The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. II, No. 4, March 1896)

John was a mechanic until over-production or under-distribution or something else turned everything upside down. Now he was looking for work of any kind—and not finding it.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s sick in bed, sir,” said Annie.

“Say, mister! Do you know what we’ve got?” piped the four-year-old. “We’ve got a new baby, and it’s a boy!”

A grunt of disgust was the lackey’s only answer. Well, what then? If John Jones had work, or a little money in the bank, it would be no reproach to him that the miracle of life had been wrought once more over in the corner of that room, and that there was one more mouth to feed. But this wasn’t business.

“Can you write?” the footman said to the girl.

“Yes, sir, a little,” she said.

“Write your name here,” he said, producing a receipt book.

The girl made a scratch where he indicated, with some tremor. Then he handed her a large package which he had held in his gloved hand. “This is for your father,” he said; “don’t open it until he comes,” and the vision of furry magnificence faded from sight.

John Jones, coming up the narrow stair, was almost crowded down again by the swelling cape of the man who was looking for him, passing down. Of course neither knew the other. A moment later the father with a heavy countenance entered the back room and asked in an anxious whisper how mamma was. Before the elder girl could answer the younger cried out, “O Papa! there was a splendid man here for you and he brought you somefing nice.”

The square package was a problem to the man. So large and so light. When it was opened the puzzle was no less. It was a picture—a beautiful woman’s head, with a pensive, tender look that might have been the Sphynx’s own schoolmarm stare for all it meant to him. As he looked for an explanatory mark somewhere a card dropped to the floor. This is what he read on it:

John Jones, Esq.:

DEAR SIR—At the last meeting of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor the following resolution was unanimously adopted:

WHEREAS, The refining influence of art is almost wholly lost to the poorer classes by reason of their lack of means and time to enjoy the exhibitions open to others, and

WHEREAS, The degradation of poverty is to be cured not alone by teaching self-dependence by means of a labor test for applicants for relief but also by making the poorest conversant, so far as may be, with the works of the great masters of Literature, Music and Art; therefore be it

_Resolved_, That each member of this Society shall be one of a committee to loan works of art to the poor and pledges himself or herself to place each week in the house of some poor family a picture or sculpture to be studied by such family, to be loaned such family for one week, in the hope of arousing in its members a love of the beautiful.

ELEANOR GOULD MARTIN, Secretary.

All this but the address line was printed. Below a form was filled in as follows:

Names, _John Jones_. Residence, _Paradise Flats_. Picture, _Psyche, by Smith_. Owner, _Jane Hodges McVickar_. Date of Loan, _December 16, 1895_. Picture to be called for, _December 23, 1895_.

“Papa,” said four-year-old Kit, as the card fell from the nerveless hand of John Jones, “I fought it was somefing good to eat.”

* * * * *

The Latest Revision tells after this fashion what followed the Trial in the Wilderness:

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights he was afterward an-hungered.... And behold, angels came and patronized him.”

WILLIAM MCINTOSH.

A COMPLAINT OF SOME EDITORS.

Yes, most potent seignors, a complaint! Persuade me not; I will make a star chamber matter of it.

Which of us—humble and much enduring devotees of the Muse—having somehow got our song or sonnet accepted and in the course of years published, has not waxed wroth to find it mischievously meddled with, the trail of the editor’s blue pencil over all its printed lines?

In prose editorial interference is exasperating enough. But in verse, where a comma misplaced, arbitrarily inserted or omitted, may change the whole meaning or effect of a pet phrase! And when the editor comes to manipulating words instead of punctuation marks, and juggling with rhymes even and with titles, what is to be said? What the author commonly says cannot be printed here.

I once knew a poetaster who wrote a handful of little rhymes which he called rather happily after his own notion, “Songs of a Year,” and which in due time appeared in print. The editor, however, had thought “The Four Seasons” a more taking title. The poetaster disagreed with him, but it was too late. Another effort of this same unfortunate he protested tearfully that he could not recognize in its printed form except by the strawberry mark, that is, the signature; and he said he wished the editor had revised that, too, while he was about it.

