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  THE LITERARY SHOP

  AND OTHER TALES

  BY

  JAMES L. FORD

  AUTHOR of “HYPNOTIC TALES,” “DR. DODD’S SCHOOL,”
  “THE THIRD ALARM,” ETC.

  _NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION_

  [Illustration]

  NEW-YORK

  THE CHELSEA COMPANY

  PUBLISHERS




  Copyright, 1894,

  By GEO. H. RICHMOND & CO.


  Copyright, 1899,

  BY THE CHELSEA COMPANY.




PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.


_The Literary Shop_ was first printed in book form in the fall of
1894, nearly five years ago. Some of its constituent papers had
already appeared in the pages of _Truth_ and _Puck_. To the present
edition have been added the sketches that deal with life and letters
in the McClure village of Syndicate. This model literary community was
established about four years ago, on a convenient and healthful rise
of ground overlooking the Hackensack River, which is navigable at that
point. It has a population of several hundred poets and prose hands,
all of whom are regularly employed on the magazine and the newspaper
syndicate controlled by Mr. S. S. McClure. These sketches are reprinted
by permission from the _New York Journal_ and the _Criterion_.

  NEW YORK, March 8, 1899.                                      J. L. F.




AUTHOR’S NOTE.


Many of these papers are new. Others are reprinted by permission from
_Puck_ and _Truth_.




CONTENTS.


THE LITERARY SHOP.

      CHAPTER I.                                                    PAGE

  IN AN OLD GARRET                                                     1

      CHAPTER II.

  THE “LEDGER” PERIOD OF LETTERS                                      11

      CHAPTER III.

  SOMETHING ABOUT “GOOD BAD STUFF”                                    24

      CHAPTER IV.

  THE EARLY HOLLAND PERIOD                                            34

      CHAPTER V.

  MENDACITY DURING THE HOLLAND PERIOD OF LETTERS                      47

      CHAPTER VI.

  THE DAWN OF THE JOHNSONIAN PERIOD                                   62

      CHAPTER VII.

  WOMAN’S INFLUENCE IN THE JOHNSONIAN PERIOD                          78

      CHAPTER VIII.

  LITERATURE--PAWED AND UNPAWED; AND THE CROWN-PRINCE THEREOF         99

      CHAPTER IX.

  CERTAIN THINGS WHICH A CONSCIENTIOUS LITERARY WORKER MAY FIND
    IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK                                          118

      CHAPTER X.

  “HE TRUN UP BOTE HANDS!”                                           139

      CHAPTER XI.

  THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.                                160


  AND OTHER TALES.

  THE POETS’ STRIKE                                                  183

  ANCIENT FORMS OF AMUSEMENT                                         194

  THE SOBER, INDUSTRIOUS POET, AND HOW HE FARED AT EASTER-TIME       199

  THE TWO BROTHERS; OR, PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING                     208

  THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN OF TALENT                               223

  THE SOCIETY REPORTER’S CHRISTMAS                                   231

  THE DYING GAG                                                      245

  “ONLY A TYPE-WRITER”                                               251

  THE CULTURE BUBBLE IN OURTOWN                                      260

  SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION AND PRESERVATION OF JOKES        275

  MCCLURE’S MODEL VILLAGE FOR LITERARY TOILERS                       299

  ARRIVAL OF THE SCOTCH AUTHORS AT MCCLURE’S LITERARY COLONY         307

  THE CANNING OF PERISHABLE LITERATURE                               316

  LITERARY LEAVES BY MANACLED HANDS                                  323

  MCCLURE’S BIRTHDAY AT SYNDICATE VILLAGE                            331

  LITERATURE BY PRISON CONTRACT LABOR                                340

  CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE SYNDICATE VILLAGE                             351




THE LITERARY SHOP




CHAPTER I.

IN AN OLD GARRET.


I am lying at full length on a broken-down haircloth sofa that has
been placed near the cobwebby window of an old garret in a country
farm-house. It is near the close of a rainy day, and all the afternoon
I have listened to the pattering of the heavy drops on the shingled
roof, the rustling of the slender locust-trees and the creaking of
their branches as the wind moves them.

There are pop-corn ears drying on the floor of this old garret; its
solid rafters are festooned with dried apples and white onions. Odd
bits of furniture, and two or three hair trunks bearing initials made
with brass-headed nails, are scattered about the room, and from where
I lie I can see a Franklin stove, a pair of brass andirons, and one of
those queer wooden-wheeled clocks that used to be made in Connecticut
years ago, and which are a fitting monument to the ingenuity of the
Yankee race.

Every article in the room is carefully treasured, and none is held in
more tender regard than are certain square, dust-covered packages of
what might be old newspapers that are piled up in big heaps beside the
old chairs and tables. One of these bundles lies on the floor beside
my sofa, with its string untied and its contents scattered carelessly
about. Look down and you will see that it contains copies of the _New
York Ledger_, of a year that was one of the early seventies, and which
have been religiously preserved, together with fully twoscore of other
similar bundles, by the excellent people who dwell in the house.

The number which I hold in my hand contains instalments of four
serials, as many complete stories, half a dozen poems, contributions by
Henry Ward Beecher, James Parton, and Mary Kyle Dallas, and a number of
short editorials and paragraphs, besides two solid nonpareil columns of
“Notices to Correspondents.” One of the serials is called “The Haunted
Husband; or, Lady Chetwynde’s Specter,” and deals exclusively with
that superior class of mortals who go to make up what a great many of
the old _Ledger_ readers would have called “carriage trade.” Another
story, “Unknown; or, The Mystery of Raven Rocks,” bears the signature
of Mrs. E. D. N. Southworth, a name venerated in every household in
which a red-plush photograph-album is treasured as a precious _objet
d’art_. The short stories are simple and innocuous enough to suit the
most primitive of brain-cells. The fiction is embellished with three
pictures, which are interesting as specimens of a simple and now
happily obsolete school of art.

The “Notices to Correspondents” are a joy forever, and reflect with
charming simplicity and candor the minds of the thousands of anxious
inquirers who were wont to lay all their doubts and troubles at Robert
Bonner’s feet.

It is here that the secrets of the maiden heart are laid bare to the
gaze of the whole world. It is here that we read of the young man who
is “waiting on” a young widow and formerly “kept company with” a lady
friend who is the cashier of the laundry which he patronizes. Not
knowing which of the two he ought to marry, he pours out his soul in
this free-for-all arena of thought and discussion. “Mary X.” writes
from Xenia, O., to inquire if she is a flirt because she has a new beau
every two weeks, and is solemnly warned by Mr. Bonner that if she goes
on in that way she “will soon have no beaux at all.” “L. L. D.” is a
young girl of eighteen, whose parents are addicted to drink. She wishes
to know if it is proper for her to correspond with a young gentleman
friend who is a telegraph-operator in Buffalo and has made her a
present of a backgammon-board last Christmas. That these letters are
genuine is proved by their tone of artless simplicity, and by the fact
that no single mind or score of minds could invent the extraordinary
questions that were propounded from week to week.

Careful perusal of the _Ledger_ lyrics reveals a leaning on the part of
the poets of that period toward such homely themes as “The Children’s
Photographs,” “The Mother’s Blessing,” and “Down by the Old Orchard
Wall.” They are all written on the same plane of inanity, and are
admirably well suited to the tastes of the admirers of Mrs. Southworth
and Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

It is growing dark in the old garret--too dark to read--and I arise
from the horsehair sofa, filled with memories of the past which have
been awakened by perusal of the yellow sheet of twenty years ago. As
I tie up the bundle and place it on the dust-covered heap with its
fellows, my eye falls upon a dozen packages, different in shape from
these and containing copies of the _Century Magazine_ for the past
decade, which are preserved with the same tender care that was once
bestowed upon the _Ledger_ alone.

But as I slowly descend the staircase my mind is full of the favorite
old story-paper, and of the enormous influence which its Scotch
proprietor, Robert Bonner, exerted over the literature of his day and
generation--an influence which is still potent in the offices of the
great magazines which now supply us with reading matter. I doubt if
there has ever been, in this country, a better edited paper than the
_Ledger_ was in the days when its destinies were shaped by the hand of
its canny proprietor. No editor ever understood his audience better,
or, knowing his readers, was more successful in giving them what they
wanted, than was Robert Bonner, whose dollars accumulated in his own
coffers even as the files of his paper accumulated in country garrets
in all parts of this broad land.

“Well, where do you find evidences of such careful editing in that
hotch-potch which you describe so carefully?” I hear some carping
critic ask, and as I run my eye over what I have written I realize
that I have utterly failed in my attempt to convey an idea of the
glories of that particular number of the _Ledger_. I would say,
however, to my critical friend that the paper is well edited because
it does not contain a line of prose or a stanza of verse that is not
aimed directly at the hearts and minds of the vast army of farmers,
midwives, gas-fitters’ daughters, and the blood-relations of janitors
who constituted its peculiar _clientèle_. And I would add that if the
critical one desires to get at the very bone and sinew of _Ledger_
literature he should make a careful study of the poems which were an
important feature of it, and in which may be found the very essence of
the great principles by which the paper was guided.

Indeed, Mr. Bonner used to be more particular about his poetry than
about his prose, and always read himself every line of verse submitted
to him for publication. Some of the poems were written by women of
simple, serious habits of thought; but a great many of the highly moral
and instructive effusions that were an important feature of the paper
were prepared by ungodly and happy-go-lucky Bohemians, who were glad to
eke out the livelihood earned by reporting with an occasional “tenner”
from Mr. Bonner’s treasury. These poets studied the great editor’s
peculiarities and personal tastes as carefully as the most successful
magazine contributors of to-day study those of the various Gilders,
Johnsons, Burlingames, and Aldens who dominate American letters in
the present year. For example, no horses in _Ledger_ poems were ever
permitted to trot faster than a mile in eight minutes, and it was
considered sagacious to name them Dobbin or Old Bess. Poems in praise
of stepmothers or life-insurance were supposed to be distasteful to
the great editor, but he was believed to have an absolute passion for
lyrics which extolled the charm of country life and the homely virtues
of rural folk. If a poet wrote more than one rhyme to the quatrain he
was warned by his fellows not to ruin the common market.

And now I hear from the carping critic again: “But you don’t mean to
tell me that any good poetry was produced by such a process? Why,
suppose one of our great magazines--”

“Who said anything about good poetry? It was good poetry for
the _Ledger_ subscribers to read, and as to the great modern
magazines--haven’t I told you already that I stumbled over a heap of
them just as I was leaving the old garret where the pop-corn and the
wreaths of dried apples and the bundles of _Ledgers_ are kept?”




CHAPTER II.

THE “LEDGER” PERIOD OF LETTERS.


A quarter of a century hence, perhaps, one of those arbiters of taste
to whom poetastry owes its very existence will lecture before the
intellectual and artistic circles of that period on “The Literary
Remains of the Bonnerian Period”; and the _Ledger_ school of poetry,
long neglected by our critics, will become a fashionable cult. I hope,
too, that the names of those writers who, as disciples of that school,
gave an impetus to those great principles which live to-day in the
beautifully printed pages of our leading periodicals will be rescued
from the shades of obscurity and accorded the tardy credit that they
have fairly won.

These principles have lived because they were founded on good, sound,
logical common sense, for Mr. Bonner possesses one of the most logical
minds in the world. In the days when he was--unconsciously, I am
sure--moulding the literature of future generations of Americans, he
was always able to give a reason for every one of his official acts;
and I doubt if as much can be said of all the magazine editors of the
present day. It was this faculty that enabled his contributors to learn
so much of his likes and dislikes, for if he rejected a manuscript
he was always ready to tell the author exactly why the work was not
suitable for the _Ledger_.

For instance: One day a maker of prose and verse received from the
hands of the great editor a story which he had submitted to him the
week before.

“If you please,” said the poet, politely, “I should like to know why
you cannot use my story, so that I may be guided in the future by your
preferences.”

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Bonner. “This story will not do for me because
you have in it the marriage of a man with his cousin.”

“But,” protested the young author, “cousins do marry in real life very
often.”

“In real life, yes,” cried the canny Scotchman; “but not in the _New
York Ledger_!”

And it is related of this talented young maker of prose and verse,
that he changed his hero and heroine from cousins to neighbors, and
the very same night was seen in Pfaff’s quaffing, smoking, and jesting
with his fellow-poets, and making merry over the defeat that was turned
into a victory. And in the generous fashion of Bohemia he told all his
comrades that “Bonner was down on cousins marrying”; and thereafter
neither in song nor story did a _Ledger_ hero ever look with anything
but the eye of brotherly affection on any woman of even the most remote
consanguinity.

“In real life, yes; but not in the _New York Ledger_!”

That gives us a taste of the milk in the cocoanut, although it does not
account for the hair on the outside of the shell.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Bonner knew that a great many of his
subscribers did not approve of a man marrying his own cousin when there
were plenty of other folks’ cousins to be had for the asking; and so,
rather than cause a moment’s annoyance to a single one of these, he
forbade the practice in the columns of his paper.

I knew a number of these _Ledger_ writers in my salad days, and
have often heard them discussing their trade and the condition of
the market in a way that would have lifted the hair of some of the
_littérateurs_ of the modern “delightfully-Bohemian-studio-tea” and
kettledrum school.

Years ago one of them confided to me his recipe for a _Ledger_ poem.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “be careful not to use up a whole idea on
a single poem, for if you do you’ll never be able to make a cent. I
usually cut an idea into eight pieces, like a pie, and write a poem for
each piece, though once or twice I have made sixteen pieces out of one.
My ‘Two Brothers’ idea yielded me just sixteen poems, all accepted, for
which I received $160. What do I mean by cutting up an idea? Well, I’ll
tell you. I took for a whole idea two brothers brought up on a farm in
the country, one of whom goes down to the city, while the other stays
at home on the farm. Well, I wrote eight poems about those brothers,
giving them such names as Homespun Bill and Fancy Jake, and the city
man always went broke, and was glad to get back to the country again
and find that Homespun Bill had either paid the mortgage on the place
or saved the house from burning, or done something else calculated
to commend him to the haymakers who subscribed for the paper. Then
I wrote eight more, and in every one of those it was the yokel who
got left; that is to say, Fancy Jake or Dashing Tom, or whatever I
might choose to call him, would go to the city and either get rich in
Wall Street--always Wall, never Broad or Nassau Street or Broadway,
remember--and come back just in time to stop the sheriff’s sale and
bid in the old homestead for some unheard-of figure, or else he would
become a great physician and return to save his native village at a
time of pestilence, or maybe I’d have him a great preacher and come
back and save all their souls; anyway, I got eight more poems out of
the pair, to say nothing of some stories that I used in another paper.”

I pondered for several moments over the words of the poet and then I
said to him, “But if you were so successful with the ‘Two Brothers’ why
didn’t you try to do as well with two sisters?”

“I did,” he replied. “I started a ‘Two Sisters’ series as soon as the
brothers were all harvested, but I got them back on my hands again. You
know Bonner is down on sisters.”

“Bonner is down on sisters!”

What stumbling-blocks there were in the path to literary fame which the
poets of the early _Ledger_ period sought to tread!

Fancy the feelings of one who has poured out his whole soul in a
poem descriptive of sisterly love and learns that his labor has been
in vain, not because of any fault on his part, not because his
poem is not good, but simply and solely because “Bonner is down on
sisters”! And then I hear the carping critic ask if I call that good
editing. I say that it was the very best of editing. At any rate, it
was good enough to make the _Ledger_ fiction popular from one end of
this country to the other; and it is because of that editing that we
still find the old dusty files in the country garrets, along with the
pop-corn ears and the wreaths of dried apples. I wonder how much of
the ephemeral literature of to-day will be found sacredly guarded in
anybody’s garret a quarter of a century hence?

But there were other folks besides sisters and matrimonial cousins who
were regarded with disfavor by the great editor and thinker who long
ago set the pace for modern American fiction.

Well do I remember Jack Moran coming upon us one bright morning, a
dozen years ago, with bitter invective on his lips because his poem,
“The Stepmother’s Prayer,” had been returned to him from the _Ledger_
office. He read it aloud to us, and then inquired, pathetically, “Isn’t
that poem all right?”

It was more than “all right.” It was a delicate, imaginative bit of
verse, descriptive of the young bride kneeling reverently in the
nursery of her new home and praying that God would make her a good
mother to the sleeping stepchildren. It was a real poem--such a poem as
poor, gifted Irish Jack Moran could write, but only when the mood was
upon him, for he was not one of those makers of verse who go to work at
six in the morning with their dinner-pails.

“Ah, Jack!” exclaimed a sympathizing poet, “you never should have
taken it to the _Ledger_. Didn’t you know that Bonner was down on
stepmothers? Change it round so as to make the stepmother a beast, and
he’ll give you ten for it.”

“By the way, Jack, do you remember the time there was a death in the
old man’s family, and we all got in on him with poems about meeting on
the further shore and crossing the dark river?”

“I do,” replied Jack, briefly. “It was worth just twenty to me.”

And why was Bonner “down” on stepmothers? Simply because he wished to
avoid giving offense to those who disapproved of second marriages, and
who formed a very large part of his constituency.

I hope that I have thrown sufficient pathos into my description of the
condition of the poor rhymester of a dozen or fifteen years ago to
touch the hearts of my sympathetic readers. How much better off, you
say, is the literary man of to-day, who makes steady wages in Franklin
Square, or occupies one of the neat white cottages erected for the
employees of the McClure Steam Syndicate Mills in Paterson!

Better off in some respects, perhaps, dear reader, but in others his
state is none the more gracious than it was in the days when Jack
Moran’s “Stepmother’s Prayer” was rejected because Bonner was down on
stepmothers. The great _Ledger_ editor has retired to his stock-farm,
but the principles which have enabled him to possess a stock-farm
still live in every magazine office in the land, and the writer of
to-day must be just as careful in regard to forbidden topics as his
predecessor was, and, moreover, must keep his eye on three or four
editors, with their likes and their dislikes.

But these remarks are not made in a carping spirit. There is some good
reason for every one of these likes and dislikes. If Mr. Gilder prefers
oatmeal to wheaten grits as a breakfast-table dish for the hero of
the new _Century_ serial, it is because he has an eye on his Scotch
subscribers; and if the manuscript of _Robinson Crusoe_ is returned to
Mr. De Foe with the remark that “Burlingame is down on goats,” it is
simply because _Scribner’s Magazine_ is not pushing its sale in Harlem
and Williamsburg.

In regard to the practice of cutting an idea into eight pieces and
serving up each piece as a separate poem or story, can any one familiar
with current literature deny that ideas are just as much cut up now as
they ever were? More than that, have not some of our writers solved
the old problem of making bricks without straw? Why, then, you ask,
is their manuscript printed in preference to matter that is more
virile and fresh and readable? For the same reason that Jack Moran’s
“Stepmother’s Prayer” was returned to him by the very hand that was
stretched forth in glad eagerness to grasp the sixteen poems that had
sprung from the solitary idea of the two country brothers. Why, I know
of one or two poets whose verses enjoy the widest sort of publicity,
and who, I am sure, cut an idea into thirty-two pieces instead of
sixteen.




CHAPTER III.

SOMETHING ABOUT “GOOD BAD STUFF.”


