Part 1
The Philistine A Periodical of Protest.
_Let me take you a buttonhole lower._—LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST.
[Illustration: Vol III. No. 3.]
Printed Every Little While for The Society of The Philistines and Published by Them Monthly. Subscription, One Dollar Yearly Single Copies, 10 Cents. August, 1896.
THE PHILISTINE.
CONTENTS FOR AUGUST.
Miserere, Hiram Dryer McCaskey.
An Hour with Maecenas, G. W. Stevens.
Sunrise Over the City, William James Baker.
The Captives, Ouida.
If Love Were All, Edith Neil.
The Man on a Bicycle, Harvey Lewis Wickham.
The Steward, C. P. N.
Let There Be Gall Enough in Thy Ink, Adeline Knapp.
The Worshippers, Charles P. Nettleton.
Side Talks with the Philistines. Conducted by the East Aurora School of Philosophy.
Have you seen the Roycroft Quarterly? The “Stephen Crane” number is attracting much attention and we believe it will interest you. 25 cents a copy.
_Entered at the Postoffice at East Aurora, New York, for transmission as mail matter of the second class._
_COPYRIGHT, 1896, by B. C. Hubbard._
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The Roycroft Quarterly:
Being a Goodly collection of Literary Curiosities obtained from Sources not easily accessible to the average Book-Lover. Offered to the Discerning every three months for 25c. per number or one dollar per year.
Contents for May:
I. Glints of Wit and Wisdom: Being replies from sundry Great Men who missed a Good Thing.
II. Some Historical Documents by W. Irving Way, Phillip Hale and Livy S. Richard.
III. As to Stephen Crane. E. H. A preachment by an admiring friend.
IV. Seven poems by Stephen Crane.
1—The Chatter of a Death Demon. 2—A Lantern Song. 3—A Slant of Sun on Dull Brown Walls. 4—I have heard the Sunset Song of the Birches. 5—What Says the Sea? 6—To the Maiden the Sea was Blue Meadow. 7—Fast Rode the Knight.
V. A Great Mistake. Stephen Crane. Recording the venial sin of a mortal under sore temptation.
VI. A Prologue. Stephen Crane.
THE PHILISTINE.
NO. 3. August, 1896. VOL. 3.
MISERERE.
Joy and sorrow, mirth and tears, Darkness, sunshine, kind words, jeers, The flitting moments, halting years— Strange contrasts these!
Today the youth, tomorrow age; We read, and then we turn the page; The fool we honour, not the sage— Sad travesties!
The dancers gay, the open grave— From foot-lights’ flare to solemn wave The sale of souls Christ came to save— Life’s tragedies!
—HIRAM DRYER MCCASKEY.
AN HOUR WITH MAECENAS.
One, two, three—five men that call themselves my friends, all wishful to borrow money! Statilius, you will please to make a note of these five gentlemen, and give orders that on no account are they to pass my vestibule again. The settlement of society under our Prince has done much to stamp out the dangerous classes, but we have not yet got rid of the borrowers. I think it a little hard that after I have neglected my estate for half my life to expel roguery by the front door that it should creep in at the back.
Did you inquire, Statilius, why my cook served white sauce with quails last night? Very well; I have made it a rule to deal with my people in person: send for him. It is not possible to maintain a household well regulated, unless the servants come personally into touch with the master.
Plato, you served me last night a dish which, had any of my friends been present, would have shamed me forever. As it was, my dinner was ruined. It is incompetence such as yours whose ill effects Rome has struggled these eight lustrums to efface. You will be sold in the market tomorrow. Go.
You see now, Statilius, the wisdom of my rule to permit no freedman in my household: all my servants are my own property. You will buy me the best cook in Rome in three hours. What, sir? You are a free man, and I employed you only to work at my pedigree and my library? True: I am satisfied with you. But understand that if I bid you litter my horses you will do it, or I sell you up tomorrow. Now, sir, the best cook in Rome is Iulus Antonius’s Dama: buy him. Antonius is a rich man? Very true, but I think we need not be afraid of that. We can tempt him, I imagine, Statilius. At any price whatever: do you understand? And not a penny more than he will sell at: understand that also. If he is stubborn, hint at my influence with the Prince; that will be sufficient. Go.
Iulus knows that he is whispered against, and he looks to me to prop him up. I shall not do so. Again and again I have urged on Octavian the necessity of putting these malcontents out of the way. His father’s son cannot but be a danger to a settled State, however soundly disposed himself. It appears to me that Octavian is losing his aptitude for politics, and Agrippa exercises the worst possible influence upon him. This stupid, expensive system of banishment: it should never have had my voice had I remained in politics.