What is an editor? Is he omniscient? We know better. Are all the articles in his magazine supposed to bear the imprint of his ideas and style? When Mr. Howells, at an alleged salary of fifteen thousand a year, edited the _Cosmopolitan_ and wrote most of it himself—well, you remember.

If the editor knows to a comma how he wants his poetry written, let him write it himself, as Mr. Gilder mostly does. If he thinks he can improve on the poetical style of his contributor and wants to put in his time that way, let him write and propose collaboration, or at least submit to the poor mortal of an author a plan of the contemplated improvements. But to go ahead on his own hook and change the whole complexion of the thing perhaps, and then send it out over the original signature? It is not honest.

The author relinquishes for a time the child of his brain, fondly expecting to get it back again in beautiful new clothes of type. What he does get is a changeling with dyed hair and a clothespin on its nose. Is he grateful? Hardly.

When the editor accepts a drawing for his magazine does he proceed to work it over, put in a few more shadows, touch up the high lights and perhaps alter the arrangement of the model’s back hair? Not as a rule.

A magazine is not a school for drawing, nor is it a literary kindergarten. An editor is not a pedagogue.

If he thinks a thing good enough to print, let him print it honestly as it was made; if not, let him return it with thanks and encourage the author to send it somewhere else. That author, if he is worth his Attic salt, would rather have his verses printed in the Podunk _Thinker_ as he wrote them than in the _Century_ with R. W. Gilder’s emendations.

NEITH BOYCE.

THE MODEL OF A STATESMAN.

When Abiel Whitworth went to the assessor’s office to get fifty per cent. taken from the taxable value of his house and lot, he stepped jauntily into the room. Then he shuddered. “I want to see the assessor,” he faltered.

Now, the man who had lifted his head when he stepped on the rug before the official desk filled him with a vague alarm. He was of only medium size, not well put together: he had a curling black mustache, a heavy, monkey-like face, a miraculously clean shave, a political diamond in his shirt, new clothes and an air of brutal leisure that reminded one of a sphinx, or an alderman. But it was the shining, glassy, far seeing eye, with its lashes turned back, that startled Mr. Whitworth. It was so cold, so empty of expression, so thoroughly uncanny, that it scared him. After a long, searching look, in which he did not seem to breathe, the assessor bent his head and resumed the study of a paper that lay on the desk before him.

Mr. Whitworth waited; a clock ticked and buzzed somewhere in the room, emphasizing the silence: then he gulped and repeated, “I want to see Mr. Flannery, the assessor.”

Some seconds elapsed this time before the man at the desk raised his head again and transfixed him with another stare: then he resumed his reading. The man was wrong, in some way. Was he mad? He might be a vampire, or a ghoul, for he did not look or act like a human being. Mr. Whitworth became quite chilly in his blood.

“I don’t believe I want to see the assessor,” he said, huskily, and was about to turn away and run, when a solitary clerk, who had been toiling over a ledger in the back of the room, hastened forward and said, “Beg pardon, sir, but I was in the middle of a calculation and wanted to finish it. Can I do anything for you?”

“I wanted to see Mr. Flannery.”

“This represents Mr. Flannery,” said the clerk, “and represents him remarkably well, in more than one way. He is, if I may so call him, the official Mr. Flannery.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I dare say not. We don’t let everybody know about it.” And, calmly lifting Mr. Flannery’s head from his shoulders, the clerk reached down his neck and adjusted something inside of him. The sound of the clock stopped, and Mr. Flannery did not lift his head again after it was replaced.

Mr. Whitworth gasped.

“You see, sir,” added the clerk, “Mr. Flannery was appointed by Mayor Rourke, at the request of Boss McManus. It was supposed that he could read and write, for he has been quite successful in managing primary elections, and has made a good lot of money in the saloon business. But he can’t read and he is busy, so what was the use in his coming to the office? He had this wax figure of himself made to sit at this desk, and there is a spring attachment that works whenever anyone stands on that rug. The figure, you see, lifts its head once in twenty seconds, and that is all that Flannery does when he is here. The taxpayers have been kicking so hard about absentees that the boss and others have been stirring the office holders up and Flannery thinks it’s only right to make this much of a concession. Very few find out that it is not Flannery, except that he swears more. If you want to see the sure enough Flannery go down to his saloon on Columbus avenue. He comes here every second Saturday—he is very good about that—to get his pay.”

