The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. I, No. 6, November 1895)

“Then, too,” resumed the visitor in a meek tone, “I hear that you patronize theaters, and have even been to the opera; that you permit your family to spend large sums on trivial entertainments and personal adornment; that the amount you wasted on dinners last winter would have repaired the alms-house; that you never visit the hospitals and jails; that if you keep on in this selfish and wasteful course you are likely to become a nuisance to the neighborhood and a burden on the public; that”——

The rich man found his voice in a roar: “You audacious scoundrel! Get out of this, or I’ll kill you. How dare you come here and lecture me in my own house?” And overcome by wrath he fell into an arm chair and hissed.

“It’s strange that it doesn’t work both ways,” continued the meek one, reflectively, “Your wife and daughter called on me yesterday in the interests of the East Side Charitable Interference Society, of which you are president. They made me see the error of my course, and I was actuated only by a hope of accomplishing your moral improvement by coming here. For is not wine worse than beer? Are not perfectos more injurious to the health than pipes? Is not poker more expensive than pinocle? Is not your club more luxurious than the Peter H. Milligan Association, of which I used to be floor manager? Isn’t it as bad for you to go to theaters and stay away from prayers as it is for me? Oh, brother, let me plead with you to have more faith—to exercise more the gifts of the spirit. Let me”——

At this point the millionaire struggled out of an impending fit of apoplexy and threw a chair at the meek man, who escaped. And the East Side Charitable Interference Society never called on him again. It gave him up as a hopeless case.

CHARLES M. SKINNER.

A QUESTION OF FORM.

“LET ME NOT MUCH COMPLAIN.”

Let me not much complain of life, in age; Life is not faulty, life is well enough, For those who love their daily round of doing, And take things rounded, never in the rough, Turning from day to day the same old page, And their old knowledge ever more renewing. I have known many such; through life they went With moderate use of moderate heritage, Giving and spending, saving as they spent, These are wise men, though never counted sage; They looked for little, easy men to please; But I, more deeply drunk of life’s full cup, Feel, as my lips come nearer to the lees, I dived for pearls, and brought but pebbles up.

—Thomas William Parsons, in the _Century_.

By title the above lines commend themselves as “well enough” wisdom, yet will I “much complain” of them.

Here are fourteen lines.

At glance the eye anticipates a sonnet, following one of the fixed orders of sonnet rhymes. The end of the third line yielding no recurrent sound, the ear is disappointed and infers blank verse, while expectation is frustrated by the fourth line rhyming with the second.

Did we read aright? Perhaps the first and third lines do conform to the Shakspearean order now suggested! Go back. “Age,”—“doing,” no! and we reach “page” at the end of line fifth with the suspicion that we have stumbled on a nondescript.

Well, give it another chance, and begin again!

This time we ask: what is it in the third and fourth lines that gives the ear a sensation as if something was struck with a hammer?

Yes, “round” and its iterate “rounded.”

Such sforzando does not occur in a good sonnet unless there is an idea to be emphasized, to which the mind is pointed by the ear.

But we conclude that this is not a sonnet, and apatheticly scan didactic platitudes through eleven lines till sobriety is startled by the all too frank confession of the twelfth.

We read it twice, to see if it is not a lapse of grammar, or a squeeze of “have drank” to meet the exigencies of rhythm, and come up from the dive of the last line thirsty to know just what image Mr. Parsons had in his mind.

Was his conception analogous to that of the reporter’s who described the pretty actress as “standing on the brink of the rushing torrent of Niagara and drinking it all in with shining eyes”?

Was “life’s full cup” so immense that Mr. Parsons dove therein for pearls? A pretty large cup to drink to the lees, that? Is there, as a rule, any reasonable expectation of discovering pearls or pebbles, or, for that matter, lees, in a wine cup? Was the condition so awkwardly characterized in the twelfth line—but no! there is simply an unconsidered mixing of metaphors in this short poem, that starts with the book of life, and in the last three lines introduces the cup of life, and the sea of life. The last line, by the way, is mixed upon itself. Pearls and pebbles are not found mingled, and at the bottom of the sea, notwithstanding Robert Browning’s Divers in _Pan and Luna_.