Thucydides, I have told you once already I am not to be disturbed in meditation. The poet Horace is in attendance? Horatius, I think you mean; avoid these vulgarisms, Thucydides. Bid Horatius wait. Indeed, I doubt not whether Octavian had at any time any real grasp of the principles of government. I was deceived by the facility with which he lent himself to my views. He is a man incapable of understanding any system between militarism and license. Of the finer arts of statecraft I am afraid he knows very little. How often have I explained to that man how the law of treason might be developed into an infallible engine of sound government! Yes: I was wise to leave politics, though Octavian is ungrateful to his Mentor. Well, I will see Horatius. He, at least, with all his faults, is a faithful soul. A man I have made.
Good-day, Horatius. I hope you are well and keeping sober. Have you brought the work I commissioned? Very well; let me see it. There has been a very great improvement in your manner of writing, Horatius, since I took you up: the large P’s are very much bolder than they were. But what is this? This is not the Epistle Dedicatory I ordered. That comes second? Ah! yes, here it is; you should have given it to me first.
Maecenas, born of grandsire kings—
Quite right: “grandsire kings” is very good. It is not, of course, literally correct, but one may, in poetry, fairly write the particular term “grandsire” for the general “ancestor”—
O my defense and proud delight!
“Proud delight.” Now I think I shall correct that to “dear delight.” I think the alliteration is well worth securing, and you may allow yourself a familiarity in literature, Horatius, where all men are equal, which, as I have no doubt you felt in writing, would be highly unbecoming in society. “Proud delight” does you credit as a man, my good Horatius; as a poet I permit—nay, I invite you to write “dear.”
To hug the post with wheels afire
The piece gets a little tame in the middle, Horatius, ... ah! what is this?
But deign me so to canonize, O’er highest heaven my fame will rise.
Yes, very happy. A very good ode, Horatius. You have distinctly added to your reputation. I am very glad to note that you disavow that most dangerous tendency, which I am sorry to see is growing among some of my poets, to defer to the popular judgment. Even poor Virgil is tainted by it in this last epic, as he calls it, published in one of those measly magazinelets. I am afraid Virgil is coming to think more of the so-called glories of Rome than of his truest friends. Such defection on your part, I warn you candidly, I should feel very deeply. Now what is this other? I hope none of that Epicurean stuff which is such a handicap, if I may so phrase it, upon your best powers for good....
Ah, Postumus, how fleet, how fleet, The years slip by no prayers may stay Since beldame Age knows not delay, Since Death pursues with ruthless feet—
I think you might have found a fitter name than Postumus; but it is very passable. I suppose you have verified all these mythological allusions in the Greek; it is not your industry I need ever distrust.
Your land, your house, your yielding wife Renounce; and of these trees you trim; None follows, save the cypress grim, The lordling of the little life.
Yes, the tone of the work is quite good.... And then—really Horatius, you are too annoying—then you must spoil all again in the last stanza. I have warned you a thousand times against that, Horatius. Listen, sir, to what you say here—
He breaks your seals, the worthier heir, He sweeps your bins, the worthier lord, Dashing imperial winds abroad, While Pontiffs envy and despair.
Now, understand once and for all, Horatius, that I will not have such pernicious and disloyal trash as this put out to pollute the State. You say you meant nothing impious? Well, then I will ask you, Horatius, who is Chief Pontiff? The prince; so I had thought. And then you say you had no intention of disloyalty? In that case I will merely answer that you have expressed yourself very badly. You will agree, I suppose—even you who were out with Brutus, when I understand you threw away your shield—that what we must all work for in Rome, is a settled social order? And I suppose that you are not incapable of perceiving that this is impossible without the maintenance of religion? And perhaps you may have heard that His Highness is supreme head of our religion? And then, do you tell me, sir, that you did not see that this last stanza—this Pontiff’s ambition, or whatever it is—is pernicious in the highest degree? Now this is what I shall do. I shall make you, Horatius, write an ode of fourteen stanzas in praise of His Highness as Chief Pontiff. Take your tablets and write down the heads of the poem, as I dictate them.
First: The deplorable desuetude.
I beg your pardon: I think I was asking you to take down the heads of the ode. What! I? You say that I gave you the subjects of this one? Very possibly, though I do not remember: with the ode as a whole I am very well satisfied. You say I gave the hint of the Pontiff? Very true; I recollect it quite well, but it was not to be used, or wasted, in the spirit in which you have used it here. Perhaps, however, you meant it to refer to the Pontiffs of the old regime, whose unworthy excesses I may have doubtless mentioned to you at some time? I could wish, Horatius, that your execution were on a level with your intention: you lay yourself open to a great deal of misconstruction. I think we must substitute “late” for “while.”