“Seems to me you are giving him away pretty freely.”

“Well, to tell the truth, I’m hoping to get his job myself, under the new mayor.”

* * * * *

In which Narrative an Allegory may perhaps be discovered without a Powerful Mind or a Microscope.

CHARLES M. SKINNER.

SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES.

The drama is queer. Life’s queer, for that matter, but queerness does most abound when Mr. Mansfield gives up elevating the stage and begins hoisting the lecture platform—or doesn’t, whichever is the latest news. Mansfield can earn some hundreds a week acting; wants to make it thousands, managing; fails, naturally, not having a spreadeagle mustache and sufficient capacity for the tender passion; abuses people for not supporting Art. Mansfield reminds the irreverent reader of Jno. Glimmer Screed, bewailing in the _Forum_ that he can only make five thousand dollars a year by his puissant pen and that his children must eat breadless butter or butterless bread, or other incomplete dietary, and live in a flat. These considerations suggest a legislative enactment of the “be and hereby is” sort, assessing upon the taxpayers the cost of paying fifty thousand dollars a year each to all people who are so lacking in the sense of humor as to suppose it makes any difference whether they eat bread or snow.

* * * * *

The drama isn’t queerer than literature. Laureate Austin, mere mention of whose name has been known to split a horse’s sides, dedicates _England’s Darling_ to the Princess of Wales by permission. No knowing whether the darling is the Princess or the Laureate without reading the verses, and that’s too much trouble.

* * * * *

Mr. Moulting Storrs Bigelow has lost the tail feathers of his prestige in the insurance business, which than his requires cheek even more adamantine.

* * * * *

Mr. Richard Harding Davis is being congratulated upon his “manly words about the Monroe doctrine,” wherewith the fifteen dollar a week hired-man-of-intellect in the Harper factory saved his fifteen thousand dollars a year article upon Venezuela from being quite so idiotic as it might have been. Dr. Conan Doyle prescribes peace with Great Britain to Uncle Sam, with a canny view to the sale of sedative Tales, uninterrupted by blockades. B’rer Crockett also loves the Americans. So does Sarah Grand. So would Screed and Beau Brummell Mansfield, if——

* * * * *

The way to get rich is to sell paper, not like the newspaper publisher, who sometimes makes a hit buying tree paper at two cents a pound and selling it at the rate of one hundred fakes for five cents; that’s an uncertain business and requires a disciplined conscience, not to speak of capital, which is more rare. No, sell paper of the kind recommended by the Bucyrus _Authors’ Journal_ or the Dutch Flats _Cable Railway to Parnassus_. Here is the whole snap:

1. PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE: “Du Maurier is to receive fifty thousand dollars and a paid up accident policy for _The Martian_.”

2. HELPS FOR YOUNG AUTHORS: “Write only on one side of the paper. Use good cream paper, unruled, seven by ten. Mr. Gilder always writes his sonnets with violet ink. Keep a written record of all manuscripts sent out, etc.”

3. ADVERTISEMENTS.

+---------------------------------------------+ | JONES & BROWN, | | WRITERS SUPPLIES, | | VIOLET, RED AND BLACK INKS. | | | | Paper, cream and white, 7×10, and other | | standard sizes. Manuscript records, rulers, | | pens, etc. Send for catalogue. | | Mail Orders Promptly Filled. | +---------------------------------------------+

Wherefore hath Mr. Screed written himself down an ass. Yea, a wild ass. If he values money more than doing what he wants to do, let him sell seven by ten paper, violet ink and manuscript records, and let us have Peace.

* * * * *

Mr. Sothern makes an announcement. For production next year he has accepted _An Enemy to the King_, and thus tosses into the arena Mr. R. N. Stephens, of Philadelphia, who made the play. Mr. Stephens has a past. Having endured for some years as a dramatic editor the honeyed wheedlings of theatrical advance agents, he crouched for a spring last year while painstaking audiences beheld his dramatic works, _The White Rat_, _The Sidewalks of New York_, _Girl Wanted_ and others, and then he began working out swift and cosmopolitan vengeance as an agent on all the remaining dramatic editors. One afternoon before that, however, Mr. George Marion, the veteran though happy stage director for Messrs. Davis and Keogh, contractors, sat in their Herald Square Factory smoking the most dynamic cigar ever taxed.

