Part 2

When Clangingharp got back he had had several of them, so at first he did not quite take in what had happened. It seemed to him as if much greater cohesion and consistency had been imparted to the epic by the insertion interlinearly as well as between the pages, of his pot of mucilage. Illustrations had also been sketched over the sheets with the unbridled ink-bottle. The work as a whole had begun to circulate, and was already widespread in its influence. Much of it looked as if the critics had already been at it. Clangingharp stepped to the window and looked out. Golden light from the window in a first-floor flat shone brightly over the bottom of the air-shaft. There, curled up on the cement, lay Marcus Aurelius, a study in purple and dead.

“Dam that cat!” said Clangingharp.

FRANK W. NOXON.

HEART TO HEART TALKS WITH MEN

QUERY ONE.

Whom do you consider the greatest living _litterateur_?

Formerly, this matter was in doubt; but there can be no dispute over this point in recent years. But, unfortunately, both good taste and modesty prevent me from making a more definite reply.

QUERY TWO.

I notice you frequently refer to Henry Ward Beecher as a great man; will you kindly state why you consider him such?

Mr. Beecher acquired some reputation in Brooklyn a few years ago as a preacher; this contributed somewhat to his fame. His principal claim to greatness, however, rests on his wonderful power of recognizing genius in others. He early saw the advantage of seeking out and connecting himself with the great geniuses of his neighborhood. I need scarcely add that I was raised in Brooklyn, and that he was among my first admirers.

QUERY THREE.

Should a young man smoke cigarettes?

I notice on glancing over our advertisement columns, that the cigarette trust has given up its devilish attempt to make our American women nicotine _habitues_, so I will divert from my usual plan of never referring to myself, and tell you my own experience as a reply to this question.

Ten years ago this very day, a large cigarette firm in New York City offered me ten thousand dollars a year if I would smoke their brand of these death-dealing instruments of the evil one. I was very very young at the time; this is my explanation of my only great temptation. I confess that I did not see the horror, the degradation in this suggestion; I saw only in the offer the gold. I am changed now, but, then, it was a fierce battle. But my mother plead with me, and she made me promise never even to think of such a wicked thing again. See the result. I now edit the largest journal in the world, and am educating the women of America what to do and how to do it. This lesson teaches you to do always as your mother tells you. Some day you may edit the _Homely Ladies’ Journal_, and then you can catch the sympathies of your readers with this sentiment, without fear of your conscience keeping you awake at nights.

QUERY FOUR.

Which of our great poets do you consider led the happiest lives?

Whittier and Tennyson, because they were so blessed with great friendships. I knew them both well myself.

I shall never forget that glorious day in London, when Tennyson told me, with tears in his eyes, that his only regret was that he had written himself out before I had taken charge of the _Homely Ladies’ Journal_; while Whittier, the dear old chap, told me his fiery war songs that brought him social ostracism, need never have been written had I edited the _Woman’s House Journal_ during that period.

QUERY FIVE.

Do you find editing such a great journal as the _Woman’s House Journal_ hard work? It must be, for I find it very hard to edit properly my own little country weekly.

This question it is almost impossible to answer; to you my work would seem Herculean, unceasing, impossible; but to me it is so different that I feel that I cannot answer this question to make myself intelligible. This question is doubly difficult to answer, for I have systematized my work by establishing a drag net for getting material. I will explain my method. I take up the latest magazine; I see a story by some new great writer, a society leader in the metropolis. Presto! I order a series of articles on “How Women Should Behave at Teas” from her pen. I hear that a great English novelist is coming over to seek the American dollar; again, as with lightning, I order an article “How Your Women Impress Me.” It is immaterial to me what they actually do write, or how far they wander from their text, so long as they use my ready made titles. They look so nice in the index.

In this way, I use the small talk of the writers as a soft food for my readers. Just as you attempt, in your feeble way, to serve up the gossip of your little hamlet in your weekly paper, so I do; for I tell you in confidence what women want is not literature, not art, not science, but gossip. So I make all the great writers of the day write gossip for them. This is the secret of my success. You should feel very happy now, for, although my thoughts and pen fly with lightninglike rapidity, I have spent five hundred dollars’ worth of time in answering your inquiry.

I will answer the rest of my anxious readers as soon as I can systematize other incidents in my very short but successward career. In the meantime, young men by following the lines laid down in this paper cannot fail of success, real, pure, noble success.

J. HOWE ADAMS.

PLOTS AND THINGS.

UNFORBIDDEN FRUIT.

I have a plot:—A man and a girl in a boarding house in Duesseldorf were rather sweet on each other. It might have become love and a marriage, since they were the only Americans there, were both to stay all summer, and both attractive.

The romance began well, they even got so far that one day he held her hand and leaned forward, gazing deeply into her eyes.