What is that you are sputtering about Minucius? I told you to glance at Minucius? Well, in one respect you are quite right. I do not remember that I ever spoke of him to you, but the extravagance of Minucius not only makes him a man impossible to be seen abroad with, but constitutes a great scandal on the pontificate. And I tell you, sir, I tell you that that man’s insolence to his betters is more than any well-ordered State could endure. He has got the Prince’s ear, and presumes upon it. Yes, you may jab at Minucius whenever you can, and as hard as you can. I am very glad I suggested that, and you have taken up the hint very cleverly. Sit down, my good Horatius; you must be tired of standing, and we men of letters are all equal, whatever our social position. I will read you a chapter of my own history that I threw off last night. You will remember, of course, what happened while I was Urban Prefect.
G. W. STEVENS.
SUNRISE OVER THE CITY.
With restless searching are the nightwinds spent, A solitary bird pipes lovenotes lorn, Portent of life new wakening with the morn; Long lines of flaring lamps still burn their stent, With gloom upon the city’s bosom blent; But ’bove the dark threat of a cloud low drawn, White as a wraith, pale glows God’s holy dawn, The morning star her brightest ornament. As gathering splendor floods the world with light, The whilom watcher sleeps, forgetting grief; And though ’neath fuming smoke, ’mid roll of wheels, The sordid city wakes her giant might Lustful of gain, her deepest heart yet feels The benediction of that vision brief.
WILLIAM JAMES BAKER.
THE CAPTIVES.
Amongst them there was one colossal form, on which the sun poured with its full radiance.
This was the form of a man grinding at a mill-stone; the majestic, symmetrical, supple form of a man who was also a god.
In his naked limbs there was a supreme power; in his glance there was a divine command; his head was lifted as though no yoke could ever lie on that proud neck; his foot seemed to spurn the earth as though no mortal tie had ever bound him to the sod that human steps bestrode: yet at the corn-mill he laboured, grinding wheat like the patient blinded oxen that toiled beside him.
It was the great Apollo in Pherae.
The hand which awoke the music of the spheres had been blood stained with murder; the beauty which had the light and lustre of the sun had been darkened with passion and with crime; the will which no other on earth or in heaven could withstand had been bent under the chastisement of Zeus.
He whose glances had made the black and barren slopes of Delos to laugh with fruitfulness and gladness—he whose prophetic sight beheld all things past, present, and to come, the fate of all unborn races, the doom of all unspent ages—he, the Far-Striking King, laboured here beneath the curse of crime, greatest of all the gods, and yet a slave.
In all the hills and vales of Greece his Io paean sounded still.
Upon his holy mountains there still arose the smoke of fires of sacrifice.
With dance and song the Delian maidens still hailed the divinity of Leto’s son.
The waves of the pure Ionian air still rang forever with the name of Delphinios.
At Pytho and at Clarus, in Lycia and in Phodis, his oracles still breathed forth upon their fiat terror or hope into the lives of men; and still in all the virgin forests of the world the wild beasts honored him wheresoever they wandered; and the lion and the bear came at his bidding from the deserts to bend their necks and their wills of fire meekly to bear his yoke in Thessaly.
Yet he labored here at the corn-mill of Admetus; and watching him at his bondage stood the slender, slight, wing-footed Hermes, with a slow, mocking smile upon his knavish lips, and a jeering scorn in his keen eyes, even as though he cried:
“O brother, who would be greater than I! For what hast thou bartered to me the golden rod of thy wealth and thy dominion over the flocks and the herds? For seven chords strung on a shell—for a melody not even thine own! For a lyre outshone by my syrinx hast thou sold all thine empire to me. Will human ears give heed to thy song now thy sceptre has passed to my hands? Immortal music only is left thee, and the vision foreseeing the future. O god! O hero! O fool! what shall these profit thee now?”
Thus to the artist by whom they had been begotten the dim white shapes of the deities sometimes speak. Thus he sees them, thus he hears, whilst the pale and watery sunlight lights up the form of the toiler in Pherae. For even as it was with the divinity of Delos, so is it likewise with the genius of a man, which, being born of a god, yet is bound as a slave to the grind-stone. Since even as Hermes mocked the Lord of the Unerring Bow, so is genius mocked of the world, when it has bartered the herds, and the grain, and the rod that metes wealth, for the seven chords that no ear, dully mortal, can hear.
He can bend great thoughts to take the shapes that he choose, as the chained god in Pherae bound the strong kings of the desert and forest to carry his yoke; yet, like the god, he likewise stands fettered to the mill to grind for bread.