Who dive for pearls do not so on pebbly bottoms. No doubt, by unluck, they often bring up valueless shells.

The orders of rhythms and rhymes in a sonnet are supposed to be known to all poetasters—or one can consult the Century Dictionary.

These forms should be kept in sacred reserve. Therein the poet may mold some holy sentiment or feeling—not with wandering thought: rising through the personal to the universal, or perhaps veiling the universal in the personal. If one reproduces such trite didactic thought, why not bestow enough labor to shape a pure form?

By so doing the platitudes even might be polished and made to shine like new, with new metaphor.

I have not been able to resist the temptation of trying a prentice hand on the metaphors in Mr. Parsons’s lines. Perhaps with more spleen against the “well enough,” more enthusiasm for the intoxication not of the wine, and more sympathy for the luckless diver.

FAILURE.

Too long I’ve lingered inland fruitlessly, Strolling with moonlit loves through narrow vales, Where to rapt hearts rave love-tranced nightingales! I so said, thrilling to the far off sea, Whose deep voiced tides and storms were calling me: Leave dalliance, and breast my wholesome gales, The world is known not in thy timid dales; My winds ’twixt nations waft my lovers free. But when I came unto the thundrous shore, Long enervating habit balked intent; My ventured wealth returned less than before, I dove for pearls, found only empty shells: Yet learned I then what love and peace have meant, Though not why famed ambitions strike their knells.

WILLIAM JAMES BAKER.

HAPPINESS.

The happiest thing The freest thing That man may hope to see Is a sun-bonnet-mite Of a country child In the top Of an apple tree.

MARY DAWSON.

A PLEA FOR INEBRIETY.

Is that ancient and honorable institution, the New York Chamber of Commerce, becoming frisky and convivial in its old age? Will it in its ripe judgment recommend that the proper course for one to pursue is to tread the perfumed paths of Bacchus? Does the Chamber, as a body, indorse the able and thoughtful article in the October _Forum_, by Mr. Louis Windmuller, one of its honored members, in which that gentleman makes a strong plea for inebriety and drunkenness? Mr. Windmuller is certain that the policy of Mr. Roosevelt toward the liquor interests in New York will sap the lifeblood of our institutions, and he sends up a cry of alarm. It may be gathered from Mr. Windmuller’s well considered paper that there can be no true happiness in this life without strong drink, and plenty of it. Contentment and peace of mind will slink under the bed unless there be a flagon on the table. Domestic felicity will be a hollow mockery, a failure and a fraud if there be not a keg in the cellar and a case of Culmbacher on the ice.

Our gifted author does not say it in so many words, but it is clearly his view that man’s faculties are at their best only when the gentle glow of intoxication steals over the brain and articulation thickens and halts by the way. He goes even further. He firmly believes that ours is a land to hastening ills a prey, unless we speedily go to Bavaria for our excise laws and fling Roosevelt over the Battery wall.

Only a lack of space prevented Mr. Windmuller from giving the Sunday schools a side wipe, and he comes very near it as it is. Evidently he looks upon them as a blot or something equally unpleasant. They have no bars, and, moreover, their teaching is all the other way. This makes our author a prey to melancholy and his brow is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

But what the Philistines are anxious to know is, does the ancient and honorable New York Chamber of Commerce believe that man reaches his best estate only when he has a jag on?

