III.

_A Fashionable Lady Interested in Occultism._ I want to hear some more about the new magazine, for I have interested a great many people in it, even with the little you have told me. But I find it difficult to express its actual purpose. What is it?

_Editor._ To try and give a little light to those that want it.

_A F. L._ Well, that’s a simple way of putting it, and will be very useful to me. What is the magazine to be called?

_Editor._ Lucifer.

_A F. L._ (_After a pause_) You can’t mean it.

_Editor._ Why not?

_A F. L._ The associations are so dreadful! What can be the object of calling it that? It sounds like some unfortunate sort of joke, made against it by its enemies.

_Editor._ Oh, but Lucifer, you know, means Light-bearer; it is typical of the Divine Spirit——

_A F. L._ Never mind all that—I want to do your magazine good and make it known, and you can’t expect me to enter into explanations of that sort every time I mention the title? Impossible! Life is too short and too busy. Besides, it would produce such a bad effect; people would think me priggish, and then I couldn’t talk at all, for I couldn’t bear them to think that. Don’t call it Lucifer—please don’t. Nobody knows what the word is typical of; what it means now is the devil, nothing more or less.

_Editor._ But then that is quite a mistake, and one of the first prejudices we propose to do battle with. Lucifer is the pale, pure herald of dawn——

_Lady_ (_interrupting_). I thought you were going to do something more interesting and more important than to whitewash mythological characters. We shall all have to go to school again, or read up Dr. Smith’s Classical Dictionary. And what is the use of it when it is done? I thought you were going to tell us things about our own lives and how to make them better. I suppose Milton wrote about Lucifer, didn’t he?—but nobody reads Milton now. Do let us have a modern title with some human meaning in it.