“Bonner is down on stepmothers!” “All _Ledger_ horses must be called
Dobbin, and there is a heavy fine for driving them through a poem or
serial faster than a walk, or, at best, a slow trot!” “Don’t write
anything about cousins marrying unless you want to have them back on
your hands again!” These were a few of the beacon-lights that shone
on the literary pathway of twenty years ago, and I know of more than
one successful writer whose early footsteps were guided by the great
artistic principles first laid down by Robert Bonner and religiously
followed by the makers of prose and verse who brought their wares to
him every Friday morning. But poor Jack Moran did not live to become a
successful writer. He dropped out of the ranks just as the rest of us
were passing the quarter-post, but it was the first hurdle that really
did for him. I have often thought that if Jack had taken his friend’s
advice and “changed his poem round so as to make the stepmother a
beast,” he might have lived to fill a responsible position in the
Franklin Square Prose and Verse Foundry, or at the Eagle Verse Works
in Jersey City. But Jack was a poet, and therefore did not know how
to “change his poem round,” and besides he hated to go to work every
morning with his dinner-pail in his hand, and there were cakes and ale
in Bohemia in those days for such as he.

As for the poet who tried to guide Jack’s footsteps in the path that
led to fame, he is alive to-day, and a highly esteemed member of the
guild. Indeed, a more industrious, sober, or thrifty man of letters
never put on a pair of overalls or crossed the North River in the early
morning boat with a basket of poems, jokes, and stories on his arm.

One Friday morning, many years ago, I went with this poet to the
_Ledger_ building, and there found half a dozen writers gathered
together in an outer office, anxiously watching the dark shadow of a
man that was thrown upon a partition of ground glass that extended from
floor to ceiling across the room and separated it from the private
office of the great editor.

The dark moving shadow on which every eye was fixed was that of
Robert Bonner himself, and as it was seen to cross the room to a
remote corner--growing smaller and fainter as it receded--every face
brightened with hope, and forms that had seemed bent and dejected but
a moment before were suddenly straightened. An instant later the door
opened and the editor of the _Ledger_ crossed the threshold, handed a
ten-dollar bill to one of the waiting poets, and then hastily retired
to his own den again.

Then my friend showed me how the watchers could tell by the movements
of the dark shade whether a poem had been accepted or refused. If the
editor walked from his desk to the remote corner of his private office
they knew that he did it in order to place a poem in the drawer of an
old bureau in which he kept the accepted manuscript; but if, on the
other hand, he came directly to the door a horrible feeling of anxiety
came into every mind, and each poet uttered a silent prayer--while his
heart literally stood still within him--that the blow might fall on
some head other than his own.

On this occasion my friend received ten dollars for his poem entitled
“When the Baby Smiled,” and in the fullness of his heart he invited the
author of the rejected verses on “Resignation”--who, by the way, was
uttering the most horrible curses as he descended the staircase--to
join us in a drink.

It was on this occasion, also, as I distinctly remember, that my friend
the poet put the whole trade of letters in a nutshell:

“There are plenty of people,” he remarked, “who can write good good
stuff, but there are not many who can write good bad stuff. Here’s one
of those ‘Two Brothers’ poems I told you about, and if that isn’t good
bad stuff, I’d like to know what is.” He handed me a printed copy of
the poem, and I can still recall the first verses of it:

  Herbert to the city went,
    Though as sturdy was his arm
  As plain Tom’s, who, quite content,
    Stayed at home upon the farm.

  Herbert wore a broadcloth coat,
    Thomas wore the homespun gray;
  Herbert on display did dote,
    Thomas labored every day.

These lines have clung to my memory during many changing years, and I
quote them now with undimmed admiration as almost the best example of
“good bad stuff” that our literature possesses. And if the lines compel
our regard, what must be our respect for the genius which could extract
sixteen ten-dollar poems from the one primitive idea of the two rustic
brothers?

The bard who penned these deathless stanzas has progressed with the
times, and now writes many a poem for the _Century_ and _Scribner’s_,
but I never see his name in one of the great monthlies without thinking
of the days when he used to sit in the outer office of the _Ledger_,
with half a dozen of his contemporaries, wondering whether he would get
a ten-dollar bill or his rejected poem when Mr. Bonner came out to
separate the chaff from the wheat.

Some of my readers may wonder what became of all the poetry that was
rejected by Mr. Bonner, and to these I would reply that it was seldom,
indeed, that any literary matter--either in prose or in verse--was
allowed to go to waste. The market was not as large then as it is now,
and a serious poem could “make the rounds” in a very short time. If it
failed as a serious effort it was an easy matter for a practical poet
to add to it what was called a “comic snapper,” by virtue of which it
could be offered to _Puck_ or _Wild Oats_.

For instance, a poet of my acquaintance once told me that he wrote a
poem about “Thrifty Tom,” as he called him, who insured his life for a
large sum of money, paid the premiums for two or three years, and then
died, leaving his wife and children comfortably provided for. Now it
happened that the great Scotch editor did not believe in life-insurance
as an investment--the _Ledger_ published no advertisements of any
description in those days, so he was enabled to view the matter with
an unbiased mind--and therefore he declined the verses, not wishing
to promote the interests of a scheme which he could not indorse. And
straightway the poet sate himself down and gave to his stanzas a comic
snapper which told how “Idle Bill” proceeded to court and marry the
widow, and passed the remainder of his days in the enjoyment of the
money which the thrifty one had struggled so hard to lay aside for
his family. In its new form the poem was sold to _Puck_, and the word
went out to all the makers of prose and verse that Bonner was “down on
life-insurance.”

Is there any demand for “good bad stuff” nowadays?

There is an almost limitless demand for it, and there always will be,
provided the gas-fitters and the paper-hangers and the intelligent and
highly cultivated American women continue to exert the influence in the
field of letters that they do to-day.

The “good bad stuff” of the present era is printed on supercalendered
paper, and illustrated, in many instances, with pictures that are so
much better than the text that it is difficult to comprehend how even
the simplest observer can fail to notice the contrast. Moreover the
good bad stuff of to-day commands much higher prices than were ever
paid during the _Ledger_ period, and it is not infrequently signed
with some name which has been made familiar to the public ear--if only
by mere force of constant reiteration--and is therefore supposed to
possess a peculiar value of its own. Nevertheless it is good bad stuff
all the same, and can be recognized as such by those whose eyes are
too strong to be blinded by the glare from the pictures and the great
big literary name.

Don’t understand me to say that there is no good prose or verse to be
found on those highly glazed, beautifully printed pages to which we of
the present generation of readers turn for our literary refreshment. On
the contrary, the modern magazines give us so much that is admirable,
so many thoughtful essays and descriptive articles, that one wonders
only why so much of the fiction which they offer should be of such poor
calibre.

But the editors and publishers of the great monthlies know what they
are about as well as Mr. Bonner ever did, and they know, too, the
immense value of the good bad stuff which they serve to their patrons
in such tempting and deceptive forms.




CHAPTER IV.

THE EARLY HOLLAND PERIOD.


When, near the close of the year 1870, Dr. J. G. Holland started
_Scribner’s Monthly_, American letters entered upon a new stage of
its development. The literary field was then occupied by the poets,
humorists, and essayists of the Pfaff school, dwelling under the
perpetual shadow of the Bonnerian maxims, and the occasional one of
pecuniary depression; also a few men of the James Parton type who knew
not Bohemia, and women writers like Mrs. Dallas.

It must be remembered that at this time no signatures were allowed in
the Harpers’ publications, and the matter published in the _Monthly_
was either of foreign manufacture or else prepared in the Franklin
Square Foundry by poets employed by the week at fair but not exorbitant
wages. The _Ledger_ principles were observed here to a certain extent,
but were not enforced as rigidly as they were by Mr. Bonner in his
own establishment. I think, myself, that the Pfaff poets were more
directly accountable for the introduction of the Bonnerian maxims than
were the Harpers themselves, because they had become so accustomed to
eliminate stepmothers, sisters, fast trotters, and other objectionable
features from their work that they had come to regard them as quite as
much outside the pale of ordinary fiction as if they were dwellers on
the planet Mars. Moreover a poem or story constructed on the Bonner
plan might, if rejected by the Harpers, still prove acceptable to the
_Ledger_.

From the very first Dr. Holland showed a commendable purpose to raise
the tone of the new _Monthly_ above that of Mr. Bonner’s story-paper,
and although we see distinct evidences, in his earlier numbers, of
_Ledger_ influences, it was not long before a gradual emancipation from
the strictest and most literal interpretation of Mr. Bonner’s iron-clad
rules began. Horses soon began to strike a swifter gait in the serial
stories, and in “Wilfred Cumbermede” one of these quadrupeds has the
hardihood to throw its rider over its head. But that would never have
happened if George Macdonald had been trained in the modern _Ledger_
school of fiction.

Looking over these old numbers in the light of ripened knowledge,
I can see Dr. Holland slowly groping his way along an untrodden
pathway leading from the _Ledger_ office to the broad fields of
literature, where our magazine barons hold undisputed sway. That he
kept a watchful eye on his rural subscribers is shown by an extended
illustrated article on Fairmount Park, and another one descriptive
of Philadelphia--subjects which possess about as much interest for
metropolitan readers as that masterpiece of bucolic romance, _The
Opening of a Chestnut Burr_. Among the writers whose names appear in
these numbers are Alice Cary, Edward Eggleston, J. T. Headley, and
Washington Gladden--all graduates or disciples of the great _Ledger_
school.

Of these I consider Washington Gladden entitled to the highest rank
as an exponent of mediocrity. Indeed, after a careful survey of the
magazine barons’ wide domain, I must award the palm of merit to this
popular manufacturer of literary wares for even mediocrity, unspoiled
by the slightest sense of humor. It is that very lack of humor which
has brought success to many a man whose mission in life has been to
write for the great, simple-minded public. The poets and humorists of
the Jack Moran school, who were compelled to descend to the commonplace
and the stupid because of their temporal necessities, never really
became thorough masters of the divine art of writing mediocrity,
because their sense of the ludicrous brought them to a halt before
those Alpine heights of tedious imbecility which people like E. P. Roe
and Washington Gladden scaled with unblanched cheeks.

But to return to Washington Gladden. If any of the large and thoughtful
circle whom I have the honor to address have never read a story from
this gentleman’s pen, entitled _The Christian League of Connecticut_,
I implore them to seek out the numbers of the _Century_ in which it
appeared about a decade ago, and sit down to the enjoyment of one of
the finest specimens of unconscious humor that our generation has
known.

This story deals with a league composed of all the Protestant churches
in a small Connecticut town, for the promotion of large-hearted
geniality and mutual aid in the work of evangelization. It contains a
description of a scene in the Methodist Church at the moment when it
seems that the congregation will be unable to raise the debt which has
long weighed them down. They are about to abandon the attempt, when
the other churches in the town learn of their distress and proceed
to help them out. The First Congregational Church pledges $1675, the
Universalist Church sends $500, and finally the Second Congregational
Church raises the ante to $1810, while the people burst forth into
shouts of “Hallelujah!” and fervent songs of praise.

If any one were to write a wild burlesque on the ecclesiastical methods
in vogue in Connecticut he would fall far short of Mr. Gladden’s
account of this extraordinary meeting. The New England country
parson who gets his salary regularly is a fortunate man, and as to
subscriptions for the church, they are usually collected with the aid
of a stomach-pump. I have never yet heard of a man giving anything
toward any church save that in which he had a pew, but I do remember
the scene which ensued one morning in a little country meeting-house,
when the richest man in the congregation relaxed his grip on three
hundred dollars--and there was a string tied to every bill, too.

Another chapter of _The Christian League_ tells us how Judge Beeswax
returned to his native village from the city in which he had grown
wealthy, and generously gave a thousand dollars to save the old church,
in which he had worshiped as a boy, from being sold for old timber.

And this _dénouement_ bears such a wonderful resemblance to that in
eight of the sixteen “Two Brothers” poems that I am half inclined to
suspect that in his younger days Mr. Gladden was one of the poets
who turned up at the _Ledger_ office every Friday and waited for the
verdict.

And I am sure that Dr. Holland had been, in his time, a close student
of the Bonnerian maxims, and especially of that which I have already
alluded to--“In real life, yes; but not in the _New York Ledger_!” To
which might be added, “nor in the old _Scribner’s_ either.” All through
the Holland period we find evidences of the deep hold that this maxim
had taken on the minds of both writers and barons.

For example, I believe that it is pretty well known that extreme
prohibition measures bring about the most degrading and terrible
forms of drunkenness known outside of Liverpool, and that of all the
prohibitory statutes the Maine Liquor Law is about the worst. That
is the case in real life, but not in _Scribner’s Monthly_, for in
the year 1877--Dr. Holland being then the dominant figure in American
letters--we find in an article on the Rangeley Lakes the following
paragraph: “The Maine Liquor Law has certainly put an end to this
_régime_ (a barrel of rum to a barrel of beans), and with it have
disappeared to a very great extent drunkenness, profanity, and kindred
vices.”

Yes, my carping friend, we all know that the sentence which I have
quoted is ridiculously untrue, and entirely out of place in a very
interesting article on trout-fishing, but there was just as good a
reason for printing it as there was for publishing _The Christian
League of Connecticut_. That paragraph was well calculated to please
folks of the variety that swooped down upon New York thirty thousand
strong, under the banner of the Christian Endeavor Society.

I do not know why it is, but people of this class fairly revel in
humbug of every description, and nothing pleases them more than to
read about the beneficent influences of prohibitory legislation, or to
swallow once more the old Anglo-Saxon lie about Albion’s virtue and
the wickedness of France--and if you would like to see that miserable
fallacy whacked in the head read Mr. Brownell’s _French Traits_--or
even to gloat over Mr. Gladden’s story of the princely generosity that
prevails in the religious circles of New England.

These Christian Endeavor people are a mystery to me. More than thirty
thousand of them took possession of our city, and there was one
erring brother among them who fell by the wayside, and was locked up
in the House of Detention, charged with having been robbed of his
return-ticket and about two hundred dollars in money. He was confined
nearly a week, and during that time not one of his fellow Christian
Endeavorers held out a helping hand to him. If the unfortunate man had
come on from the West to attend a convention of sneak-thieves he would
have fared better than he did.

“But what have the Christian Endeavorers to do with literature?”
asks my doubting and critical friend. They have a great deal to do
with literature just now, more’s the pity. I did not drag them into
these pages by the neck and ears simply to say what I thought of them
(although I am not sorry to do that), but to give my audience an idea
of one of the elements--and it is a large one, too--to which our
magazine publishers are obliged to cater, if they wish to hold their
own in point of circulation.

It is because of just such people as these that our periodical
literature is constantly defaced by matter of the sort that I have
mentioned, and we are all the time saying, just as Bonner said to the
Pfaff poet, “It’s one thing in real life, but another in _Harper’s_ and
the _Century_.” So it happens that intelligent human beings must have
their nostrils assailed with rubbish about the Maine Liquor Law putting
a stop to profanity, because, forsooth, it is supposed to tickle the
palates of a lot of sniveling humbugs, who are so busy with prayers and
psalm-singing that they have not time to perform the commonest acts of
decency and charity for one of their own kith and kin.

Understand me, I am not blaming the barons for putting stuff of this
sort into their publications. If I were the proprietor of a great
magazine I would have a picture of Robert Bonner over my desk, and the
walls of my editorial rooms and business offices should be hung with
the great _Ledger_ maxims. There are a thousand mediocre people in this
country to where there are five of superior intelligence; but, after
all, the five have _some_ rights that magazine barons are bound to
respect, and I think that about Christmas-time every year some little
attention ought to be shown them.




CHAPTER V.

MENDACITY DURING THE HOLLAND PERIOD OF LETTERS.


The Holland age of letters may be said to have extended over the eighth
decade of this century, and that it was an era of change and progress
can be readily seen by a glance at the periodical literature of the
seventies.

It is during this era, however, that we find indications of a
deplorable tendency on the part of the good doctor to pander to the
prejudices of the gas-fitter and the paper-hanger element, by the
publication of stories and articles which were either spurious as
literature or else absolutely mendacious as to the facts which they
recorded and the scenes which they described.

Of course I do not pretend that literary mendacity began under Dr.
Holland, for the _Ledger_ school was a highly imaginative one, at best;
but the vein of untruth which is found cropping out from time to time
during the eighth decade has proved infinitely more harmful to modern
literature than were the lurid and confessedly improbable tales of
bandits and haunted castles and splendid foreign noblemen which found
so many eager readers a score of years ago. The aristocratic circles
of English society which were enlivened by the nebulous presence of
Lady Chetwynde’s spectre were so far removed from those in which the
spellbound hay-maker, who read about them, had his being that it made
very little difference to him--or to literary art either--whether they
were truthfully portrayed or not; but the mendacious and meretricious
literature which we find in the Holland period is more pretentious in
its imitation of truth, and therefore all the more dangerous.

It was within a year after the first number of _Scribner’s_ had been
issued that Dr. Holland began the publication of a series of papers,
afterward printed in book form, which deserve special mention here
because they are so thoroughly characteristic of the period in which
they saw the light. They are known to the world as _Back-log Studies_,
and the average reader of ordinary intelligence will tell you that Mr.
Warner’s book is “delightful reading,” that he possesses a “dainty
style,” and that his studies of the open fireplace are “fresh,
original, and altogether charming.”

Now did you ever happen to read _The Reveries of a Bachelor_? If you
did you will admit that there was very little left in an open fire when
Ik Marvel got through with it; and if you have also read _Back-log
Studies_ in the conscientious, critical way in which all books should
be read, then you will agree with me in my opinion that Mr. Warner
found very little to say about it that had not already been much better
said by Marvel.

The book is neither fresh nor original nor charming, but it imitates
those qualities so artistically and successfully that it has won
for itself a unique place in the literature of a period in which
the _Ledger_ and the Holland schools of fiction may be said to have
struggled for the supremacy.

I do not call _Back-log Studies_ mendacious. They are merely imitative,
and deserve mention here only because they were put together with so
much cleverness that nearly the whole of the reading public has been
deluded into believing them wholly original and of a high order of
merit.

In a previous chapter I have cited certain glaring examples of
mendacity that occurred during the Holland period; but none of them
deserves to rank, in point of barefaced and unscrupulous perversion
of facts, with Abbott’s _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, published in
_Harper’s Magazine_ years before Dr. Holland became the leading figure
in American letters, which he was during the seventies. Nor should we
lose sight of the fact that the present literary age has given birth
to no end of stories and novels and descriptive articles which are
disgracefully mendacious in color, fact, and sentiment.

But if you, my dear reader, would like to see a descriptive article
which is absolutely matchless in point of mendacity and asinine
incompetency, turn to the June _Scribner’s_ of 1875--the very middle
of the Holland age--and read what a certain Mr. Rhodes has to say
about the Latin Quarter of Paris. I suppose the whole world does not
contain a corner that offers so much that is picturesque, fascinating,
interesting--in short, so well worth writing about--as the Quartier
Latin in the French capital.

At the time this article was printed there were dozens of clever young
men--Bohemians, poets, and humorists of the class that used to gather
in Pfaff’s of a Saturday night to make merry with the “tenner” received
the day before for a _Ledger_ poem entitled “Going Home to Mother” or
“Be Prepared; Bow to the Will Divine.” I doubt if we have to-day young
men better equipped for the task of describing the student life of
Paris than were those who dwelt in our own Bohemia in 1875. But the
conductors of _Scribner’s Monthly_ passed them by and intrusted the
work to this Albert Rhodes, concerning whom history is silent, but who
seems to have been more incompetent and more unworthy of his great
opportunity than any human being on the face of the earth.

What shall we say of a man who quotes one of the best things in the
_Scènes de la Vie de Bohême_ and then blandly remarks that he does not
see anything funny in it?

That is precisely what Mr. Rhodes does. He prints the program of the
soirée given by Rodolphe and Marcel, and then observes, with the
solemnity of a Central Park pelican: “There is nothing very humorous
in this, as will be observed, and yet it may be regarded as one of the
best specimens of Murger’s _genre_.”