R. W. CRISWELL.

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

I suppose no one was much surprised that John Oliver Hobbes wanted a legal release from the man who called himself her husband, but when the mother of Fauntleroy and the author of the _Quick or the Dead_ followed in the category of misfits I doubt not Mona Caird lifted up her voice in the wilderness and there was joy in the camp of the Claflin-Woodhulls. But the marrying and giving in marriage go right along, for this isn’t heaven; and the multitude that don’t complain put the literary folks who do to a kind of proof not easy to face. Since nature made men and women to marry, the wire-drawn literary folks who can’t stay married have the floor for an explanation. There are bitter critics who cry “I told you so,” and maybe they did—when it is announced that Amelie Rives can no longer endure her Chanler. Perhaps he is only common tallow after all—half a dozen to the pound. The maids and manlings who read _According to St. John_ and believed Miss Rives’s emphasized statement that “Love is the fulfilling of the law” must wonder if she meant the law she has just invoked to give her liberty. It is a choice of the quick or the dead now—the dead love or the quick release—and there is something more than tragic in the appeal through a prosaic court to “deliver me from the body of this death.” No, there is no discredit to any one in the pleadings of the impulsive young Southerner for her liberty. Nobody has broken any law. They can’t live together—that’s all, and all the amatory fury of the novel that gave her fame is a dead waste. It was honest when it was written, no doubt, but the pitch was too high. The happy (more or less) millions who don’t run to the public with a transcript of their strongest emotions or to a court for release from their vows must have learned a secret unknown to the Hobbeses and the Riveses and the Bashkirtseffs. They have found the happy middle line between the neurotic extreme that holds the master emotion to be a matter of physiology or of pathology—the Zolas and the Helgardeners respectively.

* * * * *

I read with unfeigned regret that the repairs which lately have been going forward in the New York postoffice will have to be abandoned until more funds accumulate in the United States Treasury. This is bad. It will leave the new elevator suspended between Heaven and earth in an unfinished condition for the Lord only knows how long. Patrons of the Federal building on Manhattan Island will therefore be obliged to patronize the two antedeluvian other on the Park Row side. And this is always attended with the keenest disappointments. For example: You go to the Broadway “lift” and find it placarded, “Not running; try the other.” You journey around to Park Row, only to be confronted with this, “Out of order; try Broadway.” Then you mount the stairs, which you ought to have done in the first place, for the reason that the man who takes passage in one of the New York postoffice elevators can have no possible idea when he will see his family again. It is said that the regular patrons of these elevators take their luncheons with them; but this imputes to them a sprightliness of motion which they do not possess. The gentleman who made the ascent to the moon by way of the horns of the Darby ram went up in January and didn’t come down till June. Persons have been known to enter these national “lifts” on the up trip in December and not get back till the Fourth of July. The several elevators in the East Aurora postoffice are of the rapid transit variety, and never stop, except when clogged with the PHILISTINE’S mail.

* * * * *

A woman who knows my weakness for potato salad on Sunday evenings asked me to lunch with her a few days ago. She has some boys—I don’t remember how many, and it doesn’t really matter—who make curious and totally irrelevant remarks, one to the other. Then they let drive biscuits through the air and accompany the sailing food with whoops, great and terrible. They are good boys—as children go—but wanting to know more about such matters, I bought Mr. Pater’s _Child in the House_ to present it to my cousin Anthony, who has a very new boy—his first—just to let him see what he has ahead of him. And then it wasn’t about that kind of a boy at all. I wonder why nobody except Mr. Aldrich has written a story of a really truly boy.

* * * * *

It is comforting to know that when a man loses his job being president he can do such things as this for the man who made Philadelphia and the _Home Journal_ and all that in them is:

“In a series of popular articles ex-President Benjamin Harrison will aim to explain clearly just what this Government means and how it is conducted. He will explain the Constitution, its origin and meaning; outline the different legislative bodies; our foreign relations; the power of the President; how the House and Senate legislate, and touch upon and explain the great National questions.”

Mr. Harrison will also devote several numbers to a detailed description of the scrap between Colonel William Patterson and the Unknown, endeavoring to explain that Colonel Patterson inflicted his own wounds in order to gain notoriety—just like Dr. Parkhurst.

* * * * *

From a magazine with four million subscribers I clip this choice bit from The Woman’s Corner. The advice is given by Mrs. Rorer:

“Cleaning a chicken is beautiful work. It is a deal easier than boiling potatoes and not half so messy as painting and modeling.

“For brain-workers the red meats are most sustaining. Bread and potatoes should be avoided as much as possible. Brain-workers should avoid warmed-over meats—the dainty entrees of which people are so fond are simply hash, and no matter how good the food tastes it is not wholesome.”