Just then the Frau Professorin who kept the _pension_ stepped suddenly into the parlor, saw them, and retreated precipitately.

Here was a catastrophe. Her reputation according to German ideas, gone. “Ein junges Maedchen sich se zu eenehmen—abschenlich!” Nothing but an engagement could excuse the holding of the hand of a junges Maedchen by a man.

They looked at each other and laughed, ruefully. Then they agreed to become engaged, temporarily: what in Virginia is known as “just engaged,” in contradistinction to “engaged to be married.”

For a time it was good fun. He was more devoted than ever; and they even thought of making it permanent. But you know how people act in Germany. Every time he came into the parlor, whoever was sitting beside her, jumped up, and he had to go over and sit beside her. Then he had to make pretty speeches to her while all the other boarders, with German tact, stopped talking and listened.

The man and the girl carried out their roles well, though they drew the line at having their picture taken with their arms around each other. This was a great disappointment to the other boarders. Neither the man nor the girl was able to talk to any one in the house except about the girl and the man. It got to be boresome after a while.

When at last they left Duesseldorf, the joy with which they flew asunder was something to see. There my plot and the romance end. Of course there were to be chaperones and scenery.

WHICH SINNED?

I was confessor; my cousin or Miss Hart was sinner (each has confessed on the other); the story is about this:—

He stood opposite her in the waltz quadrille. He did not know her, but thought what a pretty girl that was in the pink dress, and wondered if I knew her. (I was in one of the side couples.)

At “Ladies half change,” he reached out his hand with eagerness and she gave hers without reluctance. When they stood in their places again, he continued to hold hers, instead of dropping it as he might. (This may have been absent-mindedness.) Presently she turned to him, smiling, and glanced down at their hands. He smiled, too. Then she withdrew her hand, but without apparent offense.

Just then the order came, “Forward and back.” He reached out his hand for hers, saying, _sotto voce_, “You see, you might as well have let me keep it.”

This was all the preliminary skirmishing. The question of veracity comes next.

After the dance my cousin came to me.

“Who was that pretty girl opposite me?” He said.

“What girl?” I asked.

“The one in pink: who was to your right: and danced with the man in the wilted collar.”

“Ah! That was Miss Hart. Nice girl.”

“Yes,” assented my cousin. “She squeezed my hand the second time we met in the grand right and left. I wish you’d introduce me to her.”

The next dance happened to be the second extra, which I had with Miss Hart. We had not gone half way around the room when she said:

“Why didn’t you introduce your cousin to me? He squeezed my hand in the last quadrille.”

Of course it’s a simple matter of tact. I have my own opinion, but prefer to allow the sentimental reader to judge for himself. I have known Miss Hart a long time and she never has squeezed my—however I don’t suppose that really bears on the point.

THE UNUSABLE PLOT.

Here is another plot, but unfortunately it belongs to a friend of mine, so that I cannot use it.

If is half past four in Paris—stories of this class are always put in Paris—and the hero, who is also the villain, goes into a church. He stops at one of the chapels and looks in. A woman is there, but the light is dim and he cannot at first be sure that it is she whom he seeks, women’s backs being all somewhat alike.

She is kneeling, and she has been crying, though the hero cannot see that. He speaks to her and thanks her for giving him this opportunity of seeing her, and is going to take her hand; but she interrupts him and tells him that it is all a terrible mistake, that she cares for him to be sure, but that it is in a platonic way as a brother, that she truly loves her husband, and is sorry for all that has happened.

The hero who is also a villain listens with half a smile: he has seen women repent before, and it adds zest to the chase. His manner warms and he makes love admirably.

The heroine is nice—so the person who made this plot told me—and the hero is horrid. His hair is a little thin on the top of his head, and his boots are carefully polished, and he is a little fat. He is always polite to a pretty woman, but his politeness is something of an insult.

It is because the heroine is really nice, I suppose, that she at last persuades him that she does love her husband and not him. Then he goes away, and she, sinking down on the _priedieu_, listens to the click of his polished heels on the marble floor of the church. She sees at her feet the flowers which he had worn in his button-hole, and she picks them up and kisses them passionately. She is going to hide them in her bosom: but then being really nice she lays them before the figure of the Virgin, with a little prayer and then goes away.

As for the hero who is also the villain, he is piqued that it should be she that has stopped loving first; but is perhaps as well, he reflects, for she was beginning to bore him.

He looks at his watch and jumps into a cab. The horse goes fast, for the hero has an engagement at half-past five o’clock with Therese and has offered the cabman fifty centimes _pour-boire_ if he will get to her house on time.

“SANS WINS, SANS SONG, SANS SINGER, AND—SANS END.”