Well, I can inform Mr. Rhodes, and also the simple-minded folk who
believed in him because he wrote for the magazines, that if that
chapter of the _Vie de Bohême_ is not funny, there is nothing funny in
the world. It begins with the “opening of the salons and entry and
promenade of the witty authors of the _Mountain in Labor_, a comedy
rejected by the Odéon Théâtre,” and closes with the significant warning
that “persons attempting to read or recite poetry will be cast into
outer darkness.”

The gifted Mr. Rhodes was probably in doubt as to the humor of this
passage because it is not prefixed with “Our friend K---- sends
the ‘Drawer’ the following good one,” and because its point is not
indicated by italics after the fashion of humor of the _Ayer’s Almanac_
school; but he can rest assured that that brief quotation from Murger
is the funniest thing in his essay, always excepting his own bovine
lack of perception. It is particularly funny to me because I have
sometimes witnessed the “entry and promenade” through the salons of
the witty authors of stories that have been accepted by magazines--a
spectacle calculated to produce prolonged and hilarious merriment--and
I have often wished that the recitation clause in the Bohemian’s
program could be enforced in every house in the town.

I have devoted a good deal of space to this long-forgotten article
because it is a fair sample of the sort of stuff that is offered
to us from time to time, prepared especially for us, like so much
baby’s food, by men and women who are carefully selected by the
magazine barons, and who generally rival Mr. Rhodes in point of simian
incompetence and utter lack of all appreciative or perceptive qualities.

But let us turn from the awful spectacle of Mr. Rhodes standing like
a lone penguin in the very midst of the Latin Quarter of Paris, and
wailing mournfully about the poor girl who “sometimes compels the young
man to marry her.” A far brighter picture is that presented by the
distinguished English gentleman who, having won the highest distinction
with his pencil, takes up his pen with the air of one who is enjoying
a holiday fairly earned by a lifetime of toil, and portrays the real
Quartier Latin of the Second Empire with a humor that makes us think
of Henri Murger, and with a delicacy of touch, a human sympathy, and
a tendency to turn aside and moralize that place him very near to
Thackeray.

If you wish to read a story which is at once human, truthful, and
interesting, read George Du Maurier’s “Trilby,” and note the skill with
which he has caught the very essence of the spirit of student life,
preserved it for a third of a century, and then given it to us in all
its freshness, and with the fire of an artistic youth blended with the
philosophy and worldly knowledge that belong only to later life.

To read “Trilby” is to open a box in which some rare perfume has been
kept for thirty odd years, and to drink in the fragrance that is as
pervading and strong and exquisite as ever.

And while we are enjoying this charming story, let us not forget to
give thanks to the Harpers for the courage which they have shown in
publishing it, for if there is anything calculated to injure them in
the eyes of the gas-fitters and paper-hangers it is a novel in which
the truth is told in the high-minded, cleanly, and straightforward
fashion in which Mr. Du Maurier tells it here. Fancy the feelings of
a Christian Endeavorer--the modern prototype of the Levite who passed
by on the other side--on finding in a publication of the sort which he
has always found as soothing to his prejudices and hypocrisy and pet
meannesses as the purring of a cat on a warm hearthstone--fancy the
feelings of such an one as he finds the mantle of charity thrown over
the sins and weaknesses of the erring, suffering, exquisitely human
Latin Quarter model.

One need not read more than a single instalment of “Trilby” to
realize that its author never learned the trade of letters in either
the _Ledger_ primary school or the Dr. Holland academy, for there is
scarcely a chapter that does not fairly teem with matter that has long
been forbidden in all well-regulated magazine offices, and I know that
a great many experienced manufacturers of and dealers in serial fiction
believe that it marks a new era in literature.

But to return to our sheep--and in the case of Mr. Rhodes the word
is an apt one--why was that article about the Latin Quarter of Paris
published?

Perhaps some of my readers think it was that the Scribner people did
not know any better, or because Mr. Rhodes belonged to that “ring of
favored contributors” of which one hears so much in certain artistic
circles. In reply, let me say that the “ring of favored contributors”
is a myth, or at least I have never been able to find reasonable proof
of its existence. Magazine editors buy exactly what they consider
suitable for their readers, and they buy from whoever offers what
they want. If they allowed themselves to be influenced by their small
personal likes and dislikes the whole literary system which they have
reared would go to pieces, and some dialect-writers that I wot of would
be “back on the old farm,” like the slick chaps in eight of the “Two
Brothers” poems.

As for the Scribner editors “not knowing any better,” let none be
deceived. They have always known a great deal more than their rejected
contributors gave them credit for, and there was a distinct and
vital reason for every important step that they took in building up
the magnificent property now known the world over as the _Century
Magazine_. Personally I have the highest confidence in the wisdom of
the magazine barons. If a barbed-wire fence is stretched across a
certain pasture it is with a purpose as definite and rational as that
which led Mr. Bonner to reject Jack Moran’s “Stepmother’s Prayer” and
pay $160 for the sixteen poems about the two brothers.

No; there was something in this article that made it valuable for
magazine purposes. It was well calculated to please those who revel in
that sniveling Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy and humbug about British virtue
and the wickedness of the French people. Mr. Rhodes was employed by
Dr. Holland because he was probably the only living creature who could
stand on the spot from which has come so much that has made the world
brighter and better and happier, and utter his silly platitudes about
“young men draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs.” I say that the
editor of _Scribner’s_ had just as good a reason for publishing the
Quartier Latin essay as Mr. Bonner had for being “down on stepmothers”
and refusing all poems that treated of them: _Dr. Holland was down on
grisettes_.




CHAPTER VI.

THE DAWN OF THE JOHNSONIAN PERIOD.


When the good Dr. Holland passed away, his mantle descended upon the
shoulders of Mr. R. U. Johnson, the foremost of his disciples, and one
who had literally sat at the feet of the great master of the eighth
decade of the present century, and learned from his lips the deathless
principles of modern magazine editing. Since then Mr. Johnson has,
in his capacity of associate editor of the _Century Magazine_, so
skillfully blended the methods of the canny Scotch _Ledger_ editor
with those of Dr. Holland that he has not only kept his own periodical
well in the lead, but has also set the pace for American literature
and compelled his rivals to watch his movements at all times with the
closest care, and frequently to imitate him.

I first heard of the existence of Mr. Johnson, who is unquestionably
the one dominant figure in American literature of to-day, about
fourteen years ago, just as I was beginning to learn something
about the trade of writing. I had placed in the hands of a literary
friend--now well known as one of the most successful of the modern
school of story-writers--the manuscript of a story which dealt with the
criminal life of the lower east side of the town, and was wondering
how soon I was to awake and find myself famous when my manuscript was
returned to me with a brief note from my friend, in which he said:

“I read your story through yesterday, and was so much pleased with it
that my first impulse was to take it to the _Century Magazine_. Indeed,
I would have done so had I not remembered at that moment that Johnson
does not like low life; so you had better try one of the daily papers.”

“_Johnson does not like low life!_”

That was encouraging news for a young man who believed that literary
methods had not materially altered since the days when Oliver Goldsmith
wrote _The Vicar of Wakefield_.

The pen fell from my hand--it happened to be employed just then on a
story dealing with life in a Pell Street opium-joint--and I said to
myself: “Merciful heavens! must I devote my life to the delineation of
what are called society types, simply because Johnson--whoever he may
be--does not like low life?”

I think that if I had known then that low life was only one of a
thousand things that could not meet the approval of Johnson, and
that, moreover, Bonner was down on fast horses, stepmothers, sisters,
matrimonial cousins, and brindle-pups, I would have thrown down my pen
and endeavored to support myself in some other way.

But I did not know anything about the practical side of literature
then, so I blundered on, wasting a great deal of time over forbidden
topics, until I made the acquaintance of Jack Moran and others of his
school, who welcomed me to Bohemia, and generously bade me share their
treasure-house of accrued knowledge of editorial likes and dislikes. My
low-life story--in my sublime faith I had written it on the flimsiest
sort of paper--traveled from one office to another until it had eaten
up $1.28 in postage and looked like Prince Lorenzo in the last act of
_The Mascot_. Then, held together by copper rivets, it sank into its
grave in the old daily _Truth_, unwept and unsigned.

I came across this forgotten offspring of my literary youth not long
ago, and candor compels me to say that if Mr. Johnson had read that
story and printed it in the _Century Magazine_ he would not be to-day
the dominant figure in the literature of our country that he is. My
romance was not nearly as good as a great many that I have read in
daily papers from the pens of clever newspaper men who know what they
are writing about. In point of intense dramatic interest it was not
within a thousand miles of the _Sun’s_ masterly history of the career
of George Howard, the bank burglar, who was murdered in the Westchester
woods about fifteen years ago. The story of Howard’s life and crimes
was told in a page of the _Sun_, I think by Mr. Amos Cummings, and if
I could find any fiction equal to it in one of our magazines I would
gladly sound the praises of the editor who was courageous enough to
publish it.

I can afford to smile now as I recall the bitterness of spirit in
which I used to chafe under the restrictions imposed upon us by the
all-powerful barons of literature. I used to console my wounded vanity
then by picturing to myself a bright future, when Johnson would stretch
out his hands to me and beg me to place on the tip of his parched
tongue a few pages of my cooling and invigorating manuscript. And with
what derision would I have laughed then had any one told me that in the
years to come I would be the one to accord to Mr. Johnson the honor
which is his just due, and to recognize the wisdom which he showed in
rejecting my story of low life!

A truthful portrayal of life among the criminal and vicious classes
would be as much out of place in the _Century Magazine_ as one
depicting the love of a widower for his own cousin, whom he took out
to ride behind a horse with a record of 2.53, would have been in the
old _Ledger_; and I am positive that such a thing will not occur until
after the close of the present literary dynasty.

There is an excellent reason for this prohibition, too. There are no
people in the world who have a greater horror of what they consider
“low” or “vulgar” than those who are steeped in mediocrity, and who, in
this country, form a large part of the reading public. In England they
are known as the “lower middle classes,” and they exist in countless
thousands; but they have a literature of their own--Ouida, the _Family
Herald_, _Ally Sloper’s ’Alf ’Oliday_,--and writers like George
Meredith and Mrs. Humphry Ward and George Du Maurier pay no attention
to them or to their prejudices. Nor does it seem to me that these
writers are as grievously hampered by consideration for the peachy
cheek of the British young person as they claim to be.

The fact that Johnson was down on low life made a deep impression on
me, not so much because of what, I must admit, is a most reasonable
and proper prejudice, but because I soon found that every literary
man of my acquaintance was fully aware of his feelings in the matter,
and therefore took pains not to introduce into a story any scenes or
characters which might serve to render the manuscript unsalable in the
eyes of the _Century_ editors; and as years rolled on I could not help
noticing the effect which this and other likes and dislikes of this
literary Gessler had in moulding the fiction of our day and generation.
And it is because of this _Century_ taboo, which had its origin in the
_Ledger_ office, by the way, that I know of hardly a single magazine
writer of to-day who has made himself familiar with the great wealth of
varied material which may be found in that section of New York which it
is the custom to refer to vaguely as “the great east side.”

It was not very long after the receipt of the letter which thrust
upon my bewildered senses a nebulous comprehension of Mr. Johnson’s
influence and importance in the domain of letters that a fuller
recognition of his omniscience was wrung from me, all-admiring, yet
loath to believe. Mr. H. C. Bunner had written a story called “The Red
Silk Handkerchief” and sent it to the _Century_ office for approval.
The story contained a graphic description of the flagging of a train to
avert a disaster, in which occurred the following passage:

“... and he stood by the platform of the last car as the express
stopped.

“There was a crowd around Horace in an instant. His head was whirling;
but, in a dull way, he said what he had to say. An officious passenger,
who would have explained it all to the conductor if the conductor
had waited, took the deliverer in his arms--for the boy was near
fainting--and enlightened the passengers who flocked around.

“Horace hung in his embrace, too deadly weak even to accept the offer
of one of dozen flasks that were thrust at him.”

Now an ignorant layman will, I am bound, find nothing in the quoted
sentences that could possibly give offence to the most sensitive
reader; but it was precisely at the point where the quotation ends that
the finely trained and ever-alert editorial sense of Mr. Johnson told
him of the danger that lurked in the author’s apparently innocuous
phrase.

“Hold on!” he cried; “can’t you make it two or three flasks instead of
a dozen?”

Well did the keen-witted Johnson know that to many a serious minded
gas-fitter or hay-maker the spectacle of a dozen evil-minded and
evil-living men riding roughshod through the pages of a family
periodical and over the feelings of its readers would be distasteful in
the extreme, if not absolutely shocking. Two or three flasks would lend
to the scene a delicate suggestion of the iniquity of the world, just
enough to make them thank God that they were not as other men are; but
a dozen was altogether too much for them, and Johnson was the man who
knew it.

It is only fair to add that the author very properly refused to alter
his manuscript, and the story stands, to-day, as it was originally
written.

It was the flask episode that really opened my eyes to the peculiar
conditions which encompassed the modern trade of letters, clogging the
feet of the laborers thereof, and while making the easy declivities
about Parnassus accessible to every one who could hold a pen, rendering
its upper heights more difficult to reach than they ever were before.
And it was the same episode which finally proved to me Mr. Johnson’s
leadership in contemporaneous literature--a leadership which he has
held from that day to this by sheer force of his intimate knowledge of
the tastes, prejudices, and peculiarities of the vast army of readers
which the _Century Magazine_ has gathered unto itself, and still holds
by the closest of ties, and will hold, in my opinion, so long as Mr.
Johnson remains at the helm, with his pruning-hook in his hand, and
reading, with clear, searching eyes, the innermost thoughts of his
subscribers.

The present literary era has given us many things to be thankful for,
chief among which should be mentioned the enormous advance in the art
of illustration--a blessing which is shadowed only by the regretful
knowledge that literature has not kept pace with her sister art.
Indeed, too high praise cannot be given to the proprietors of the great
monthlies for the liberality and good taste which they have shown in
raising the pictorial standard of their publications to its present
high plane, from which it commands the admiration of all right-minded
people. And if we are living in the Johnsonian age of letters we are
also living in the Frazeresque period of art, for I doubt if any one
man has exercised a wider influence in the field of modern illustration
than Mr. W. L. Fraser, the maker of the art department of the
_Century_. Nor should we forget his associate, Mr. Drake.

To the present literary era, we are indebted, also, for the higher
development of that peculiar form of fiction called the short story,
the popularity of which has at least served to give employment to a
large number of worthy people who would otherwise have been compelled
to eke out an existence by humbler and more exhausting forms of labor.
No sooner had the short-story fever taken possession of the magazine
offices than there appeared from various corners of the earth men,
women, and children, many of whom had never written anything before
in their lives, but who now besieged the Franklin and Union Square
strongholds, bearing in their inky hands manuscript which in many
instances they were fortunate enough to dispose of, to the rage and
wonder of those old-timers who, having learned their trade under Mr.
Bonner and Dr. Holland, now found themselves too old to readily fall in
with the new order of things.

Of this new brood a few were chosen, and among them were the writers of
dialect stories, which enjoyed an astonishing vogue for several years,
and are now, happily enough, losing ground. I think the banner writer
of dialect stories of this period was a certain Mr. William McLellan,
who contributed a number of unique specimens of his wares to _Harper’s
Monthly_. He could spell more words wrong than any other writer I ever
heard of and I have often wished that I could read one of his stories.

Some of these short-story marvels have been extremely successful,
and now take rank as first-class writers of fiction. I would have a
much higher regard for them, though, if they could write novels--not
serials, but novels.

Among other notable products of the fecund Johnsonian age the future
historian of American literature will dwell upon the _Century_
war-papers, well calculated to extend the circulation of the magazine
over vast areas in the South as well as the North where it had been
almost unknown before; the Siberian experiences of Mr. George Kennan;
autobiographies of celebrated men and women; and idyllic phases of New
England life from the pen of the inimitable Mr. Gladden.

The Kennan articles were of enormous value, apart from their own
intrinsic merit, because their purpose was the reform of certain
abuses. We Americans are so fond of reform that we are always getting
it in one shape or another, and the more we get of it the more we
want; and these papers were aimed only at the Czar of Russia and his
advisers--men who neither subscribe for nor advertise in American
monthlies. I doubt if a proposition to undertake a crusade against
plumbers and compel them to lower their prices would awaken a tidal
wave of enthusiasm in the _Century_ office.




CHAPTER VII.

WOMAN’S INFLUENCE IN THE JOHNSONIAN PERIOD.


It seems to me that so long as a literary man can hold a pen in his
hand there is no danger of his going to the poorhouse; for when he
becomes too old to give satisfaction as a reporter, or too prosy
and stupid to write essays on “The Probable Outcome of the Briggs
Controversy” for the religious journals, he can always find a purchaser
for a series of _Letters to a Young Man on the Threshold of Life_, and
the sillier the letters the greater will be their success.

I have read dozens of books of this sort, and have often wondered at
the uniform ignorance and stupidity which characterized them. There
was a time when I wondered who bought these books, for no young man
on the threshold of life would be seen reading one of them. I know
now that they are not written to suit the tastes of the young men
themselves, but of the old grannies who will buy one at Christmas-time
as a present for Bob or Tom or Bill.

They are compiled either by literary hacks, enfeebled clergymen, or
women of limited intelligence, and they are artfully designed to
ensnare the fancy of the simple-minded, the credulous, and the good. I
have noticed that those which are plentifully supplied with texts from
Holy Writ command the largest sale, provided, of course, the texts are
printed in italics.

I believe that books of this description belong to what is known
technically as the “awakening” class--that is to say, they are supposed
to awaken a young man to a sense of his own spiritual degradation. I
cannot answer for their effect on very young men, but I do know that
they awaken nothing in my heart but feelings of uproarious hilarity;
for I well remember how the merry Bohemians who enriched the literature
of the _Ledger_ age with their contributions turned many an honest
dollar by means of these admonitory letters, and not one of these
priceless essays but contained its solemn preachment on the advantages
to be derived from the companionship of good, pure women. But never a
word was uttered in regard to the bad influence of good women.

Indeed, I can fancy nothing that would have been less in harmony with a
literary spirit which denied recognition to stepmothers, fast horses,
and amatory cousins than a vivid bit of realism of that sort; and
as for the succeeding age, was not the good Dr. Holland himself the
author of the famous _Timothy Titcomb Papers_? It is even too bald a
bit of truth for the more enlightened Johnsonian period in which we
live. Nevertheless the recording angel has a heavy score rolled up
against the sex which it was once the chivalrous fashion to liken to
the clinging vine, but which, as some of us know, can clutch as well as
cling--a sex which continues to distil the most deadly and enervating
of intoxicants, the flattery of tongue and eye, by the same process
that was known to Delilah and to Helen of Troy.

But although the latter-day process of distillation is undoubtedly
the same that was employed in centuries long gone by the effects of
the poison are by no means the same now that they were then. In the
Homeric age it sent a man forth to do valiant if unnecessary deeds; but
in the present era it slowly but surely robs the young writer of his
originality, undermines his reputation, nips all healthy ambition in
the bud, and leaves him a stranded wreck of whom men say contemptuously
as they pass by: “Bad case of the Swelled Head.” It may happen that
some more thoughtful of the passers-by will have the grace to put
the blame where it belongs by adding: “That young fellow was doing
very well two years ago, and we all thought he was going to amount to
something; but he fell in with a lot of silly women who flattered him
and told him he was the greatest writer in the world. They swelled
his head so that he could not write at all, and now he’s of no use to
himself or any one else.”