Ho! ye poets, no wonder your verse is rank; you probably live on “simply hash;” and “warmed-over” meats only give you warmed-over ideas. Long have I told you to eschew sack and low company. Now do as Mrs. Rorer says and avoid bread and potatoes, and get comfort out of the thought that Mrs. Rorer does not forbid you looking upon the meat when it is red!

* * * * *

The price is five cents, but is too much. The only thing about the periodical that is pretty is the picture on the cover, which represents a nice young lady in the act of crowning a black tom-cat with a wreath of burdock. Then why a black cat? Why not a maltese, or a tortoise shell or a plain grey blanket? But Tom is an inky black, and looks as if he could not keep proper hours even if he tried. However, that marvellous cover is a bit of symbolism. I am told that the young lady represents one of the Mewses and the cheeky cat is Max Pemberton, who is perfectly willing to be crowned.

* * * * *

I wish to notify the public that I have known Frank A. Munsey for twenty-nine years, come Michaelmas, and will vouch that any picture he prints is pretty.

* * * * *

Possibly it is as well to confess that the Universalists got listed with the Evangelical denominations in the summary of the last census on a fluke. May they do St. Peter with equal ease! Mr. Wright didn’t know any better, but having put them there and electrotyped the plates, he could not change the record without considerable expense. He therefore turned to and proved that after all Universalists were Evangelistic and had been since the days of Constantine, and now he offers to caper in an argument on the question against all comers for a thousand dollars. Darwin says we feel a thing is true first and prove it afterward; but Mr. Wright prints it first, accidentally discovers it, then knowing he has to prove it, claims it as truth and dares any one to tread on the tail of his coat.

* * * * *

I notice that a famous globe-trotter is scheduled for a series of articles for a “literary” syndicate of some pretensions. Among her announced themes is Etiquette, both general and particular, and lest there be some misapprehensions I hasten to say that this is not Mr. Bok’s social kindergarten and has no connection with the _Missus’ Home Journal_, A department of this subject is thus set forth in the circular:

+-----------------------------------------+ | EXTRAORDINARY ETIQUETTE. | | | | HOW TO MEET SOCIAL EMERGENCIES THAT ARE | | THE OUTGROWTH OF MODERN LIFE: | | | | DIVORCE ETIQUETTE. | | THE FASHIONABLE FUNERAL. | | ENDORSING SOCIAL ASPIRANTS. | | IN CASES OF FINANCIAL FAILURE. | +-----------------------------------------+

It is so nice to be informed what to do when you are divorced and how to treat your friends, if you have any, “in cases of financial failure.” So important, too, seeing that these social emergencies are “the outgrowth of modern life,” and of course it’s legitimate outgrowth—for no illegitimate outgrowth would for a moment engage the virtuous attention of the rival of Nellie Bly. Other chapters tell women how to behave “when dispensing millions,” a valuable thing for every one to know, and also the how and whereas of “the womanly woman” in public life—such occupations being specified as “street cleaning, road making and regulating schools and saloons.” Abundant illustrations are promised, and I have no doubt the newest thing in milk shakes and the jerking of beer will come within their scope. The new woman grows newer every day.

* * * * *

And is Judge Grant right when he says a man cannot be healthy, virtuous or wise unless his income is ten thousand a year?

* * * * *

In _Harper’s_ for October Mr. Brander Matthews explains that story-tellers “are of three kinds.” Startling, thrice startling, is this frightful truth which the Second-Prize-Taker sets forth! Three kinds? Gadzooks, and here the world has staggered along for six thousand years believing there were only two—the good and bad.

And then the breezy Brander says: “Mr. Du Maurier has the gift of story telling. No doubt Mr. Du Maurier has also other qualities, for instance the gift of pleasant humor and broad sympathy.” Will the Philistines please note that Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia College considers that a man may be a successful novelist and still not have “pleasant humor” and “broad sympathy;” or should we be charitable and take it that he is writing in self defense?

But a bright woman at my elbow says she knows what Brander Matthews wrote that article for—he wrote it for _Fifty Dollars_.