him cheer his puritanic path With what of joy his joyless rules permit: The beer of ginger and the bun of Bath.

We plunder not the Pharasaic fold Whose drinks are new, whose jests and maidens old; Content to cherish what the Dervish hates, The cup of ruby and the curls of gold.

It is noted that Mr. W. Irving Way of Chicago was present at the last Omar club dinner. He should give us some notable reminiscences of the feast.

Speaking of Way, I hear that he has gone into the publishing business in Chicago. As a critic of the mechanical construction of books he is supreme, but I wonder will his publishing be that of literature or wool from the wild west.

* * * * *

“You have us down one dollar for dog tax. I’d have you know we keep no dog,” said the man to the tax gatherer.

“I understand,” answered the publican, “but you subscribe to the Albany _Argus_!”

* * * * *

Buffalo, N. Y., has a _Young Ladies’ Magazine_. It has a beautiful picture of a skirt dance on the cover of its prospectus, which is ever so much more interesting than Mr. Bok’s Bermuda lily gatherer seven feet tall.

* * * * *

Now that Robert Louis Stevenson’s will has been published in full text as a feature story, perhaps Mr. So So McClure may desist. The will is almost as thrilling as a market report. Its publication explains in part, however, how the cheap magazine movement is founded. Next we shall see the weather and a Congressional debate among the contents of the cheap-books.

* * * * *

Prizes are offered in Judge Tourgee’s _Basin_ to preachers, women and “colored writers,” for short stories. The Judge is bound to keep solid with the three sexes as he understands them.

* * * * *

It is matter of record in _McClure’s_ that Edmund Goose’s poem on Samoa, which it prints, “reached Robert Louis Stevenson three days before his death.” There is a horrible suggestion in the little nonpareil footnote that the poem may have hastened that sad event. It’s bad enough.

A LYRIC OF JOY.

Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune I saw the white daisies go down to the sea.

—Bliss Carman, in July _Century_.

* * * * *

Over the ballast, the ropes and the chairs, I see the fat picnicers clamber galore, And struggle for seats by the rail near the stairs, To fry in the sun when they steam from the shore. The barker has rallied them out of the town To sands stretching white in the pitiless glare; And all of their talk as the calm night comes down Is the crush going back and the bargain day fare.

M’LISS COWBOY.

* * * * *

Ham Garland has gone up the coulee to his farm near La Crosse and is writing another novel. He is daily in receipt of letters and telegrams from people in all parts of the country asking him to pull the coulee up after him.

* * * * *

In a recent number of the _Chip-Munk_ it is said the intelligent compositor set it Charles G——d— Roberts; and the Only Original Lynx-Eyed being on a journey the whole edition was printed. It was one of those very aggravating mistakes that will occasionally occur even in printerys which print things on the finest paper.

* * * * *

I greet with exceeding joy the name of a new writer of stories which appeal to me as being above the plane of universal grayness which we have viewed for many months, and for this reason I am glad to see _A Very Remarkable Girl_ in the quarterly issued by _Town Topics_. The author of this story is Mr. L. H. Bickford of Denver, and the editor of _Town Topics_ says that he has heretofore been unacquainted with Mr. Bickford’s work. For many years I have watched the development of this young author, and if I am not much mistaken he will yet be heard from in no uncertain way. I do not believe that the public has any business with the private life of writers, but it may be said that Mr. Bickford is twenty-six, and was born in Leadville, Colorado. For a half hour’s entertainment, reading aloud in a hammock, I know of nothing better than _A Very Remarkable Girl_. It is suggestive of the signs of the times.

* * * * *

Good form has determined that special attentions at a time of bereavement are to be recognized by sending engraved cards. Some people used to send letters of thanks for sympathy, but of course cards are more impressive. A coupon scheme has been suggested, the thanks to be attached to a ticket to the funeral.

* * * * *

And furthermore be it known that the marginal notes opposite articles in THE PHILISTINE are never supplied by the authors thereof.

* * * * *

A man in Paris sends me the following delicious bit clipped from the Paris edition of the New York _Herald_ of April 1:

NEW YORK, March 31.—The _Herald’s_ leading editorial to-day says that many surprises await us in heaven.

I regret not seeing this editorial of March 31. I imagine, however, that it related to Reginald de Koven and his surprise—when he gets there—at finding he cannot write all the choir music.