But although these poor stranded human wrecks may be encountered in
every large community I have yet to find a writer of advice to young
men with sufficient courage, veracity, and conscience to utter a word
of warning against the poison to which so many owe their fall.

In order that I may make clear my meaning in regard to the evil
influences of good women let us imagine the unheard-of case of a young
man who actually reads one of these books of advice to young men on
life’s threshold, and is sufficiently influenced by its teachings to
seek the sort of female companionship which he is told will prove of
such enduring benefit to him. This young man, we will say, is beginning
his literary career in the very best possible way, as a reporter on a
great morning newspaper. He is not a “journalist,” nor a compiler of
“special stories” (which the city editor always takes special pains to
crowd out), nor is he “writing brevier” or “doing syndicate work.” He
is just a plain reporter of the common or garden kind; and very glad he
is to be one, too, for he and his fellows know that the reporter wields
the most influential pen in America in the present year of grace.

And every day this young man adds some new experience to the store of
worldly knowledge which will be his sole capital in the profession
which he has chosen. To-day the task of reporting the strike at
the thread-mills gives him an insight into the condition of the
working-classes such as was never possessed by the wiseacres who write
so learnedly in the great quarterlies about the relation of labor to
capital. To-morrow he will go down the Bay to interview some incoming
foreign celebrity, and next week will find him in a distant city
reporting a great criminal trial which engrosses the attention of the
whole country. He is working hard and making a fair living, and, best
of all, he is making steady progress every day in the profession of
writing.

It is in the midst of this healthy, engrossing, and instructive life
that he pauses to listen to the admonitory words of the Rev. Dr.
Stuffe:

“Young man on life’s threshold, seek the companionship of good women.
Go into the society of cultivated and thoughtful people. You will be
all the better for it!”

Whereupon the young man arrays himself in the finest attire at his
command and goes up-town to call on certain family friends whom he has
not seen for some years past. Within a short time he finds himself a
regular frequenter of receptions, kettledrums, and evening parties,
with dinners looming up on the horizon. He meets a number of charming
young women, and cannot help noticing that they prefer his society to
that of the other young men whom they know. These other young men are
richer, better dressed, and, in many instances, better looking than
our young friend from Park Row, but what does all that count for in
the face of the fact that he has often been behind the scenes at the
Metropolitan Opera-house, and is personally acquainted with Ada Rehan
or Ellen Terry?

He thinks that Dr. Stuffe was right when he advised him to go into
society, and already he feels sure that he is deriving great benefit
from it. But what he mistakes for a healthful stimulant is, in reality,
the insidious poison against which the Reverend Stuffe has never a
word of warning said; and, unless our young friend be strong enough to
flee from it in time, he will find his feet straying from the rugged
path which leads to true literary success, and which he has up to this
moment been treading bravely and with ever-increasing self-confidence
and knowledge.

“And so you’re really a literary man! How nice that must be! Do tell
me what _nom de plume_ you write under!” some lovely girl will say to
him, and then he will answer meekly that he does not sign either his
name or his _nom de plume_, because he is working on a daily paper--if
he has a mind as strong as Daniel Webster’s he will say that he is
a reporter--and then some of the light will fade out of the young
girl’s deep-blue eyes, and she will say “Oh!” and perhaps ask him if
he doesn’t think Mr. Janvier’s story about the dead Philadelphia cat
the funniest thing that he’s seen in a long while. Then she will ask
him compassionately why he does not write for the magazines like that
delightful Mr. Inkhorn, who sometimes goes down on the Bowery with
two detectives, and sits up as late as half-past eleven. Has he read
Mr. Inkhorn’s story, “Little Willie: A Tale of Mush and Milk”? It’s
perfectly delightful, and shows such a wonderful knowledge of New York!

At this point I would advise my young friend from Park Row to put
cotton in his ears or turn the conversation into some other channel,
because if the sweet young girl prattles on much longer he will find
that her literary standards of good and bad are very different from
those of his editor-in-chief, whom he has been trying so hard to
please, and of the clever, hard-working and hard-thinking young men
with whom he is associated in both work and play. If she can inspire
him with a desire to please her, he will have cause to bitterly regret
the day that he first sought her society in obedience to the suggestion
of Dr. Stuffe; for to accomplish this he must put away the teachings of
his editor-in-chief, who has learned four languages in order that he
may understand his own, and whose later years have been devoted to the
task of instilling in the minds of his subordinates a fitting reverence
for the purity and splendor of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

It is precious little that the pure, refined young girl cares about
good English, and she would be a rare one of her kind if she did not
prefer it splattered with hybrid French because it “sounds better.”
She has a far higher regard for the author who signs his name to “The
Paper-hanger’s Bride” in the _Century_, or “The Dish-washer’s Farewell”
in the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, than she has for the reporter who, by
sheer force of humor, pathos, and imagination, has raised some trivial
city happening to the dignity of a column “story” which becomes a three
days’ talk along Park Row.

That there are women who habitually judge literary matter strictly on
its merits, and without regard to the quality of the paper on which it
is printed, I will not deny--I am even willing to admit that there are
women who will lead trumps at whist--but I most solemnly affirm that
the average well-educated, clever reading woman of to-day believes in
her secret heart that a magazine story possesses a higher degree of
merit than a newspaper sketch _because_ it appears in a magazine,
and that the “literary man” who has succeeded in selling enough short
stories to the monthlies to enable him to republish them in book form
has won for himself a more imposing niche in the temple of fame than
should be accorded to the late Mr. J. A. MacGahan, who was nothing but
a newspaper reporter to the time of his death.

A few cases of Swelled Head resulting from the flattery of women may
be mentioned here for the benefit of my imaginary young friend from
Park Row, to whom they should serve as so many awful examples of what
may happen to one who deserts the narrow and rugged path of honest
literary endeavor for the easy-going drawing-rooms in which “faking”
and even literary and artistic theft are looked upon with complacency
and tolerance.

About fifteen years ago sundry poems, essays, and short stories,
bearing a signature which is almost forgotten now, began to attract
the attention of the critical, and before long their author came to be
looked upon as one of the most promising and talented young writers in
the city. Unfortunately for himself, however, his very cleverness and
its remarkable precocity proved his ultimate ruin. He was a very young
man when he emerged from his native commonplace obscurity and crept,
almost unaided, to the very edge of the great white fierce light in
whose rays the most ordinary of folks become famous.

And, having reached the outer edge of this brilliant disk of light,
he leisurely sate himself down to rest, firmly believing that he was
in the very center of it, and that the silly flattery of underbred
and half-educated women, and some ridiculous puffery at the hands of
time-serving reviewers and paragraphers, were the greenest bays of
Parnassus. He became thoroughly satisfied with himself and with his
work; and the Swelled Head assumes no more virulent or insidious form
than that. He did not become an unpleasant, egotistical nuisance, as
many people similarly afflicted do. I cannot remember that he talked
very much about himself or his work; he simply agreed with himself that
he was the greatest writer of the age, and that he had already achieved
fame and glory of the highest sort.

That was not more than a dozen years ago, and at that time his name was
on everybody’s lips as the “coming man” of the period. Ah me! how many
of these “coming” men and women have come and gone along the outer edge
of the great white light within my short memory!

In the past six years I have not seen anything from his pen nor heard
him spoken of a dozen times. I saw him the other night on Third Avenue,
and if the light from a huge sibilant electric lamp had not shone upon
him much more vividly than the great white light of fame ever did, I
would never have known him. Seedy, abject, repulsive, he seemed fitted
for no rôle in life other than that of an “awful example” to accompany
one whose profession it is to go about delivering lectures on the evil
results of indulgence in Swelled Head.

In another case of Swelled Head which has come under my observation,
the victim is a woman--rather an unusual thing, for a woman’s vanity
is not, as a rule, as deep-seated as a man’s. This woman, whom I will
call Margaret Mealy, and whose real name is well known to thousands
of magazine readers, dwells in a pleasant inland town and has for a
neighbor an old-time friend and fellow-writer named Henry Kornkrop.
Both are graduates of the old _Ledger_ school--many a Friday morning
have they sat side by side on the poets’ bench in the outer office,
watching the awful shadow of Robert Bonner moving to and fro behind
the glass partition--and both have been successful, though in widely
different ways.

Mrs. Mealy has made the tastes of mediocre people her life-study, and,
as she has never for a single moment lost sight of the great literary
principles which she acquired during the period of her apprenticeship,
she has continued to keep herself in touch with editorial likes and
dislikes, with the result that she is now a regular contributor to the
leading magazines, and the author of various short stories and serials
of such incredible stupidity that I often wonder what hypnotic or
persuasive powers made it possible for her to dispose of them.

Her neighbor, Henry Kornkrop, is a literary worker of another stamp. He
goes to work every morning at nine o’clock, and from that hour until
noon the click of his type-writer does not cease for a single instant.
Two hours more in the afternoon complete his day’s stint; and as his
contract with his publishers calls for neither punctuation, paragraphs,
nor capitals, he is able to turn out a stupendous quantity of fiction
from one Christmas day to another. He writes over the name of “Lady
Gwendoline Dunrivers,” and deals exclusively with aristocratic life and
character. Many a young shop-girl going down-town in an early elevated
train with the latest “Lady Gwendoline” in her hand has been carried
past Grand Street and awakened with a start from her dream of Lord
Cecil, with his tawny mustache and clear-blue eyes, to find herself
at the Battery terminus of the road. There is strong meat in Henry
Kornkrop’s work, and his publishers gladly buy every ream that he turns
out. In one sense he leads an ideal literary life, with no editors to
refuse his work or alter it to suit the tastes of their readers, no
vulgar publicity, no adverse criticisms to wound his feelings, and,
best of all, no pecuniary care; for the “Lady Gwendoline” romances
bring him in not less than $10,000 a year, which is probably twice as
much as Mrs. Mealy makes.

Of course neither of these writers turns out any decent work the
year through, if we are to judge them by a respectable literary
standard; but it is not easy to determine which of the two is the more
culpable--Margaret Mealy, who puts gas-fitters to sleep, or Henry
Kornkrop, who keeps dish-washers awake. I fancy, however, that there
are few of my readers who will disagree with me in my opinion that,
of the two, honest Henry Kornkrop is by far the more successful and
prosperous. And yet Mrs. Mealy made up her mind a few years ago that
she really could not afford to be on such familiar terms with the
Kornkrops--not that Mrs. K. was not the very best of women, and Henry
the most industrious of men--but simply because her position before the
world as a literary woman made it necessary for her to be a little
particular about her associates.

In other words, the silly flattery of young women in search of
autographs, and of mendacious reviewers who have manuscript to dispose
of, has been sufficient to upset the mental equilibrium of this most
excellent woman and leave her a victim of the Swelled Head, pitied by
all who know her, and by none more than by her old associate of the
poets’ bench, Henry Kornkrop, the modest and gifted author of the “Lady
Gwendoline” romances.

One more instance of Swelled Head and I am done. The case to which I
refer is that of Mr. E. F. Benson, the author of _Dodo_, who has, I
am credibly informed, been so overwhelmed with attentions from women
of rank and fashion that his evenings are now fully occupied with
social functions and he is unable to attend night-school. This is to
be regretted, for Mr. Benson is by no means devoid of cleverness, and
I am sure that in an institution of learning of the kind that I have
named he would soon master such mysteries of syntax as the subjunctive
mood, and at the same time vastly improve his style by constant study
of such masterpieces of simple, direct English as, “Ho! the ox does
go,” and “Lo! I do go up.”




CHAPTER VIII.

LITERATURE--PAWED AND UNPAWED; AND THE CROWN-PRINCE THEREOF.


“See here!” cried a friend of mine the other day, “you’re always crying
down the magazines, but I’ll bet you couldn’t write a magazine story to
save your neck!”

My dear boy, I never said I could write one--in fact, I am very sure I
couldn’t; it’s all I can do to read them after the other people have
written them. That is an infirmity which has, I am sure, interfered
seriously with my labors as a critic--this inability to wade through
everything that the magazine editors are kind enough to set before
us. But I contrive to keep in touch with contemporary fiction by
frequenting the Mercantile Library, where I can not only read and
write undisturbed, but also take note of what others are reading and
writing. And toward the close of each month I make it a point to arrive
very early of a morning and take a superficial glance at the pages of
the different periodicals, in order to gain an idea of the relative
popularity of each one, and of the stories which they contain. When
I find a story that is smeared with the grime of innumerable hands,
or a magazine that has been torn almost to shreds by scores of eager
readers, I retire to a corner and try to find out the cause of all the
trouble.

But this labor-saving system, excellent as it is in many ways, has
its defects; and so it happened that I came very near missing one of
the most charming stories that I have ever found in the pages of a
magazine.

One bleak autumnal morning not many years ago I paid one of my
periodical early visits to the library, and had just finished my
examination of the literary market when my eye happened to fall on the
name of François Coppée printed in about the last place in the world
that one would be apt to look for it--namely, in the table of contents
of _Harper’s Magazine_. It was signed to a story called “The Rivals,”
and although the pages of that story were neither torn by nervous
feminine claws nor blackened by grimy hands I began to read it, and as
I read New York slipped away from me, the wheezing of the asthmatic
patrons of the library became inaudible to me, for I was in Paris with
the young poet and his two loves. When I had finished the book I looked
up and saw that I was still in the library, for there were the shelves
full of what are termed the “leading periodicals of the day,” and two
elderly ladies were racing across the room for the new number of
_Life_.

And then in the fullness of my heart I gave thanks to the great firm
of publishers that had dared to violate all the sacred traditions that
have been handed down from the Bonnerian to the Johnsonian age of
letters and print a story that could make me forget for half an hour
that I had a thousand words of “humorous matter” to write before twelve
o’clock.

It was sad to come back from the _coulisses_ of the Vaudeville and
find myself directly opposite the shelf containing the _Chautauquan
Magazine_ and within earshot of the rustling of _Harper’s Bazar_; but
I turned to my work in a better spirit because of M. Coppée and the
Harpers, and I have reason to believe that the quality of the “humorous
matter” which I constructed that afternoon was superior in fibre and
durability to the ordinary products of my hands. I know that a dealer
to whom I occasionally brought a basketful of my wares gave me an order
the very next day to serve him once a week regularly thereafter, and
as he has been a steady and prompt-paying customer ever since I have
special cause to feel grateful to the famous house of Harper for the
literary stimulus which the story gave me.

I have already alluded to the fact that the pages on which “The Rivals”
was printed were not torn and discolored like those containing other
much-read and widely discussed romances. It was this circumstance which
led me to reflect on the difficulties and discouragement which confront
the editor whose ambition it is to give his subscribers fiction of the
very best literary quality. In this instance the experiment had been
fairly tried and yet at the end of the month the virgin purity of these
pages was, to me at least, sadly significant of the fact that Coppée’s
delightful work had not met with the appreciation which it deserved.

I did not, of course, lose sight of the fact that the story appealed
almost exclusively to a class of people who keep their fingers clean
(and have cleanly minds also), and that it was, therefore, not
improbable that it had found more readers than the condition of its
pages would indicate; but nevertheless I was forced to the reluctant
admission that from a commercial point of view the publication of “The
Rivals” had proved a failure; nor has the opinion which I formed then
been upset by later observation and knowledge. All of which served
to heighten my admiration for the enlightened policy which gave this
unusual bit of fiction to the American public.

I said something of this sort to a friend of mine, who, although
rather given to fault-finding, had to admit that the Harpers had done
a praiseworthy and courageous thing in printing M. Coppée’s story.
“Yes,” said my friend, rather grudgingly, “it was a big thing of Alden
to buy that story; but if that story had been offered to them by an
American they wouldn’t have touched it with a forty-foot pole.”

My friend was quite right, for if that story, or one like it, were
offered in the literary market by an American writer, the editor to
whom it was offered would know at once that it had been stolen, and
would be perfectly justified in locking his office door and calling for
the police. Coppée has simply told the story of a young poet beloved of
two women, a shop-girl and an actress; and he has told it truthfully
as well as artistically--so truthfully, in fact, that I shudder when
I think of the number of people of the “Christian Endeavor” type who
must have withdrawn their names from the _Monthly’s_ subscription-list
because of it. If I could be assured that the number of these wretched
Philistines were far exceeded by that of the intelligent men and women
who added their names because of this important step in the direction
of true art, I would feel far more confident than I do now of a bright
near future for American letters.

The very next day after that on which I read “The Rivals” I was aroused
by a sudden agitation which spread through the reading-room of the
quiet library in which I was at work. The table on which my books and
papers were spread shook so that the thought of a possible earthquake
flashed across my startled mind, and I looked up in time to see the
young woman opposite to me drop the tattered remnants of _Harper’s
Bazar_, from which she had just deciphered an intricate pattern, rush
across the room, and pounce upon a periodical which had just been
placed on its shelf by the librarian. If she had been a second later
the three other women who approached at the same moment from three
different parts of the room would have fought for this paper like
ravening wolves.

The Christmas number of the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ had arrived.

I do not know of any magazine which so truthfully reflects the literary
tendency of the age as this extraordinary Philadelphia publication,
and I am not surprised to learn, as I have on undisputed authority,
that it has a larger circulation than any other journal of its class
in this country. It is conducted by that gifted literary exploiter and
brilliant romancer, Mr. E. W. Bok, the legitimate successor to Mr.
Johnson, and the present crown-prince of American letters.

I took the trouble to examine the number which the librarian had
removed, and found that it had been pawed perfectly black, while many
of its pages were torn and frayed in a way that indicated that they
had found a host of eager readers. Here was pawed literature with
a vengeance, and so, after leaving the library that afternoon, I
purchased a copy of the Christmas number, thrust it under my coat, and
skulked home.

All that evening until well into the early hours of the new day, I sat
with that marvelous literary production before me, eagerly devouring
every line of its contents, and honestly admiring the number of
high-priced advertisements which met my eye, and the high literary
quality of many of them. When I finally pushed the Christmas number
away and rose from my table it was with a feeling of enthusiasm
tempered with awe for the many-sided genius that controlled and had
devised this widely circulated and incomparable journal. I must
confess, also, to a feeling of admiration tinged with envy that took
possession of my soul as I read the serials to which were affixed the
names of some of the most distinguished writers in America. I have
spoken in an earlier chapter of the “good bad stuff” produced by my
friend the poet, and in which he took such honest pride; and I would
like nothing better than to ask him his opinion of the “bad bad stuff”
which the acknowledged leaders of our national school of letters had
unblushingly contributed, and for which, as I have since learned, they
were paid wages that were commensurate with their shame. Now the author
who writes a good story is entitled to his just mead of praise, but
what shall we say of the author who succeeds in selling for a large sum
the serial that he wrote during his sophomore year in college? I say,
and I am sure my friend the practical poet will agree with me, that he
ought to be the president of an industrial life-insurance company.

As for the literary huckster who succeeds in distending the circulation
of an almost moribund weekly journal to unheard-of limits by the
infusion of this and other equally bad bad stuff, I am at a loss for
terms that will do fitting tribute to his ability, and must leave that
duty for some more comprehensive reviewer of a future generation who
will do full justice to the genius of our great contemporary in an
exhaustive treatise on _English Literature from Chaucer to Bok_.