“What are you doing, George?” piped a voice.

“Oh, I’m not very busy,” replied Mr. Marion, apprehensively.

“Well, you go over to Pittsburg and tell John Kernell we’ll have a new play ready for him tomorrow;” and turning around, the voice, though twisted, remarked, “Stevens, you write Kernell a play and send it to him tonight. Call it _The Irish Alderman_.”

Mr. Stephens has written eighty plays in a single week. His nights he spends with Sherlock Holmes, and in his dreams he converses with the White Robed Mahatmas. His brain food is scrapple, and he draws his strength from Johann Malt’s street car poster. Mr. Sothern’s courage must proceed from the gods.

* * * * *

Mr. Daniel Frohman, the theatrical manager, to distinguish himself from whom Mr. Charles Frohman bills his name with an emphatic score under the “Charles,” has achieved for the drama something dignified enough to be called an episode. He saw what Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Mr. George Alexander, Mr. Richard Mansfield and others denied—that Mr. Anthony Hope’s novel, _The Prisoner of Zenda_, needed very little mending to make a play of the first class. For this lonely act Mr. Frohman richly deserves a monument in Fourth avenue opposite his templar Lyceum. A Daniel certainly came to judgment. _Zenda_ on the stage is great. Mr. Edward Rose, who made the play, has not attempted to clear up the moats and castles and bridges, which in an infantry novel I never could understand, but he has made very human beings and used a precious lot of Mr. Hope’s dialogue. _Zenda_ has a bad ending. There is no question about that. I can just imagine my friend, Mr. Adv. W. Bok, sitting through the martyr separation of Rassendyll and Flavia and scuffling away thinking “Ugh, how mean!” People that croak over Mercutio’s untimely taking off are of the same ilk; and they wish _A Tale of Two Cities_ ended happily. Mean, are these nobilities. Rupert in the play, scornful-merry, thinks it is the meanest ending possible; and chained he goes laughing away, taunting Rassendyll with being the biggest of fools for giving up love and a kingdom for honor’s sake. Fritz thinks not, though. Manfully he strides up to Rassendyll, a great chunk of grief on his palate, and taking the unwounded hand, shakes it fiercely and silently, as if his allegiance were bound with that clasp, and when he let go he would be a traitor forever. And when he goes away, old Sapt comes; and he thinks not, like Fritz. He grips the “lad’s” hand while a tear falls on the bloody bandage Rassendyll wears, and a magnet somewhere somehow snaps his loyal old knee to the floor in reverence for this “lad” that ought to be king if he isn’t. Flavia? She thinks not, too. She is not to die, like Camille, but is doomed to a more horrible tragedy: she must live on. She speaks the brave, spirit-crushing word that decrees the parting, and Rassendyll goes away, too. The red badge of courage is on his rag-slung arm, and there is a royal Vestal flame in his agonizing heart. “Is love the only thing?” The tear-blinded eyes of many a spectator of Mr. Sothern and Miss Kimball’s sweet and pathetic performance testify that the average man or woman thinks, yes. I don’t know.

* * * * *

In a late number of the Paris edition of the New York _Herald_ I find this: “According to the new etymology a Philistine is one who believes in health, good cheer and manly self reliance as opposed to languid, mawkish sentimentality—that sure breeder of refined vice and degeneracy.” I really could not put the matter better than this myself.

* * * * *

My, My, My! but the “Note” that took the Five Dollar Prize was rotten!

* * * * *

In the American reprint of “Without Prejudice” sixty errors occur; the proof reading was left to Miss Mayme, who came up from the bindery: the Only Lynx-Eyed being on a journey.

* * * * *

My correspondents still continue to chew about the statement that this world is Hell and we are now being punished for sins committed in a former life. One woman writes me that if this world is surely Hell then there must be many devils here. “This being so, who are they?” she asks. I can only answer this in the words of a great poet who on being asked who the Decadents were, replied testily: “The others—always the others.”

* * * * *

The reason that it is called “Children’s Department” is because it is conducted by papa’s little boy.