I have another plot, but I do not expect ever to do anything with it. It is about the Man in the Iron Mask. Somebody is to be handling the iron mask—it is kept, I think, in the Invalides at Paris—when upon pressing a certain knob a hidden recess is to be revealed, constructed with marvelous ingenuity (as they always are you know) wherein is to be a paper telling all about the man in the iron mask.

There is nothing very original so far; but as I recollect this plot—I thought of it four years ago—the denouement was very striking. Unfortunately I have forgotten it.

KENNETH BROWN.

SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SOUL EASEMENT AND WISDOM INCIDENTALLY.

Subscribers to the PHILISTINE not fully understanding my jokes will be supplied with laughing gas at club rates.

* * * * *

_The St. Louis Mirror_ is flashing the light on to one W. J. Arkell, who it says has a habit of carrying on a brilliant conversazione with himself through his chapeau. Just what this means I do not know, but Arkell is not the only man in this country who owns an Unjust Judge.

* * * * *

The city of Cork in Ireland has one hundred thousand inhabitants, one-half of whom can neither read nor write. Able-bodied men can be hired for forty cents a day, and women who get a dollar a week and board are very fortunate. The city of Cork has no street cars, nor electric lights; the best hotel has no elevator, nor gas; so you can neither fall down the shaft nor asphixiate. At bed-time you are given a candle which is duly charged in your bill. Three-fifths of the citizens are Catholics and yet the city of Cork boasts the finest Protestant Episcopal church of its size in the United Kingdom. I refer to the Church of St. Fin Barre. It cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The bronze gates that separate the chancel from the nave, alone cost twenty thousand dollars; sixteen thousand dollars were paid for one window, and the grill-work, hand carved, in the choir, took two men five years to make. The building of this beautiful temple was made possible only through the generosity of one Mr. Guinness, manufacturer of a certain “stout” that is known as “XXX.” This mixture is highly recommended for nursing mothers and those in need of a tonic.

And now a resident of Chicago proposes to build in the Windy City a church patterned after the beautiful church at Cork, but whose steeple is to be twice as high, and which is to cost a full million dollars. Cork can keep her rags and illiteracy; she may continue sending her guests to bed with a candle; but no longer shall she be able to boast her supremacy in things ecclesiastic—not by a dam sight!

* * * * *

THE EAST AURORA SUMMER SCHOOL OF LITERATURE: The season of 1896 opens July 1st, and will last for two months. The idea of the course being to prepare beginners that they may score a success in the fall publishing season.

A feature of our system is the Art of Sonneting which is imparted in three lessons, leaving the pupil then free to take up Novel Writing, Essay Composition or Dramatic Construction. The Modern Sex Novel Department is under the special care of the Matron.

For prospectus, address with stamp, Doctor John Peascod, D. D., Principal, Room 1001, Philistine Building, East Aurora, New York.

* * * * *

A small but lusty Philistine is now following Strange Gods in one of the Buffalo (N. Y.) newspapers. In his “Philistine Talk” he cites certain authors who he claims have an itch for fame; and for their benefit and the benefit of Organized Charity he gives the following Fable:

The Emperor Claudius on going up the steps of the Capitol at Washington one day found a Beggar who had a bad case of Eczema. Now the Eczema had staked off its claim on that particular spot on the Beggar’s back where he could not scratch it. The Emperor being a tenderhearted man, and a generous, acceded to the fellow’s prayer and ordered a slave to scratch the Beggar’s back. Next morning on mounting the Capitol steps the Emperor found two Beggars in place of one. But instead of assigning two slaves to scratch the backs of the two Beggars, he remarked in a sweet imperial falsetto: “Here you shabby sons of guns! scratch each other!!” and passed on in maiden meditation fancy free.

* * * * *

To Jehn Z.—No, Way & Williams do not publish _The Short Horn Register_.

* * * * *

I descend again to Mr. Bok, and apologize to the Philistines for having once seemingly coupled his name with that of Mr. Howells. That particular issue of the PHILISTINE is now listed at seven dollars with no copies to be found. Whether the scarcity arises from the agents of Mr. Howells having bought up all obtainable copies and destroyed them, or whether Mr. Bok’s emissaries scoured the book stalls for them, to keep as precious heirlooms, or both, I cannot say.

* * * * *

_The New York World_ recently gave two full columns to old epitaphs, and how the writer missed this, the choicest of them all, I know not. I hope, by the way, that none of the enemy will be deceived by its typographical form and quote it as a Stephen Crane poem:

Here lies, Foundered in a fathom and a half, The shell Of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., Formerly Commander of a Squadron In his Majesty’s service; Who broached to, at 5 P. M., Oct. 10th In the year of his Age Three-score and nineteen. He kept his Guns always loaded, And his Tackle ready manned, And never showed his poop to the enemy, Except when he took him in tow. But, His shot being expended, His Match burnt out, And his upper works decayed, He was sunk By Death’s superior weight of metal. Nevertheless, He will be weighed again At the Great Day, His rigging re-fitted, And his Timbers repaired; And with one broadside Make his old Adversary Turn tail.