Although as yet only the heir apparent to the crown of letters, Mr.
Bok has acquired an undeniable and far-reaching influence in the realm
which he will one day be called upon to govern, and has strongly
impressed his individuality on contemporaneous literature, in which
respect his position is not unlike that of the Prince of Wales in
England. Among the more noteworthy of the literary products which
have added lustre to the period of his minority may be mentioned
“Heart-to-Heart Talks about Pillow-shams”; “Why My Father Loved
Muffins,” by Mamie Dickens; “Where the Tidies Blow”; “The Needs of
a Canary,” by the Rev. Elijah Gas; and “How I Blow My Nose,” by the
Countess of Aberdeen. Mr. Bok has also made a strong bid for the favor
of the sex which is always gentle and fair by his vigorous championship
of what is termed an “evening musicale,” an abomination which still
flourishes in spite of the persistent and systematic efforts of strong,
brave men to suppress it. A timely Christmas article on the subject,
published about a year ago, was found to be almost illegible before it
had been on the Mercantile Library shelves a fortnight. This article
is by the wife of an eminent specialist in nervous diseases--it may
be that she has an eye on her husband’s practice--and it contains
elaborate instructions as to the best way of inflicting the evening
musicale on peaceful communities. How to entrap the guests, what
indigestibles to serve, how to prevent the men from escaping when
the bass viol begins its deadly work, and how to make them believe
they have had a pleasant time, are among the minutiæ treated in this
invaluable essay.

It is by sheer force of tireless industry and a complete mastery of
every detail of his prodigious literary enterprise that Mr. Bok has
placed himself in the proud position which he occupies to-day. He is
the acknowledged authority on such subjects as the bringing up of
young girls, the care of infants, the cleansing of flannel garments,
and the crocheting of door-mats. In the gentle art of tatting he has
no superior, and has long held the medal as the champion light-weight
tatter of America. In his leisure moments he “chats with Mrs. Burnett,”
“spends evenings with Mark Twain,” and interviews the clever progeny of
distinguished men in the interest of his widely circulated monthly.

The homely qualities to which I have alluded in the preceding
paragraph have made Mr. Bok our crown-prince, but he will live in
history as the discoverer of a new force in literary mechanics--a force
which may, with justice, be compared to the sound-waves which have been
the mainspring of Mr. Edison’s inventions, and one which is destined
to produce results so far-reaching and important that the most acute
literary observer is utterly unable to make any estimate of them.

The use of the names of distinguished men and women to lend interest
to worthless or uninteresting articles on topics of current interest
dates back to the most remote period of the world’s history, but it
was Mr. Bok who discovered, during a temporary depression in the
celebrity market, that a vast horde of their relations were available
for literary purposes, and that there was not much greater “pull”
in the name of a citizen who had won distinction in commerce, art,
literature, in the pulpit or on the bench, than there was in those of
his wife, his aunt, his sister, and his children even unto the third
and fourth generation.

It was this discovery that led to the publication of the popular and
apparently endless series of essays bearing such titles as “The Wives
of Famous Pastors,” “Bright Daughters of Well-known Men,” “Proud
Uncles of Promising Young Story-writers,” and “Invalid Aunts of Daring
Athletes.” The masterpiece of these biographical batches was the one
bearing the general head of “Faces We Seldom See,” and it was this one
which established beyond all question or doubt the permanent worth and
importance of Mr. Bok’s discovery. The faces of those whom we often see
have been described in the public prints from time immemorial, but it
was the editor of the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ who discovered the great
commercial value that lurked in the faces of men and women who were
absolutely unknown outside their own limited circles of friends.

Then the relations of the celebrities became writers on their own
account, and straightway the pages of Mr. Bok’s invaluable magazine
glistened with “How My Wife’s Great-uncle Wrote ‘Rip Van Winkle,’” by
Peter Pointdexter; “My Childhood in the White House,” by Ruth McKee;
“How Much Money My Uncle is Worth,” by Cornelius Waldorf Astorbilt: and
“Recollections of R. B. Hayes,” by his ox and his ass.

Even a well-trained mind becomes stunned and bewildered in an attempt
to estimate the extent to which this newly discovered force can be
carried. The imagination can no more grasp it than it can grasp the
idea of either space or eternity, and it is my firm belief that under
the impetus already acquired in the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ the hoofs
of the relations of celebrities will go clattering down through the
literature of centuries as yet unborn.

In the mind of a celebrity the prospect is one calculated to rob the
grave of half its repose; nevertheless it must be a comfort to pass
away in the great white light of fame, cheered by the thought that the
stricken wife, the orphaned children, and the consumptive aunt are left
with a perpetual source of income at their fingers’ ends.

A well-thumbed paragraph in a recent number of the _Journal_ announces
that Mr. Bok has trampled upon his diffident, sensitive nature to the
extent of permitting “what he considers a very satisfactory portrait”
of himself to be offered to his admirers at the low price of a quarter
of a dollar apiece. This offer, which bears the significant heading
“The Girl Who Loves Art,” is made with the express stipulation that
intending purchasers shall not deepen the blush on the gifted editor’s
cheek by sending their orders direct to the _Home Journal_ office, but
shall address them direct to the photographer, Mr. C. M. Gilbert, of
926 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.

I desire to add that I reprint this generous proposition of my own free
will and without either solicitation on the part of Mr. Bok or hope
of reward from the photographer whose precious privilege it has been
to transmit to the cabinet-sized cardboard the likeness of America’s
crown-prince. I would not do this for Mr. Gilder, for Mr. Scribner, or
for any of the Harpers. I would do it only for Mr. E. W. Bok.




CHAPTER IX.

CERTAIN THINGS WHICH A CONSCIENTIOUS LITERARY WORKER MAY FIND IN THE
CITY OF NEW YORK.


Let us return to my imaginary young friend from Park Row, to whom I
have referred in a previous chapter, and let us picture him at a small
social gathering in the drawing-room of some clever and charming woman
of fashion, of the kind that assiduously cultivate the society of men
of art and letters because they like to hear the gossip of literature,
the stage, and the studio “at first hand,” if I may use the term.

Our young friend is modest and well-bred, and, moreover, carries with
him a certain breezy and intimate knowledge of the men and events of
the day which fairly entitles him to a place of his own in what ought
to be the most enjoyable of all circles of society. He is delighted
with the young women whom he meets here in what his hostess fondly
hopes will become a _salon_--how many New York women have had a similar
ambition!--and yet he cannot understand why they pay so much attention
to certain gentlemen who are present also, and whom he knows to be of
very small account so far as the arts and letters are concerned.

Young Daubleigh is there, the centre of a breathless group, to whom
he is bewailing the utter lack of all true art sense on the part of
Americans, and the hideousness of New York, which, he declares, offers
absolutely nothing to a true artist. Daubleigh never goes into society
without a pocketful of art phrases, such as “_au premier coup_,”
“he has found his true _métier_,” “the divine art of Velasquez,” and
others of the same sort. Of course he is a great social favorite, and
of course he has very high ideals of his art, and is apt to refer
slightingly to artists who know how to draw as “mere illustrators”--a
form of speech which does not somehow endear him to those who know that
he ought to be at Cooper Union learning the rudiments of his calling.

Another guest, and a favorite one too, is the strangely gifted romancer
who poses as a literary man because he has sold two sonnets and a
short story to one of the magazines, and of whom it is related in an
awestruck whisper that he once went through Mulberry Bend, disguised
with green side-whiskers and under the protection of a Central Office
detective--all this in search of what he calls “local color.”

Our young friend from Park Row spent two hours in Mulberry Bend the
night before in search of a “story” for his paper, and has the
hardihood to say so to the charming young girl beside him, adding that
he felt as safe as if he had been at an organ recital. The next moment
he realizes that he has made a mistake in trying to destroy any of the
glamour that shines from the green whiskers and the detective. The
conversation now turns upon the availability of New York as a field
for the writer of fiction, and is ably sustained by a young gentleman
who is known to be “literary,” although no one can say definitely
what he has written. However, he is literary enough to have a place
in this _salon_, and to take a leading part in the discussions which
go on there. He is very decided in his views regarding literature,
as distinguished from what he calls “mere newspaper scribbling,”
and does not scruple to express his contempt for anything that is
not printed either in a magazine or “between covers,” as he puts
it in his careless, professional fashion. Like many a one of the
gentler sex, he has been dazzled in early life by the glare from the
supercalendered paper. It is now nearly two years since he first began
to be a literary man, and he regards the progress that he has made
during that period as extremely gratifying, for he has put himself on
an excellent footing in three or four of the most delightful literary
and artistic _salons_ in the city, and confidently expects to have a
story published in one of the leading monthlies by midsummer. And that
story will be published, as I happen to know, as soon as he has made
certain alterations suggested by the editor--taken out the strong scene
between the banker’s daughter and the poor but impulsive suitor, and
modified various sentences which in their present form might wound the
susceptibilities of a large contingent of subscribers.

This promising young writer has been such a constant visitor to
magazine offices since he first embarked on a literary career, and has
associated so much with the junior members of the editorial staffs
(or staves?), that his opinions are a reflex of theirs, and he is now
thoroughly in accord with those with whom he is anxious to do business.

Therefore when he remarks, in that superior manner which insures for
him the instant credulity of the women in the company, that it is not
worth an author’s while to study the social structure of New York,
he is right from his own point of view, and it ill becomes our young
friend from Park Row to despise him for it. And when he goes on to say
that our beloved city has no individuality of its own, and is permeated
through and through with the awful flavor of commerce, while its
society is nothing but a plutocracy, I would advise my young friend of
the city department to draw him out and make careful notes of what he
says about life and literature.

This young man of letters is merely echoing the opinions of those
at whose feet he has sat, humbly and reverently acknowledging their
literary supremacy, and fondly hoping that they will purchase his
manuscript. He knows that Johnson does not like low life, just as Jack
Moran knew that Bonner would not tolerate second marriages or fast
horses; and so far as his own literary ambitions are concerned, a
thorough knowledge of New York would prove about as useful to him as a
familiarity with the customs and beliefs of the Mormons or the names of
the Derby winners would have been to the old-time _Ledger_ poets.

But the young reporter, who hears him with feelings of either amusement
or contempt or indignation, as the case may be, has already seen enough
of New York--it may be that he is able to compare it with foreign
capitals--to know that there is an abundance of material within its
limits which native writers of fiction have not only left untouched,
but of whose very existence most of them are absolutely unaware. But
it would be useless for him to say so in this company, for he who has
just spoken so decisively is a “literary man,” whose work will one day
be printed on the finest quality of paper and perhaps adorned with
beautiful pictures. And besides, do not all the nice people live north
of Washington Square?

Ah! those nice people and that supercalendered paper--what an influence
they exert in our literary Vanity Fair!

Perhaps one of the young literary men will go on to say, in proof of
his theory about the literary poverty of New York, that the magazines
have already published a great many articles and stories about the
Bowery and the east side, and have in fact quite covered the field
without enriching the literature of the day to any very noticeable
degree. All of which is perfectly true, but the results might have been
different had the work been intrusted in each case to a writer who was
familiar with the subject instead of to one whose only qualification
was that he had mastered the art of writing matter suitable for
magazines--or, in other words, “literature.” An exception to this
rule, and a notable one too, was made in the case of Jacob A. Riis,
who wrote some articles for _Scribner’s Magazine_ a few years ago
on the poor of New York, and who is known as the author of _How the
Other Half Lives_ and _The Children of the Poor_. Mr. Riis knows his
subject thoroughly--he has been a police reporter for years--and his
contributions are valuable because of the accuracy of the information
which they contain, which is more than can be said of the work of some
of the wiseacres and gifted story-writers who seem to stand so well in
the estimation of the magazine managers.

But, fortunately enough, the truth is mighty, and must, in the long
run, prevail, in literature as in other forms of art: and the enduring
novel of New York will be written, not by the man who, knowing his
audience of editors rather than his subject, is content with a thin
coating of that literary varnish known as “local color,” but by this
very young man from Park Row or Herald Square, to whom I take the
liberty of addressing a few words of encouragement and advice. When
this young man sits down to write that novel, it will be because
he is so full of his subject, so thoroughly in sympathy with his
characters--no matter whether he takes them from an opium-joint in
Mott Street or a ball at Delmonico’s--and so familiar with the various
influences which have shaped their destinies, that he will set about
his task with the firm conviction that he has a story to tell to the
world.

In that novel the “local color” will be found in the blood and bones:
it will not be smeared over the outside surface with a flannel rag. And
men and women will read the story and talk about it and think about it,
just as they are reading and talking and thinking about “Trilby” now.

Did you ever hear any one talk about Mr. Du Maurier’s “local color”? I
never did.

But it was for the best of reasons that the barbed-wire fence was
stretched across the city just below Cooper Union, although it shut
out from view a quarter of the town in which may be found a greater
and more interesting variety of human life and customs than in any
other region that I know of. Of course this literary quarantine was
not effected for the benefit of men and women of clean, intelligent,
cultivated minds, but to avoid giving offense to the half-educated
and quarter-bred folks whose dislike for what they consider “low” and
“vulgar” is only equaled by their admiration of all that is “genteel”
and their impassioned interest in the doings of “carriage company.”

I have sometimes accompanied parties of sight-seers through what was
to them an entirely unknown territory, south of the barbed-wire fence,
and I have noticed in almost every instance that it was only the men
and women of a high social and intellectual grade who showed any true
interest in, or appreciation of, what they saw there. There have been
others in these little expeditions who looked to me as if they stood
in perpetual fear of running across some of their own relations, and
one of these once gravely assured me that Hester Street was not at all
“nice.”

Chinatown is to me a singularly attractive spot, because of its vivid
colors, its theatre, joss-house, restaurants, and opium-joints--those
mysterious dens in which the Occident and Orient are brought into the
closest companionship, while the fumes of the burning “dope” cloy the
senses, and outcasts from every clime--the Chinese highbinder jostling
against the Broadway confidence man--smoke and drink side by side,
talking the while with a looseness of tongue that would be impossible
under any influence other than that of opium. Mr. William Norr, a New
York reporter, has told us a great many interesting and curious things
about the human types--Caucasian as well as Mongolian--to be found in
this quarter, and his book, _Stories from Chinatown_, possesses the
rare merit of being absolutely true in color, fact, and detail.

But there is something in this alien settlement that seems to me to
possess a greater interest, a deeper significance, than the garish
lights of the colored lanterns or the pungent smoke of the poppy-seed,
and that is the new hybrid race that is growing to maturity in its
streets and tenements. There are scores of these little half-breeds to
be seen there, and one of them has just come prominently before the
American public in the person of Mr. George Appo, the son of a Chinese
murderer and an Irishwoman, and himself a pickpocket, green-goods
operator, as well as one of the most entertaining and instructive of
all the witnesses examined before the Lexow Committee.

The Chinese and Italians rub elbows in this corner of the town, and
a single step will bring us into Mulberry Bend, bright with red
handkerchiefs and teeming with the olive-skinned children of Italy.
Nowhere in the whole city is there a stronger clan feeling than here--a
feeling that manifests itself not only in the craft and ferocity of the
vendetta, but also in a spirit which impels these poverty-stricken
exiles to stand by one another in the hour of trouble. There is no
better-paying property to be had than one of these Mulberry Street
tenements, for it is seldom, indeed, that the Italian poor will permit
one of their number to be turned into the street for want of a month’s
rent.

The Jewish old-clothing quarter that lies close to the Five Points is
near by. The “pullers-in,” as the sidewalk salesmen are termed in the
vernacular of the trade, transact business with a ferocity that can be
best likened to that of Siberian wolves; but over beyond Chatham Square
lies the Hebrew burying-ground, an ancient patch of sacred soil which
all the money in New York could not buy from the descendants of those
whose ashes repose there.

A few short blocks north of this old landmark lies one of the most
famous political districts in the town, one which is liable to become
the pivotal point in an exciting and closely contested election. There
is a saloon here on one of the side-streets which it may be worth your
while to visit. It is a dark, uninviting place, and its interior, with
its rows of liquor barrels and boxes and its throng of blear-eyed,
tough-looking customers, suggests anything but wealth and power.
Nevertheless the taciturn little Irishman whose name is over the door
has grown rich here and is the Warwick of the district so far as the
minor city offices are concerned. And it was to this rumshop, as the
whole ward knows, that a President of the United States came in his
carriage one Sunday morning not many years ago, to make sure of the
fealty of its proprietor and pour the oil of patronage on the troubled
political waters.

And furthermore it is related of this district boss--who stands in the
same relation to his constituents that the Roman senator of old did
to his clients--that once at the close of an election day of more
than ordinary importance one of his lieutenants burst in upon him, as
he sat with a few faithful henchmen in the back room of his saloon,
and announced triumphantly that his candidate had carried a certain
election district by a vote of one hundred and fifty-five to one. And
at this intelligence the east-side Warwick swore a mighty oath, and,
striking his clenched fist fiercely on the table before him, exclaimed:
“What I want to know is the name of the wan sucker that voted agin us!”

And while you are strolling along the Bowery you may come across an
oldish-looking man with a dyed or gray mustache and a suggestion of
former rakishness in his seedy clothes and well-preserved silk hat--a
man who seems to have outlived his calling, whatever it may have been,
and to have been left high and dry with no intimate companionship save
that of his own thoughts. It will pay you to get acquainted with this
old man, for he belongs to a race which is fast disappearing, the race
of old-time American gamblers, of which Bret Harte’s John Oakhurst is
the best type to be found in our national fiction. He still survives in
the West and South, but here in New York his place has been taken by
the new brood of race-track plungers and Hebrew book-makers; and the
faro-box from which he used to deal with deft fingers, and the lookout
chair from which he was wont in the olden times to watch the progress
of the game with quick, searching eyes and impassive face, know him no
more.

If you are studying the different dialects of the town, you should make
careful notes of this old man’s speech and of the peculiar way in which
he uses the present tense in describing bygone happenings. Mr. H. L.
Wilson has given us, in his excellent book of stories called _Zig-zag
Tales_, the following delicious bit of dialect, which I quote because
it well illustrates what I have said. The words are taken from the lips
of the “lookout,” and are addressed in a cautious undertone to the
faro-dealer:

“See his nobs there with the moniment of azures? I’m bettin’ chips to
coppers that’s Short-card Pete. He’s had his mustache cut off, ’n’ he’s
heavier ’n he was ten years ago. He tends bar in Noorleans, in ’68,
fer Doc Nagle--ole Doc, you rec’lect--’n’ he works the boats a spell
after that. See ’im one night play’n’ bank at Alf Hennesey’s, an’ he
pulls out thirty-two solid thousan’; Slab McGarr was dealin’, ’nis duck
here makes him turn over the box. See ’im ’nother time at San’tone, ’na
little geeser works a sleeve holdout on ’im--one a these here ole-time
tin businesses; you never see a purtier gun play ’n he makes--it goes,
too; mebbe it was n’swif’! He’s a-pullin’ on that gang; get onto that
chump shuffle, will you? Ain’t that a play fer yer life? He ain’t
overlookin’ any bets.”

“What are you giving us?” is the contemptuous cry of my young friend
from Park Row who has done me the honor to read what I have written. “I
know all that about Chinatown and the politicians as well as you do.”

So you do, my young friend, and I have no doubt you know it a great
deal better than I do; but I had a double motive in offering you the
words of suggestion which you have taken the trouble to follow. In
the first place, when the young literary man of limited achievement,
referred to in an earlier part of this chapter, obtains an order for an
article on “The Coast of Chatham Square,” he will probably come to you
to find out where Chatham Square is and at what time they light the gas
there: and I am sure you will be glad to help him to the full extent
of your knowledge, although you may wonder why the order was given to
him instead of to you. In the second place, although the whole of the
east side is familiar ground to you, there are plenty of intelligent,
well-informed men and women who know very little about what this city
contains, and if you will read my next chapter you will learn of the
impression which the tenement-house district made upon a certain
distinguished gentleman who saw it recently for the first time.