OUIDA.
“IF LOVE WERE ALL.”
(PRISONER OF ZENDA.)
“If love were all!” Can love be less than all Here in the world the God of Love hath made? If love _were_ all—and love were unafraid, And knew not death’s corrupting funeral pall!
Oh Princess, with thy soul by heavenly call In love’s divinest panoply arrayed, Hath thy soul-sight thy love-sight so betrayed That love from his supremest place should fall?
Yet wert thou right. Thy woman’s heart divined The soul of love’s transcendent perfectness: For like a star within a mist confined And burning thro’ love’s soul is righteousness.
Thus love _is_ all—tho’, as on Calvary, Renunciation love’s fulfillment be!
EDITH NEIL.
THE MAN ON A BICYCLE.
The man on a bicycle came panting up a hill at the beginning of a large town.
“Hello! Knickerbockers,” cried the man on foot; “do you call that the gait for a scorcher? Why, it aint more’n a pair uv bars.”
“That’s all right, little boy,” returned he of the wheel.
“Little boy, yourself! Didn’t you know it was five dollars fine for ridin’ on the sidewalk?”
“Is it? All right? I’ll pay when I come back;” and the man on a bicycle, encountering a level piece of road, put an end to further conversation by a sudden spurt.
But the cyclometer was not to make a steady advance that evening. A surface crossing lay ahead, blocked by a belated freight train. The engineer knew his business and meddled continually with the throttle. After going about two car-lengths in one direction, the train would stop, remember something left behind, and back up. That is the way to keep a crowd pacific. Give them plenty to hope for and they forget to fight.
The wheelman rode in slow circles for a while, but finding the slush and snow too deep for this exercise, was forced to a humiliating dismount.
“Misder!” shouted a dirty urchin with a cold, “did yer know yer ’adn’d god no lighd? Fibe dollars fine an’ the cop’s in the deepo.”
“O, break away, break away!” snarled the wheelman.
“Young man,” lisped a willy boy, “I thought those things weah called in, you know.”
“I wish some one would call _that_ thing in.”
This retort was pointed at the willy boy, and raised a laugh.
“How long are they going to keep us waiting here in the cold?” muttered a querulous old gentleman. “It’s against the law, and the company ought to be prosecuted.”
“The present company?” ventured a bashful young man, who was dressed as if going somewhere.
“No, the present company is always excepted,” came from obscurity.
The man with a bicycle snapped his bell uneasily. He was in a hurry, of course; if you live much on a wheel, hurry becomes chronic, engendered perhaps by the accustomed sense of rapid motion; but, like many of his class, he had that fellow feeling for petty law breakers, which comes by taking chances against city ordinances.
The fellow at the valve was taking his chances too, with excellent success. The patience of an American crowd approaches the miraculous. Fifty engagements were being broken and ten times as many toes were freezing, all because one railroader was too lazy to draw a coupling-pin. Yet so long as the cars continued to move, no one felt called upon to interfere.
“How many minutes may a crossing legally be blocked?” demanded the querulous old gentleman, pulling out his watch.
“Ten, I believe,” answered the flagman, soothingly.
“Ten? Why, we’ve been here most fifteen now!”
“S’posin’ that train on the down track ud move up just as this un was movin’ away, which ud you have ’rested then?”
The querulous old gentleman looked at the newsboy reprovingly, but said nothing.
“Might try and have the president pulled,” suggested some one.
“What of? The Road? Wopey dick! He’s got a pull himself.”
The newsboy smiled approvingly upon his mot, during a silence that might be felt. It was a relief when the wind picked up the tones of a brass band, playing in front of the theatre, and wafted them in that direction.
“Sub ud oughd to pud runners on thad bike, see?” volunteered the dirty urchin with a cold.
This aroused the newsboy to a stroke of business.
“New Yawk Evening Sun or Worl! One cent! Sunorworl?”
Here the bashful young man who was dressed as if going somewhere, separated himself, and cried:
“Conductor, cut this train in two, or I will have you arrested.”
“There, you’re done!”
“Cut it short!”
“Go, take a walk!”
were expressions which greeted this sally.
The bashful young man took up the thread of his private life where it had broken off, and wished he had separated himself further.
A touch on the sleeve aroused the man with a bicycle. There stood the man on foot.
“Hello! Knickerbockers. Horse tied, eh? Thought I’d ketch up to you. Where is your century run? Didn’t I say that there was no scorchin’ gait?”
The man with a bicycle said something that commenced with “damn,” and then, seeing a pale frightened-looking girl near by, wished he hadn’t. In the forgetfulness of his remorse he smirched the newsboy with his machine.