* * * * *

When George Haven Putnam said, “The chief business of the True Publisher is to discourage the publication of books,” he made a strong bid for immortality. The mot deserves to rank with Tallyrand’s concerning the gift of language.

* * * * *

In a recent issue of _Harper’s_, “the pastor of Mt. Clemens” has something to say. And who would ha’ thought Mark Twain had a pastor?

* * * * *

Any writer who poses before the country as being the winner of A Big Prize is no longer like Caezar’s wife.

Little Journeys

SERIES FOR 1896

Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors.

The papers below specified were, with the exception of that contributed by the editor, Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late G. P. Putnam, in 1853, in a book entitled _Homes of American Authors_. It is now nearly half a century since this series (which won for itself at the time a very noteworthy prestige) was brought before the public; and the present publishers feel that no apology is needed in presenting to a new generation of American readers papers of such distinctive biographical interest and literary value.

No. 1, Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis. ” 2, Bryant, by Caroline M. Kirkland. ” 3, Prescott, by Geo. S. Hillard. ” 4, Lowell, by Charles F. Briggs. ” 5, Simms, by Wm. Cullen Bryant. ” 6, Walt Whitman, by Elbert Hubbard. ” 7, Hawthorne, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. ” 8, Audubon, by Parke Godwin. ” 9, Irving, by H. T. Tuckerman. ” 10, Longfellow, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. ” 11, Everett, by Geo. S. Hillard. ” 12, Bancroft, by Geo. W. Greene.

The above papers will form the series of _Little Journeys_ for the year 1896.

They will be issued monthly, beginning January, 1896, in the same general style as the series of 1895, at 50 cents a year, and single copies will be sold for 5 cents, postage paid.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON

The ROYCROFT Printing Shop has in preparation GLYNNE’S WIFE, a story in verse by Mrs. Julia Ditto Young.

Mrs. Young is a Poet who has written much but published little. This, her latest and believed by her friends to be her best work, is the product of a mind and heart singularly gifted by Nature, and ripened by a long apprenticeship to Art. As a specimen of the pure “lyric cry,” illustrating the melody possible in the English tongue, the volume seems to stand alone among all books written by modern versifiers. The delicacy of touch, the faultless rhythm, the splendid vocabulary and the gentle tho’ sure insight into the human heart, make a combination of qualities very, very seldom seen. The author _knows_, and knowing blames not: a sustained sympathy being the keynote of it all.

The publishers have endeavored to give the story a typographical setting in keeping with the richness of the lines. Five hundred and ninety copies are being printed on smooth Holland hand-made paper, and twenty-five on Tokio Vellum. The copies on Holland paper will be bound in boards covered with antique watered silk; the Vellum copies are bound in like manner save that each will bear on the cover a special water-color design done by the hand of the author.

The price of the five hundred and ninety copies is two dollars each; the Vellum copies five dollars each. Every copy will be numbered and signed by Mrs. Young. Orders are now being recorded and will be delivered on September 1st, numbered in the order received.

THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP, East Aurora, New York.

[Illustration: MODERN ART

Edited by J. M. BOWLES.]

Quarterly. Illustrated.

“If Europe be the home of Art, America can at least lay claim to the most artistically compiled publication devoted to the subject that we know of. This is _Modern Art_.”—_Galignani Messenger (Paris)._

“The most artistic of American art periodicals. A work of art itself.”—_Chicago Tribune._

_Fifty Cents a Number. Two Dollars a Year. Single Copies (back numbers) 50 Cents in Stamps. Illustrated Sample Page Free._

Arthur W. Dow has designed a new poster for _Modern Art_. It is exquisite in its quiet harmony and purely decorative character, with breadth and simplicity in line and mass, and shows the capacity of pure landscape for decorative purposes.—_The Boston Herald._

_Price, 25 Cents in Stamps, Sent Free to New Subscribers to Modern Art._

L. Prang & Company, Publishers. 286 ROXBURY STREET, BOSTON.

We make a specialty of Dekel Edge Papers and carry the largest stock and best variety in the country. Fine Hand-made Papers in great variety. Exclusive Western Agents for L. L. Brown Paper Company’s Hand-mades.

GEO. H. TAYLOR & CO., 207-209 Monroe Street, Chicago, Ill.

_Have you seen the Roycroft Quarterly? The May issue is a “Stephen Crane Number.” 25c. a copy or one dollar a year._

The Roycroft Printing Shop, East Aurora, New York.