CHAPTER X.

“HE TRUN UP BOTE HANDS!”


One summer evening not very long ago, I saw, to my intense surprise,
Mr. Richard Watson Gilder crawl cautiously through the barbed-wire
fence which was long ago stretched, with his sanction, across the city
at Cooper Union. Once within the tabooed district, the distinguished
poet and _Century_ editor cast an apprehensive glance about him and
then marched swiftly and resolutely down the Bowery. Late that night
I caught another glimpse of him standing in the middle of one of the
side-streets that lead to the East River, and gazing thoughtfully at
the tops of the tall tenement-houses on either side of him.

I could not help wondering what strange errand had brought him to that
crowded quarter of the town, for not many months before one of his own
trusted subordinates had blandly informed me that there was nothing
in New York to write about, excepting, of course, such phases of its
social life as had been portrayed, more or less truthfully and vividly,
in the pages of Mr. Gilder’s own magazine.

I was still marveling at the spectacle of the poet in search of facts
when I came across one of my east-side acquaintances, who had seen and
recognized the _Century_ editor, and from him I learned that he was
pursuing his studies of what is known in the magazine offices as “low
life,” not that he might write about it or be capable of judging the
manuscript of those who did write about it, but by virtue of his office
on the Tenement-house Commission.

“He’s just been down Ludlow Street, an’ troo one o’ dem houses where de
Jew sweaters is,” added my friend.

“And what did he say to it all?” I inquired.

“He trun up bote hands!” said the east-sider, earnestly.

I walked home that night weighed down with the import of what I had
learned, and filled with solemn speculations regarding the effect which
Mr. Gilder’s visit would have on American letters. I could picture to
myself the hands that would be “trun up” in the _Century_ office when
the accomplished members of the editorial corps learned that their
revered chief had actually ventured into the heart of a district which
teems with an infinite variety of human life and lies but a scant mile
to the south of the desk from which Mr. Johnson rules the literary
world of this continent.

And I thought, also, of the excitement that would run through the
ranks of the writers should Mr. Johnson, of course after solemn and
secret communion with Mr. Gilder, announce officially that at twelve
o’clock, noon, on the first day of the month, the firing of a gun,
followed by the destruction of the barbed-wire fence, would throw
open the long-forbidden low-life territory to poets, romancers, and
dialectists of every degree. What a rush of literary boomers there
would be to this new Oklahoma should this old barrier be torn down! I
could not help smiling as I pictured to myself the strangely gifted
American story-writers groping their way through picturesque and
unfamiliar scenes, and listening in vain for the good old “bad man’s”
dialect that has done duty in fiction ever since Thackeray visited this
country, but which was swept away long since by the great flood-tide of
German and Jewish immigration which has wrought so many changes in the
life of the town. How many ink-stained hands would be “trun up” before
the first day of exploration was done! How many celebrated delineators
of New York life and character would lose themselves in their search,
after dark, for “local color,” and be gathered in like lost children
to be cared for by Matron Webb until rescued by their friends the next
morning!

Still brooding over the enormous possibilities of the future, I
stopped to rest and refresh myself in a modest and respectable little
German beer-saloon, situated on the tabooed side of the barbed-wire
fence--on the very border-land between low life and legitimate literary
territory. It is an ordinary enough little place, with a bar and tables
in front, and, in a space curtained off at the rear, a good-sized room
often used for meetings and various forms of merrymaking. I never drop
in for a glass of beer without thinking of a supper given in that back
room a few years ago at which I was a guest; and on this particular
night remembrance of that feast had a new significance, for it was
blended with thoughts of Mr. Gilder’s journeyings. It was an actor who
gave the supper--one of the most brilliant and talented of the many
foreign entertainers who have visited our shores--and nearly every one
of his guests had won some sort of artistic distinction. It is not the
sort of a place that suggests luxurious feasting, but the supper which
the worthy German and his wife set before us was, to me, a revelation
of the resources of their national cookery. The occasion lingers in my
memory, however, chiefly by reason of the charm and tact and brilliancy
of the woman who sat in the place of honor--a woman whose name rang
through Europe more than a quarter of a century ago as that of the
heroine of one of the most sensational duels of modern times. Mr.
Gilder has probably read about her in _The Tragic Comedians_, in which
George Meredith has made her the principal character, and I am sure
that if he--the _Century_ editor, not Mr. Meredith--had looked in upon
our little supper party that night, he would have “trun up bote hands,”
in the full sense of that unique and expressive term.

Recollections of this feast brought to mind another which was given
about two years ago fully half a mile to the south of the barbed-wire
fence, and which is worthy of mention here because it taught me that
some of the people bred in that region are vaguely conscious of a just
claim that they have on the attention of story-writers and rather
resent the fact that a place in our national literature has been denied
them.

The feast to which I allude was given on the occasion of a great
wedding in a quarter of the town which plays an important part in
civic and national affairs on the first Tuesday after the first Monday
in November--one in which the trade of politics ranks as one of the
learned professions--a quarter where events date from the reigns of the
different police captains.

The bride was the daughter of a famous politician, and I am sure
that in point of beauty and tasteful dress she might have passed
muster at Tuxedo. She was tall, graceful, and very young--not more
than seventeen. One could see traces of her Hebrew lineage in her
exquisitely lovely face, and I am sure she was well dressed, because
she wore nothing that in any way detracted from her rare beauty or was
offensive to the eye.

She had been brought up near the corner of the Bowery and Hester
Street, in the very centre of one of the most vicious and depraved
quarters of the town; and as I talked with her that night she told
me how most of her childhood had been spent playing with her little
brothers and sisters in the garden which her father had built for them
on the roof of the house in which they lived, and on the ground floor
of which he kept the saloon which laid the foundations of his present
political influence. She spoke simply and in good English, and one
could easily see how carefully she had been shielded from all knowledge
even of that which went on around her.

An extraordinary company had assembled to witness the ceremony and
take part in the festivities which followed, and as I sat beside two
brilliant, shrewd, worldly-wise Hebrews of my acquaintance we remarked
that it would be a long while before we could expect to see another
such gathering. The most important of the guests were those high in
political authority or in the police department, men whose election
districts are the modern prototype of the English “pocket boroughs” of
the last century; while the humblest of them all, and the merriest as
well, was the deaf-and-dumb boot-black of a down-town police court,
who appeared in the unwonted splendor of a suit which he had hired
especially for the occasion, and to which was attached a gorgeous
plated watch-chain. “Dummy” had never been to dancing-school, but he
was an adept in the art of sliding across the floor, and he showed his
skill between the different sets, uttering unintelligible cries of
delight and smiling blandly upon his acquaintances as he glided swiftly
by them.

Several of the gentlemen present had “done time” in previous years, and
others--John Y. McKane for example--have since then been “sent away.”
I saw one guest wink pleasantly at a police captain who was standing
near him and then slyly “lift” the watch from a friend’s pocket, merely
to show that he had not lost his skill. A moment later he awakened a
little innocent mirth by asking his unsuspecting friend what time it
was.

I dare say that a great many of my readers imagine that at a festivity
of this description “down on the east side” the men appear for the
most part clad in the red shirts which were in vogue at the time of
Thackeray’s visit to America, and which now exist only in the minds of
those writers who are famous for the accuracy of their local color.
As for the women, I have no doubt these same readers picture them in
garments similar to those worn by the “tough girl” in Mr. Harrigan’s
drama, nor would they be surprised to learn that there was a fight
every twenty minutes.

For their special benefit I will explain that nearly every one of
the men wore evening dress of the conventional pattern, and that the
display of diamonds and costly gowns--many of which were tasteful as
well--was a noteworthy one. There was an abundance of wine and strong
drink for everybody, and a very thirsty company it was, too, but not
a sign of trouble did I see the whole evening through. The truth of
the matter is that to the majority of the men and women present a
fight was a serious affair, and one not to be entered into lightly and
unadvisedly.

For three hours I sat with my two Israelitish friends--a pool-room
keeper and a dime-museum manager respectively--and talked about the
people who passed and repassed before us, and I am bound to say that
the conversation of a clever New York Jew of their type is almost
always edifying and amusing.

“It’s a curious thing,” said one of my companions at last, “but I
really believe that we three men at this table are the only ones in the
whole room who have any sort of sense of the picturesqueness of this
thing, or are onto the gang of people gathered together here. There’s
probably not a soul in the room outside of ourselves but what imagines
that this is just a plain, every-day sort of crowd and not one of the
most extraordinary collections of human beings I’ve ever seen in my
life, and I’ve been knocking round New York ever since I was knee-high.
There are thousands of people giving up their good dust every week
to go in and look at the freaks in my museum, and there’s not one of
them that’s as interesting as dozens that we can see here to-night for
nothing. Just look at that woman over there that all the politicians
are bowing down to; and they’ve got a right to, too, for she’s a big
power in the district and knows more about politics than Barney Rourke.
They never dared pull _her_ place when the police were making all those
raids last month. Those diamonds she wears are worth ten thousand if
they’re worth a cent. There’s a man who wouldn’t be here to-night if
it wasn’t for the time they allow on a sentence for good behavior, and
that fellow next him keeps a fence down in Elizabeth Street. There’s
pretty near every class of New Yorkers represented here to-night except
the fellows that write the stories in the magazines. Where’s Howells? I
don’t see him anywhere around,” he exclaimed, ironically, rising from
his chair as he spoke and peering curiously about. “Look under the
table and see if he’s there taking notes. Oh yes, I read the magazines
very often when I have time, and some of the things I find in them are
mighty good; but when those literary ducks start in to describe New
York, or at least this part of it--well, excuse _me_, I don’t want any
of it. This would be a great place, though, for a story-writer to come
to if he really wanted to learn anything about the town.”

I am perfectly sure that if Mr. Gilder had turned up at that wedding
his hands would not have been the only ones “trun up” in honor of the
visit. And I firmly believe that the visit of the _Century_ editor to
what is said to be the most densely populated square mile in the world
will prove pregnant of great results, and may perhaps mark a distinct
epoch in the history of letters.

On looking back over what I have written, it seems to me that I have
devoted too much of my space to that portion of the city which lies
below the barbed-wire fence; but I hope my transgression will be
pardoned in view of the great significance of Mr. Gilder’s recent
explorations and also of the fact that the region itself is so rich
in literary material of the sort that a Victor Hugo or a Dickens
would have seized upon with avidity. There are young men working in
newspaper offices now who will one of these days draw true and vivid
pictures of modern New York as it appears in the eyes and the brains
of those who know it thoroughly, and very interesting fiction it will
be, too. The late Mr. Mines (Felix Oldboy) and Mr. Thomas A. Janvier
have written successfully and entertainingly of the town that our
fathers and grandparents knew, but the book on New York of to-day has
yet to be written, and I know of no one better qualified for the task
than my young friend the reporter, whom I have personally addressed in
preceding chapters.

It seems to me something like high treason to even hint of the
possibility of a break in the present literary dynasty--an event
which would be deplored by none more bitterly than by my loyal self.
Mr. Johnson’s powers are still unimpaired, and his grasp on his
pruning-hook is as firm as it was on the day that he suggested the
reduction of the twelve flasks to two or three. I desire nothing more
than that in history’s page my name shall brightly glow beside his as
his Boswell. Mr. Bok has already shown such remarkable capacity for
benign and progressive rule that we may look forward with a reasonable
degree of confidence to his peaceful and undisputed accession to the
throne, and a new impetus to the sale of his photographs, which are
dirt-cheap at a quarter of a dollar.

And yet let us not forget that France was not always a republic
nor Germany a united empire; nor has there always been a Guelph
on the throne of Edward the Confessor. During the past year a
new literary power has arisen among us in the shape of the cheap
magazines--_McClure’s_, the _Cosmopolitan_, and _Munsey’s_--a power
which is making itself felt more strongly every day, and may in
the near future prove a serious menace to the established order of
things. The rapidity with which these cheap monthlies have established
themselves in the popular esteem is due primarily to the low price at
which they are offered, and also, in a measure, to the fact that their
conductors have not grown up in the _Ledger_ or Johnson school, and
therefore are not accomplished in the sort of editing which has reached
its highest development in the offices of the leading monthlies. But it
happens that each one of these cheap periodicals is controlled by a man
of restless, energetic temperament--what is known in common parlance as
a “hustler”--and if I am not much mistaken each one of these hustlers
is firmly imbued with the American fancy for exploring new and untried
fields. Several of the stories published in these cheap magazines are
of a sort forbidden in their more venerable contemporaries; and while I
am not prepared to say that these stories are equal in point of merit
to the ones which have been subjected to the Johnsonian process of
selection and elimination, they have attracted attention because people
found them different from those to which they had been accustomed.

Personally I have a profound faith in American hustlers. To me the
term hustling is synonymous with those which describe cable-laying,
bridge-building, and material progress of every kind, and when hustlers
go into the business of publishing magazines it is time to be on the
lookout for change of some sort. That the conductors of their older
contemporaries appreciate this fact and are getting ready to trim sail
if necessary is made evident to me by the Harpers’ publication of
“Trilby,” and Mr. Gilder’s journey to the populous kraals of the east
side.

I will say no more regarding the cheap monthlies and their possible
importance in the near future, because I do not wish to run the
risk of being put on trial for high treason; and so I will bring my
chapter to a close with a few words on a subject which I am sure lies
close to the heart of every true woman in the land--the unexampled
philanthropy shown by Mr. Bok in placing his photographs within reach
of the humblest and poorest of his admirers. The editor’s philanthropy
is exceeded only by the diffidence betrayed in his announcement of the
address of the photographer and the low price charged for the portraits.

The code of etiquette which governs the conduct of the dime-museum
lecturer ordains that no brutally frank or emphatic allusions shall
be made to the pictures of the different human “freaks” which are
offered for sale. “I believe,” says the lecturer, in a tone of complete
indifference, as he brings his glowing eulogy of the “Tattooed Queen”
to a fitting close, “that the lady has a few of her photographs which
she wishes to dispose of.” And as the lady has eight of them in each
hand, and twenty-two more arranged along the edge of the platform in
front of her, even the most skeptical audience is forced to admit that
the professor’s surmise is correct.

“I believe,” says the diffident Mr. Bok, “that there are some fair
likenesses of myself for sale on Chestnut Street, and I understand that
they cost a quarter apiece.”

My readers can depend upon it that what Mr. Bok has to say about those
photographs is absolutely true.




CHAPTER XI.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.


Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. But first of all let us
think of the many mercies for which we have to be thankful, and then
let us be just as well as generous; for certainly the magazines have
been of enormous benefit to the reading public as well as to those
whose profession it is to entertain, amuse, or instruct that public.

The magazines have not only raised the rates of compensation for
literary labor, but they have spread the reading habit to an
enormous extent, and are still educating vast numbers of people--of
a class that do not read at all when they happen to be born in
other countries--to become habitual buyers of books and periodicals.
Moreover it must be said of the editors of these publications that they
place their time at the disposal of every aspiring author who brings
his manuscript to them. In other words, they give careful attention
to whatever work is submitted to them, and are glad to buy and pay
promptly for such stories and poems as they may deem suitable to their
needs. I have never seen any disposition on the part of any of them to
crush budding genius, but, on the contrary, I have frequently met them
on dark, rainy nights hunting through the town with lanterns in their
hands for new writers. In fact, I do not know of any place in this
world where a young man may look for fairer attention and encouragement
than he will find in the office of a modern magazine.

I have heard these editors denounced, one and all, by infuriated poets
and romancers, for the “favoritism” which had been shown to certain
contributors, but I have generally found that when they erred in
this way it was on the side of charity; and if certain writers whose
contributions we generally skip occupy more room in the monthlies than
we think they ought to, it is not because they are editorial pets,
but because they have been careful students of the great literary
principles described in these pages, and have thereby acquired the
art of writing exactly what can be printed without injury to the
susceptibilities of a single advertiser or subscriber.

But we have special cause for being thankful to the magazines when we
read some of the hysterical, obstetrical, and epigrammatic romances
which have enjoyed such an astonishing vogue in England of late years.
Thank Heaven! no American magazine--so far as my knowledge goes--has
had the effrontery to offer its readers any such noisome, diseased
literature as that with which the alleged “clever” people of London
have flooded our market. To my way of thinking the epigrammatic books
are the most offensive of the whole lot, and certainly there is nothing
better calculated to plunge one into the depths of despair and shame
than the perusal of a modern British novel whose characters are forever
“showing off,” as children say, and who seem to devote their lives
to uttering sixpenny cynicisms and evolving, with infinite pains and
travail, the sort of remarks that pass current in the “smart London
set”--if these chroniclers are to be believed--as wit.

Callow and ingenuous youth betrays itself by two unmistakable earmarks.
One of these is in the form of a slight down on the cheek, and the
other is the belief that Oscar Wilde writes brilliant epigram.

I attended the first American representation of a play by that
distinguished author, and can well recall my feelings when an
able-bodied mummer took the centre of the stage and said, with the air
of a man who has been rolling a good thing under his tongue all the
evening, and at last has a chance to utter it: “Time is the thief of
procrastination.” A murmur of admiration ran through the house, but
I--I sobbed like a heart-broken child.

And yet Mr. Wilde is one of the cleverest of the whole brood of
fat-witted chromo-cynics whose vulgar flippancies have somehow come
to be regarded as witty and amusing, and that, too, by people who
ought to know better. It positively makes me sick to see one of these
paper-covered chronicles of fashionable imbecility lying on a parlor
table, and to hear it spoken of as “so delightfully bright and clever,
don’t you know.”

Heine was a genuine cynic and the maker of epigrams which he wrote
as easily and naturally as Bobby Burns wrote verses; and if there
is anything in the world which can be accomplished, if at all,
without manual labor and the accompanying sweat of the brow, it is
the utterance of really witty or epigrammatic remarks. But these
leaden-footed English wits somehow convey to me a vision of a cynic in
toil-stained overalls going forth in the gray of the early morning,
dinner-pail in hand, for a hard day’s work at being epigrammatic and
funny.

And while I am on the subject of epigram and cynicism, I cannot help
wondering what Heine would have done for a living had his lot been
cast in our own age and country. Imagine him offering manuscript to
the _Ladies’ Home Journal_! (By the way, Bok ought not to let those
photographs go for twenty-five cents apiece. They’re worth a dollar if
they’re worth a cent.) Think of the sensation that the _Reisebilder_
would create in the _Century_ office!

My own opinion is that Heine would, were he living here to-day, find
occupation as a paragrapher on some Western paper, acquire some
nebulous renown as the “_Ann Arbor Clarion_ man” or the “_Omaha
Bumblebee_ man,” and be consigned in his old age to that Home for
Literary Incurables known as the McClure Syndicate.

There is a book of excerpts from the writings of this gifted man,
published some years ago by Henry Holt & Co., and now, unhappily
enough, out of print. These excerpts are so well selected and convey
to us so vividly the charm of this matchless writer that I took the
trouble some time ago to inquire into the way in which the work was
done. I learned on undisputed authority that Mr. Holt, who has not
spent his life in the literary business for nothing, borrowed a
pruning-hook from the _Century_ office, placed it, together with
Heine’s complete works, in the hands of an experienced and skilled
magazine editor, and bade him “edit” them as if they were intended
for publication in his own monthly. The skilled and experienced
editor opened the volumes, and the pruning-hook--also a skilled and
experienced instrument of mutilation--fairly leaped from its scabbard
in its eagerness to eliminate the dangerous passages. When the editor
had completed his task Mr. Holt gathered up the parings from the floor
and published them under the title of _Scintillations from Heine_; and
I sincerely hope that a new edition of this book will be brought out
before long, if for no other purpose than to show people what a real
epigram is and how sharp it can bite.

There is another variety of literature which I dislike, and which seems
to have attained a ranker and more unwholesome growth in this country
than elsewhere. I refer to those articles and books whose sole purpose
seems to be the exploiting of men and women who are really unworthy of
any serious consideration. The Johnsonian period is rich in specimens
of this sort of work, and the future historian will marvel at the
absurd prominence given in this enlightened age to people who have
never accomplished anything in their lives, and who themselves evince
the greatest eagerness to transmit to posterity authentic records of
their failures.

“How I Lost the Battle,” by Captain Runoff, of the Russian army;
“Driven out of Asia Minor,” by General Skates; and “Ever so Many Miles
from the North Pole,” by Lieutenant Queary, are excellent examples of
this style of literature; but a far lower depth was reached about two
years ago, when the Harpers burst into enthusiastic praise of a young
man named Chanler, who had announced his intention of discovering
Africa, and proposed to awe and conciliate the ferocious native chiefs
by performing in their presence various difficult feats of legerdemain
which he had taken the pains to learn from a professional master in
London.

What has become of that gifted young man for whom the Harpers predicted
such a rosy future? Perhaps at this very moment he is seated in a deep,
shady African jungle making an omelet in a high silk hat or converting
a soiled pocket-handkerchief into a glass globe full of goldfish. I can
picture him standing, alone and unarmed, before thousands of hostile
spears. His eye is clear and his cheek unblanched. In another moment
he will be taking rabbits out of the chieftain’s ears, and the dusky
warriors will cower, in abject submission, at his feet.

There is one thing that can be said in favor of Mr. Chanler, and
that is that up to the present moment he has not annoyed his
fellow-creatures with any lectures or articles or stories descriptive
of the wonders that he did not discover during his journeyings in the
Dark Continent. His reticence is commendable, and should serve as an
example to various windy travelers who “explore” during a period of
eight weeks and then talk for the rest of their lives.

Verily this is a golden age for “fakirs,” quacks, and intellectual
feather-weights, and my friendly advice to all who may be classified
under any one of those three heads is to make hay while the sun shines,
because, in my belief, the coming decade will see them relegated to the
obscurity in which they naturally belong. But our little tuppenny gods
and celebrities have kicked up so much dust of late years that they
have contrived to obscure the fame of men who are infinitely better
worth talking about.

Singularly enough, the American who achieved more with his pen than any
one else in his generation is almost unknown to the majority of his
countrymen and countrywomen, although our government paid an unusual
tribute to his memory by bringing his remains back to his native land
in a man-of-war. The man of whom I write was simply a reporter employed
by the _New York Herald_ to chronicle contemporaneous European history.
It was he who told the civilized world the truth about the atrocities
committed by the Turkish invaders of Bulgaria in a series of letters
to the _London Daily News_--letters which became, in the hands of Mr.
Gladstone, a weapon with which he aroused the popular feeling until
the Beaconsfield ministry was swept from power and the Jingo spirit
held in check while Russia carried on her “holy war” against the Porte.
There is not a statesman or sovereign in Europe who does not know of
the important rôle which this American reporter played in continental
affairs at the time of the Russo-Turkish war. If you ask a Bulgarian or
Montenegrin if he ever heard of J. A. MacGahan he will very likely say
to you what one of them said to me: “Did you, an American, ever hear of
George Washington? Well, MacGahan was our Washington, and there is not
a peasant in all my country who is not familiar with his name.”

This countryman of ours, in whose achievements I have such a sturdy
pride, died literally in the harness in 1879, and every year on the
9th of June, throughout all the land of which he was the acknowledged
savior, the solemn prayers of the church are offered for the repose
of his soul. It may be that he has won a higher fame than he would if
he had lived to make himself known to the American public through the
medium of the lecture platform, but nevertheless I often wish that his
renown in the land of his birth were nearer in accord with his deserts
than it is.

I doubt if any system, either literary, political, or social--unless
it be negro slavery--has ever had a fairer trial in this country than
has that of pruning-hook editing, of which I have treated in these
pages; and that system may be responsible, in part, for the fact that
three quarters of the fiction offered in bookstores to-day is the work
of foreign writers, most of whom have been reared in the comparatively
free and independent literary atmosphere of Great Britain, and have
always addressed their books directly to the public instead of the
editors of magazines. It is true that Smith or Mudie, whose influence
in the book-trade is almost incalculable, occasionally refuse to
circulate a novel out of consideration for the feelings of the “young
person,” but such a proceeding is not nearly as disastrous to a writer
as the refusal of his manuscript by all the magazines would be to an
American. A ton of manuscript makes no more commotion when returned
to its authors than the touch of a humming-bird on a lily-petal; but
when a book like _Esther Waters_ is cast out of an English circulating
library it falls with a crash that is heard throughout the length and
breadth of the three kingdoms, while the author and his friends, with a
little assistance from the author’s enemies, make the welkin ring with
their cries.

The recent discussion over “Trilby” and the action of its publishers
in cutting out this passage and pruning that have given the public
a little insight into the methods in vogue in our large literary
establishments--methods which I have tried to explain in this book.
The very fact that Mr. Du Maurier’s manuscript stood in need of the
pruning-hook is, to me, proof positive that he never sat on the poets’
bench in the _Ledger_ office or practised his profession under the rule
of Dr. Holland.

It may be that at this very moment a great many American story-readers
are asking themselves why it is that native authors who know their
trade so well that the magazines will publish anything that they offer
should be unable to write a serial equal to that of a gray-haired
novice like Mr. Du Maurier, who, I will wager, knows absolutely nothing
about the immortal principles which are the very lamps unto the feet
of his American contemporaries. I shudder to think of what the world
would have lost had the author of “Trilby” gone about his work with the
Holland fetters on his wrists, the fear of the gas-fitter in his heart,
the awful pruning-hook hanging by a single hair over his head, and the
ominous shadow of Robert Bonner falling across the pages of his story.

There are other English writers who have “arrived” during the past
half-dozen years--a sufficient number, indeed, to make us feel that
there must be some deep-seated cause for the comparatively slow
progress which our own literature has made in the same time.

It is no easy matter to fairly estimate the literary worth of writers
who have been before the public such a short time, especially when we
take into consideration the wide difference in personal tastes, and
therefore I have sought the aid of a number of critical and learned
friends in the preparation of a list of writers which I confess is not
exactly the one that I would print had I consulted only my own personal
tastes.

This is the list which I offer as a result of many consultations with
people who are supposed to understand the subject: J. M. Barrie,
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Hall Caine, Rudyard Kipling, Conan Doyle, Barry
Paine, J. K. Jerome, I. Zangwill, Marie Corelli, Quiller Couch, S. R.
Crockett, Sarah Grand, Beatrice Harraden, Anthony Hope, and Stanley J.
Weyman--fifteen in all besides Mr. Du Maurier.

From this catalogue of talent and genius it is possible to select ten
whose position in letters is assured, although tastes will differ as to
the names on the last end of the list.

Now let us see how many writers have been raised to maturity in the
carefully watched and over-cultivated magazine soil during the same
period of time--say half a dozen years. Can we point to sixteen, or
ten, or even five who have made their way into the great white light
within that time?

No; we have precisely one writer to show as the fruit of American
literary endeavor during six years, and that writer is a woman who has
confined herself--and wisely, too, I suspect--to the portrayal of
life and character among the New England hills and villages. A narrow
field, it may be said, but she has surveyed it with the true artistic
eye, and at her touch it has yielded truthful, appreciative, honest
literature--stories with an underlying note of sadness that rings
true as steel and is a bit of the very essence of rural New England
life. Of course this writer is in an enviable position because she
enjoys all the advantages of magazine authorship and the prestige
which accompanies it, and is, to all practical purposes, exempt from
the ordeal of the pruning-hook to which other authors are obliged to
submit. I do not say this in disparagement of her great talents; I only
mean to say that her stories all lie within the necessary magazine
limitations, and she can write to the very top of her bent without
getting within gunshot of the barbed-wire fences which restrict the
endeavors of authors whose natural impulse it is to work in the deeper
and broader strata of humanity.

I do not deny that there are several bright and clever young men and
women who have done excellent literary work in the magazines and will
undoubtedly live to do even better in the future. I know of two or
three who are, according to my way of thinking, better entitled to
mention than some of the English authors whom I have named; but the
woman whom I have in mind is the one recent acquisition to American
letters, who draws truthful pictures from a proper point of view,
writes fully as well to-day as she did six years ago, and has,
moreover, given us one good novel. I do not know of a single other
bright young American writer--and very clever some of them are, too--of
whom nearly as much as this can be fairly said.

If the names of Hamlin Garland or Edward Bellamy occur to any of my
readers it should be remembered that they sprang up by the wayside and
are not the product of the rich magazine soil.

In bringing my modest preachment to a close, it is with a hope that my
readers will pardon any errors of humor into which I may have fallen,
or at least find in them a reasonable excuse for my effrontery in
offering advice while I am still under ninety-seven years of age. I
hope that I have done full justice to the established literary dynasty
which began with Robert Bonner and of which Mr. Johnson is now the
acknowledged head.

And let my last word be one of thankfulness because that dynasty has at
least kept our national literature clean--as clean as a whistle or a
pipe-stem.




AND OTHER TALES




THE POETS’ STRIKE.


It was just three o’clock on a warm day in August, and the deep silence
that prevailed in the Franklin Square Prose and Verse Foundry indicated
plainly that something unusual had happened. The great trip-hammer in
the basement was silent; there was no whir of machinery on the upper
floors; and in the vast, deserted dialect department the busy file was
still. It was only in the business office that any signs of life were
visible, and there the chiefs of the great establishment were gathered
in anxious consultation. Their stern, determined faces indicated that
they had taken a stand and had resolved to maintain it, no matter what
might happen. From the street came the faint sound of newsboys crying
extras. By nightfall the tidings would be carried to the remotest
corners of the town.

The poets of the Franklin Square Foundry had been ordered out on strike!

Well might the heads of the various departments look grave, for never
before in the history of the factory had there been a strike in its
literary department. Down in Pearl Street the poets were congregated in
groups, talking over the situation and casting ominous glances at the
great window, through which they could faintly distinguish the forms of
the men against whose tyranny they had rebelled.

Suddenly a tall form loomed up in the centre of a large group of
excited men. It was a master poet who had climbed up on some boxes to
address his comrades; and they grew quiet and closed in about him to
hear his words.

“Prosers, rhymesters, and dialectists,” exclaimed the master poet, “the
time has come for us to make a stand against the oppression of those
who call themselves our masters. The time has come for the men who toil
day after day in yonder tall factory to denounce the infamous system
by which they are defrauded of the greater part of their wretched
pittance. You know, of course, that I am speaking of the ruinous
competition of scab or non-union labor. See that cart!” he cried,
pointing to a square, one-horse vehicle, similar to those employed in
the delivery of coal, which had been backed up against the curb in
front of the factory.

“Do you know what that cart contains? See those men remove the iron
scuttle on the sidewalk, and listen to the roar and rumble as the cart
discharges its contents into the cellar beneath the pavement! Is that
coal they are putting in with which to feed the tireless engine that
furnishes motive power to the factory? No, my friends; that is a load
of jokes for the back page of _Harper’s Bazar_, collected from the
sweating-shops about Washington Square and Ninth Street. Do those jokes
bear the union label? They do not. Many of them, no doubt, are made by
Italians and Chinese, to the shame and degradation of our calling.”

The master poet’s words were received with a howl of rage that reached
the ears of the men who were closeted in the business office, and
brought a pallor to their stern, set faces.

“There is no time to be lost!” exclaimed one of the firm; “that yell
of defiance convinces me that any attempt to introduce non-union poets
would precipitate a riot. It will not be safe to do it unless we are
prepared for the worst.”

“For my part,” said Mr. Harry Harper, “I believe that it would be a
good policy for us to introduce machinery at once, and get rid of those
poets, who are forever making new demands on us. The _Century_ people
have had machines in operation for some time past, and have found them
very satisfactory. We must admit that a great deal of their poetry is
as good as our hand-made verses.”

“Do you know,” cried Mr. Alden, “that that Chicago machine they put in
some time ago is simply one of Armour’s old sausage-mills remodeled? It
is the invention of a man named Fuller, who two years ago was merely an
able-bodied workman in the serial shops. It is really a very ingenious
piece of mechanism, and when you think that they throw a quantity of
hoofs, hair, and other waste particles from the Chicago stock-yards
into a hopper, and convert them into a French or Italian serial story
of firm, fine texture--well, making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear is
nothing to it.”

“Gentlemen,” said the head of the firm, rising as he spoke, and taking
from the desk beside him some large cardboard signs, “I do not propose
to have my own workmen dictate to _me_. I am going to hang these signs
on our front door and give employment to whomever may apply for it.”
The signs were thus inscribed:

  x-------------------------------x
  |                               |
  |         HANDS WANTED          |
  |                               |
  |              ON               |
  |                               |
  |        SHORT STORIES.         |
  |                               |
  x-------------------------------x

  x-------------------------------x
  |                               |
  |         GIRLS WANTED          |
  |                               |
  |           FOR THE             |
  |                               |
  |    BAZAR AND YOUNG PEOPLE.    |
  |                               |
  x-------------------------------x

  x-------------------------------x
  |                               |
  |      STEADY EMPLOYMENT        |
  |                               |
  |             FOR               |
  |                               |
  |   SOBER, INDUSTRIOUS POETS.   |
  |                               |
  |  TWO RHYMES TO THE QUATRAIN.  |
  |                               |
  x-------------------------------x

But before Mr. Harper could carry out his resolution, a young man, clad
in the ordinary working-garb of a poet, hurriedly entered the office,
and, placing himself before the chief, exclaimed:

“Stop, sir, before it is too late!”

“And who are you, sir?” demanded the amazed publisher.

“I am Henry Rondeau,” replied the young man, “and although I am only
a humble, laboring poet, I feel that I can be of assistance to you
to-day. I have a grateful heart, and cannot forget your kindness to me
when I was unfortunate.”

“Kindness? I confess that I do not remember any--” began Mr. Harper;
but the poet interrupted him with: “Last summer, sir, when I got my
fingers frost-bitten by being permitted to shake hands with Mr. Harry
Harper, you not only allowed me half-pay, but gave my poor idiot sister
a job in the factory as a reader of manuscript, thus enabling us to
keep the wolf from the door until I was able to use a scanning-rule
again.”

“And a most invaluable assistant she is, too,” cried Mr. Alden, warmly;
“she selects all the short stories for the magazine, and I doubt if you
could find, even in the office of the _Atlantic Monthly_, any one with
such keen perceptions of what the public do not want as Susan Rondeau,
the idiot reader of Franklin Square.”

At this moment a hoarse yell arose from the crowd of strikers beneath
the window, and was borne to the ears of those who were gathered in the
business office.

“What does that noise mean?” demanded the senior partner, an angry
flush suffusing his cheek. “Do they think they can frighten me with
yells and threats of violence? I will hang out these signs, and bid
them do their worst!”

“Stop! I implore you, stop!” cried Henry Rondeau, as he threw himself
before his chief. “The sight of those signs would madden them, and the
counsel of the cooler heads, which has thus far controlled them, would
be swept away in a moment. And then--the deluge!”

“But we do not fear even death,” cried the courageous publisher.

“Mr. Harper,” continued the young workman, earnestly, “at this very
moment the master poet is urging them to desperate measures. He
has already in his possession the address and dinner-hour of every
gentleman in this room, and--”

“Well, even if dynamite is to be used--”

“And,” pursued Henry Rondeau, “he has threatened to place the list in
the hands of Stephen Masset!”

“Merciful heavens!” exclaimed the veteran publisher, as he sank, pale
and trembling, in his easy-chair, while his associates wrung their
hands in bitter despair; “can nothing be done to prevent it?”

“Yes,” cried the young working-man. “Accept the offer of the Poets’
Union to make a new sliding-scale. Make a few slight concessions to the
men, and they will meet you half-way. Put emery wheels in the dialect
shop instead of the old-fashioned cross-cut files and sandpaper that
now take up so much of the men’s time. Let one rhyme to the quatrain
be sufficient at the metrical benches, and--it is a little thing, but
it counts--buy some tickets for the poets’ picnic and summer-night’s
festival at Snoozer’s Grove, which takes place next Monday afternoon
and evening.”

Henry Rondeau’s advice was taken, and to-day the great trip-hammer
is at work in the basement of the foundry, and the poets and
prose-writers are busy at their benches on the upper floors. The master
poet is at work among the rest, and sometimes he chuckles as he thinks
of the concessions that were wrung from the foundry-owners by the great
August strike. But little does the master poet dream of the vengeance
that awaits him--of the awful midnight oath taken by Joseph Harper
after he had signed the treaty with his employees.

Not until after death will that oath be fulfilled. Not until the
members of the Poets’ Union have borne the remains of their chief to
Calvary with a following as numerous as that which accompanies the
deceased aunt of a Broadway janitor to her last resting-place--not
until then will the surviving members of the firm carry out the sacred
trust imposed upon them.

They will collect the poems of the master poet and publish them in a
mouse-colored volume--_edited by Arthur Stedman_.




ANCIENT FORMS OF AMUSEMENT.

(_From the Hypnotic Gazette, January 1, A. D. 2203._)


Workmen employed on the mesmeric dredge near what was in old times the
bed of the Harlem River discovered yesterday a leaden box in which was
the following manuscript, which gives us a vivid idea of the crude
condition of the drama toward the close of the nineteenth century:


“FUN ON THE ROOF.”

Farce Comedy in Three Acts.


ACT I.

SCENE. _A garden with practicable gate R. U. E._

SPARKLE MCINTYRE (_entering through gate_). Well, this is a pretty
state of affairs! Rosanna Harefoot lived only for me until that
theatrical troupe came to town; but now she’s so stuck on singing and
dancing and letting those actor men make love to her that I can’t get a
moment with her. Hello! here comes the whole company. I guess they’re
going to rehearse here. I’ll hide behind this tree and watch them do
their acts.

_Enter company of_ PLAYERS.

FIRST PLAYER. Well, this is a hot day; but while we’re trying to keep
cool Miss Kitty Socks will sing “Under the Daisies.”

(_Specialties by the entire company._)

FIRST PLAYER. Well, we’d better hurry away down the street, or else
we’ll be late.

                                                        [_Exeunt_ OMNES.

SPARKLE MCINTYRE (_emerging from behind tree_). That looks easy enough.
I guess I’ll see what I can do myself.

(_Specialties._)

FIRST PLAYER (_entering with company_). Now that rehearsal is over,
we’ll have a little fun for a few moments.

SPARKLE (_aside_). Rosanna will be mine yet.

(_Grand Finale._)

CURTAIN.


ACT II.

SCENE. _Parlor of_ SPARKLE MCINTYRE’S _house_; SPARKLE _discovered
seated at table with brilliant dressing-gown on_.

SPARKLE. I invited all that theatrical company to spend the evening
with me; but I’m afraid they won’t come. I just wanted to surprise them
with that new song and dance of mine. Ah! here they come now.

_Enter_ THEATRICAL COMPANY.

FIRST PLAYER. We are a little late, Mr. McIntyre, but the fact is I
had to go to the steamer to meet some friends of mine who were coming
over to try their luck in glorious America; and as they’re all perfect
ladies and gentlemen, I took the liberty of bringing them along. Allow
me to introduce them to you: Mr. and Mrs. Lorenzo Sirocco and the Miss
Siroccos from the Royal Alhambra in Rooshy.

SPARKLE. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to meet you; and now, if
you’ll favor us with an act, we’ll be greatly obliged.

(_Specialties by everybody, and Finale._)

CURTAIN.


ACT III.

SCENE. _Same as Act I._

_Enter_ ROSANNA.

ROSANNA. This is the very garden where I used to meet my own true
Sparkle. In fact, it’s right here that he used to _spark_ me. Well,
while I’m feeling so downhearted, I’ll do a little dance just to cheer
myself up.

(_Specialties by_ ROSANNA.)

SPARKLE (_entering_). What! _you_ here. Rosanna? Then you must love me.

ROSANNA. Yes, Sparkle, I do.

SPARKLE (_embracing her_). Then, darling, we will be married this very
day. Call the neighbors all in, and we will sing, dance, and be merry.

_Enter_ COMPANY.

(_Specialties._)

CURTAIN.




THE SOBER, INDUSTRIOUS POET,

AND HOW HE FARED AT EASTER-TIME.


“Alas, Mary!” exclaimed William Sonnet, as he entered his neat but
humble tenement apartment a few days before the close of Lent, “I fear
that our Pfingst holiday this year will be anything but a merry one. My
employers have notified me that if they receive any more complaints of
the goods from my department they will give me the sack.”

William Sonnet was certainly playing in hard luck, although it would
be difficult to find in the whole of Jersey City a more industrious,
sober young poet, or a more devoted husband and father. For nine
years he had been employed in the Empire Prose and Verse Foundry,
the largest literary establishment on the banks of the Hackensack,
where by sheer force of sobriety and industry he had risen from the
humble position of cash-boy at the hexameter counter to that of foreman
of the dialect floor, where forty-five hands were kept constantly
employed on prose and verse. During these years his relations with his
employers, Messrs. Rime & Reeson, had been of the pleasantest nature
until about six months previous to the opening of this story, when they
began--unjustly, as it seemed to him--to find fault with the goods
turned out by his department. There were complaints received at the
office every day, they said, of both the dialect stories and verses
that bore the Empire brand.

The _Century Magazine_ had returned a large invoice of hand-sewed negro
dialect verses of the “Befoh de Wah” variety, and a syndicate which
supplied the Western market had canceled all its spring orders on the
ground that the dialect goods had for some reason or other fallen far
below the standard maintained in the other departments of the Empire
Foundry. William was utterly unable to account for this change in the
quality of the manuscript prepared on his floor, and as he sat with his
bowed head resting on his toil-hardened hand, and the sweat and grime
of honest labor on his brow, he looked, indeed, the very picture of
dejection.

“William,” said his wife, as she placed a caressing hand on his
forehead, “you have enemies in the foundry whom you do not suspect.
You must know that when you wooed and won me a year ago I had been
courted by no less than four different poets who at that time were
employed at the Eagle Verse Works in Newark, but have since found
positions with Messrs. Rime & Reeson. I will not deny, William, that I
toyed with the affections of those poets, but it was because I deemed
them as frivolous as myself, and when they went from my presence with
angry threats on their lips I laughed in merry glee. But when I saw
them standing together on street corners, with their heads together in
earnest conversation, I grew sick at heart, for I knew it boded us no
good. Be warned, William, by my words.”

The next day, when the whistle blew at noon, William Sonnet ate his
dinner from his tin pail as usual; but then, instead of going out into
the street to play baseball with the poets from the adjacent factories,
as the Empire Foundry employees generally did, he took a quiet stroll
through the whole establishment, under the pretense of looking for an
envoy that had been knocked off the end of a ballade.

In the packing-department was a large consignment of goods from his
floor ready for shipment, and he stopped to examine the burr of a
Scotch magazine story to make sure that it had not been rubbed off by
carelessness. What was his surprise to find that the dialect, which
he himself had gone over with a cross-cut file that very morning, was
now worn completely smooth by contact with an emery-wheel! He replaced
the story carefully in the fine sawdust in which it was packed, and
then examined the other goods. They had not yet been touched, but it
was evident to him that the miscreants fully intended to finish the
destructive work which they had only had time to begin. Returning to
his own bench, he passed two or three poets who were talking earnestly
together, and by straining his ears he heard one of them whisper:

“We’ll finish the job to-night. Meet me at ten.”

That was enough for William Sonnet. He determined, without delay, what
course to pursue.

At half-past nine that evening, three mysterious figures draped in
black cloaks entered the Empire Prose and Verse Foundry by a side
door. William Sonnet was one of the three, and the others were his
employers, Messrs. Rime & Reeson. He led them to a place of concealment
which commanded a full view of the packing-room. Before long stealthy
footsteps were heard, and the four conspirators entered.

“Listen,” said the eldest of the quartet, as he threw the light from
his dark lantern on the sullen faces of his companions; “you all know
why we are here. This night we will complete William Sonnet’s ruin, and
Easter Monday will find him hunting for work in Paterson and Newark,
and hunting in vain. Why is he foreman of the dialect department, while
we toil at the bench for a mere crust? Mary Birdseye is now his bride;
but when we wooed her we were rejected like our own poems.”

“And that, too, although we inclosed no postage,” retorted the second
poet, bitterly.

“Now to work,” continued the first speaker, as he stooped to examine
some goods on the floor. “What have we here? A serial for the _Atlantic
Monthly_? Well, we’ll soon fix that,” and in another moment he had
injected a quantity of ginger into the story, ruining it completely.
Then the work of destruction went on, while Messrs. Rime & Reeson
watched the vandals with horror depicted on their faces. A pan of
sweepings from the humorous department, designed for Harper’s “Editor’s
Drawer” and the _Bazar_, was thrown away, and real funny jokes
substituted for them. A page article for the Sunday supplement of a
New York daily, entitled “Millionaires who have Gold Filling in their
Teeth,” embellished with cuts of twenty different jaws, was thrown
out, and an article on “Jerusalem the Golden,” ordered by the _Whited
Sepulchre_, substituted.

Messrs. Rime & Reeson could control themselves no longer. Stacked
against the wall like a woodpile were the twelve instalments of a
_Century_ serial by Amelia E. Barr, which had been sawed into the
proper lengths that afternoon. Seizing one of these apiece, the three
men made a sudden onslaught on the miscreants and beat them into
insensibility. Then they bound them securely and delivered them over to
the tormentors.

As for honest William Sonnet, he was made foreman of the whole foundry;
and his wife, who was a fashion-writer, and therefore never fit to be
seen, received a present of two beautiful new tailor-made dresses,
which fitted her so well that no one recognized her, and she opened a
new line of credit at all the stores in the neighborhood.

It was a happy family that sat down to the Easter dinner in William
Sonnet’s modest home; and to make their joy complete, before the
repast was ended an envelope arrived from William’s grateful employers
containing an appointment for his bedridden mother-in-law as reader for
a large publishing house.




THE TWO BROTHERS;

OR, PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING.


“No, Herbert, I would advise you to tear up that card and put
temptation away from you. If you yield now you will weaken your moral
character, and you will have less strength to resist another time.”

The speaker, a young man of grave, honest aspect, was standing with
his hand laid in a kindly way on his younger brother’s shoulder. The
latter, whose face was cast in a more delicate and a weaker mould,
stood irresolutely twirling in his hand a card of invitation to an
afternoon tea.

“I don’t see what harm it will do just for this one time,” he said,
pettishly. “You’re always preaching about temptation, John; but, for
my part, I think it’s my duty as a writer to see a little of every side
of life. I want to write a novel some day and to have one of the scenes
laid at a kettledrum. How can I describe one unless I see it myself?”

“I hope, Herbert,” said the elder brother, mildly, “that you will
never sink so low as to write a New York Society novel; but that is
surely what you will come to if you abandon yourself to the pernicious
habit of attending afternoon teas. Do you remember your old playfellow,
Walter Weakfish? It is only three years since he began to sip tea
at kettledrums. At that time he was considered one of the very best
reporters in the city, while at the poker table he commanded universal
respect. You know, of course, that his downward career has been very
rapid since his first fall, and that he has sounded every depth of
ignominy and shame; but do you know where he is now?”

“I heard some time ago,” replied Herbert, “that he had become an
habitual frequenter of the most exclusive musical circles in Boston,
and that--”

“No,” interrupted the elder; “that was a malicious report. It is true
that he once attended an organ recital, but that was all. At present he
is conducting, over his own signature, a department entitled ‘Old Uncle
Squaretoes’s Half-hour Chats with the Little Folks,’ in a Philadelphia
paper.”

“Merciful heavens!” cried Herbert; “I had no idea it was as bad as
that; but can nothing be done to save him?”

“I fear not,” replied the elder brother, sadly; “and now, Herbert, I
shall say no more. You must choose your own course; but remember that
our poker club meets to-night in the room over Cassidy’s Exchange, and
you must--”

“Yes, and drop another double X,” exclaimed Herbert, bitterly.

“And learn the great lesson of life,” said John, “that in this vale of
tears the hand that shapes our destiny will ofttimes beat three of a
kind.”

And with these impressive words John Dovetail departed, leaving his
brother still twirling the engraved card between his fingers and
hesitating.

“Pshaw!” he exclaimed at last, “I don’t care what John says. I’m sick
of his preaching, anyhow; and besides I’m not going to get the Society
habit fastened on me through just one kettledrum! I’ll go there just to
see what it’s like.”

       *       *       *       *       *

That afternoon Herbert tasted of the forbidden intoxicant of feminine
flattery, drank five cups of tea, and ate four pieces of sticky cake.
He was introduced to a leader of the Chromo Literary Set, who told
him that she “adored clever men,” and begged him to come to her next
Sunday evening reception. Then he allowed himself to be patronized
by a dude who copied letters in a broker’s office by day and led the
cotillion by night; and he had not been in the drawing-room half an
hour before his mind became affected by the “Society talk” going on
about him to such a degree that he found himself chuckling in a knowing
manner at an idiotic story about Ollie Winkletree, of the Simian Club.

It was at this moment that the warning words of his brother John
suddenly came back to him, and he realized that it was time to go.

He had no appetite for dinner that night--the tea and the sticky cake
had done their work; and instead of joining the poker class over
Cassidy’s Exchange, he sat down by the fire to brood over the new life
that was opening before him. The Society bee--the most malevolent
insect in the world’s hive--had stung him under his bonnet, the poison
was already in his veins, and when John returned at midnight from the
poker meeting his brother addressed him as “deah boy.”

Now John Dovetail had always looked after his younger brother with the
same solicitude that he would have bestowed upon a helpless child, and
to-night there was an anxious look in his face as he seated himself by
the open fire and drew from his vest-pocket the cigar which he had won
by throwing dice with Cassidy at the Exchange. He was prepared to enjoy
himself for a half-hour in that peace of mind which an easy conscience
alone can give. His evening had been well spent--thanks to that
merciful dispensation which has ordained that even the vilest sinner
shall fill a bobtail flush once in a while--and yet, as he sat there
before the glowing embers, dark misgivings filled his mind. Older than
his brother by fully four years, and of infinitely wider experience and
knowledge of the world, he knew only too well the danger that lurked in
the leaves of the five-o’clock tea.

“Alas!” he said to himself, “I hear that the Swelled Head is very
prevalent this winter. It is contagious, and there is no place--not
even an amateur theatrical company--where one is so sure to be exposed
to it as at a kettledrum. Suppose, after my years of watchful care, my
poor brother were to be taken down with it!”

       *       *       *       *       *

The weeks rolled on, and Herbert, having once yielded to temptation,
soon found it almost impossible to control his appetite for
Society functions. Not only had he formed as undesirable a list of
acquaintances as he could have made by heading the cotillion for three
seasons, but he even had the temerity to tell his brother John--whose
life was still one of noble purpose and lofty endeavor--that he
wondered how he could spend all his evenings playing poker in the room
over Cassidy’s Exchange, instead of--

“Instead of what, Herbert?” demanded John, in clear, ringing accents.
“Instead of doing as you have been doing ever since you took your
first plunge into the maelstrom of tea and cake and lemonade that is
fast whirling you to destruction? No, Herbert, I have watched you day
by day, and I have noted the change that has gradually come over you.
For weeks past you have been gradually growing apart from me and from
your old-time associates, and have affiliated yourself with a class of
people who are far beneath you. Where were you last night at the hour
when you should have been opening jack-pots in the room over Cassidy’s
Exchange? You were up-town skipping the tralaloo.”

Herbert started and grew pale. “How did you find that out?” he asked,
hoarsely.

“And whose tralaloo were you skipping?” continued John, sternly,
without heeding the interruption. “You were tralalooing with the De
Sneides of Steenth Street, and you dare not deny it!”

“Well!” exclaimed the younger brother, “I don’t see any harm in that.
Isn’t the De Sneide family all right?”

John Dovetail’s clear, honest eyes blazed with anger. Then with a great
effort he controlled himself, and went on in a voice which trembled a
little in spite of him.

“All right? Herbert Dovetail, do you dare to stand before me and to
talk about the De Sneides being all right, when you yourself told me
that they concocted from a half-pint of Santa Cruz rum--a half-pint,
mind you--a beverage which they served to over one hundred human souls?
And did they not add to this crime that of blasphemy, by calling it
punch? O Herbert! Do you know what will happen if you keep on in the
path which you have chosen? You will become the victim of that awful
form of paresis known as the Swelled Head. Already I have noticed
symptoms of it in you.”

“Oh, pshaw!” cried Herbert, impatiently; “just as soon as a man begins
to go into Society a little you say he’s got the Swelled Head. It’s
simply because you’re jealous of my success--but what’s the matter,
John? Are you ill?”

For his brother was leaning against the table, his hand pressed to his
heart and his face white with an awful fear.

“Merciful heavens!” John exclaimed; “a sure and unfailing sign; the
poor boy is stricken already and does not know it. But he shall be
saved!”

       *       *       *       *       *

One night John persuaded his brother to attend a meeting of the poker
class, by telling him that two German gentlemen who had played the game
just enough to think they knew it all were going to be present.

Herbert accepted the invitation chiefly because he knew he would not
meet any one he had borrowed money from, and was given a kindly welcome
by his old associates, although, owing to the peculiar nature of his
disease, he had failed to recognize several of them when he met them in
the street the week before.

To be sure, he cast a slight gloom over the company by calling for
sherry when the rest of the company were drinking the old stuff; but
that was pardoned because of his unfortunate tea-drinking propensities,
and the game went on merrily.

Something of the old light came back into the boy’s eye as the pile of
chips in front of him began to grow apace; and the old glad smile lit
up his face once more as Baron Snoozer laid down two big pair only to
be confronted by Herbert’s three little fellows.

And yet still he called for sherry.

But it is always the unexpected that happens. Just as the game broke
up the waiter informed John Dovetail that there was a gentleman
down-stairs who wished to see him.

“Show him up!” cried John, pleasantly, as he cashed in his chips.

The stranger appeared and John arose to greet him. He wore a large
chrysanthemum in his buttonhole and held a macaroon in his hand, which
he nibbled from time to time. His make-up was that of a dude.

“You do not know me, I fear,” he said to John. “I am sadly changed, I
know; but the time was, gentlemen, when I sat at this very table; and,
oh, how I would have enjoyed a night like this!” he added, glancing
significantly at the rueful faces of the two German gentlemen, who were
turning their pockets inside out.

All the members of the club were now listening with intense interest;
and John began with, “Your face, sir, seems strangely familiar--”

“Wait,” said the visitor, with a sad smile, “until you hear my story.
Once, as I said before, I sat in this very game nearly every night; but
now what am I? One day--it was five years ago--some fiend incarnate
led me all unknowing to a reception in an artist’s studio. Tea was
ordered--I partook of it and was lost. Since then I have gone down,
down, down; and to-morrow I leave this city forever. There is but one
thing left for me to do. You will see me no more after to-night. Do
none of you remember Walter Weakfish?”

“Walter Weakfish!” gasped John. “Why, I thought you were in
Philadelphia, doing the ‘Old Uncle’--”

“No,” replied the unhappy young man, “I have been worse than that.
I have been a Society reporter. Yes, it is I who have written about
the lovely ‘Spriggie’ Stone and the queenly Mrs. ‘Jack’ Astorbilt,
who wore a passementerie of real lace down the front breadth of her
moire antique gown. I wrote about those people so much that finally I
imagined that I knew them; and then I borrowed money from people who
did know them, and ordered clothes from their tailors, until now Avenue
A is my favorite thoroughfare. And now I must leave the city forever;
but, Herbert, do you take warning from the wreck you see before you
now. Good-by, my old friends!” And Walter Weakfish started for the door.

“Stay!” cried John. “Can we do nothing for you? Shall we never see you
again?”

“No,” replied Walter, pausing for a moment on the threshold, “never
again: for I am going to Washington to patrol the great national
free-lunch route which they call Official Society, and to write
correspondence for the Western papers. After that, the morgue.”

The door closed, and he was gone. Then a moment’s silence was broken by
a wail of anguish from Herbert.

“Thank Heaven!” cried John, “his heart is touched, and he is saved.
Everybody in the room have something with me.”

And before morning the swelling in Herbert’s head was reduced so
rapidly that he had to drink thirteen hot Scotches to counteract it.
And from that day to this he has never been to another kettledrum, nor
taken anything stronger than rye whisky.




THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN OF TALENT.


Once upon a time there was a Young Man of Talent, whose stories were
so good that the editor of the paper on which he was employed heard
the Professional Humorist, who had been attached to the paper for
twenty-eight years, ask the city editor, “what the deuce the old man
meant by loading up the Sunday supplement with all that stuff;” and
the very next night the Young Man asked if he might sign his name to
his special articles in the Sunday paper. Now this was a privilege
which had never been accorded to anybody who knew how to write, and
the editor was afraid to make an exception in favor of the Young
Man for fear of bringing down upon his own head the wrath of the
prize-fighters, skirt-dancers, prominent citizens, and other windbags
who had always regarded signed articles as their special prerogative.

So he made answer that the signature was usually considered a badge
of shame. But the Young Man persisted in his demand until the editor
was forced to give way, and the following Sunday the eyes of the
Professional Humorist fell upon an article which bore the signature
of the Young Man of Talent, and which was sandwiched in between a
graphic description of “How I Slugged McGonegal’s Unknown,” by Rocksey
McIntyre, and “The Spontaneity of Mediæval Art,” by Professor Stuffe.

A jealous, angry light gleamed in the eyes of the Professional
Humorist, and he swore an awful oath to be revenged on the rival
who had come into the field with a variety of humor that would
inevitably put an end to his own calling--that of manufacturing “crisp
paragraphs”--which he had pursued without interruption for more than a
quarter of a century.

Now the Professional Humorist belonged to the “Association of Old-time
Funny Men,” to which nobody could gain admittance who was under
fifty-five years of age or who had ever been guilty of an original
piece of humor.

When one of the order wrote a crisp paragraph about a door being
not a door when it happened to be ajar, it would become the duty of
some fellow-member to quote it with the prefix: “Billy Jaggs of the
_Blankburgh Banner_ says--” and add some refined pleasantry of this
sort: “Billy’s mouth is usually ajar when the whisky-jug goes round.
How is that for high, Jaggsey, old boy?” and then the crisp paragraph
would be “passed along” after the fashion prevalent in the old days
when American humor was struggling for popular recognition.

So the Professional Humorist communicated with his fellow funny
men, and told them that unless concerted measures were taken the
old-fashioned crisp paragraphs would be relegated to the obscurity
shared by other features of ante-bellum journalism; and, the funny men
becoming alarmed, a general convention of the order was promptly called
and as quickly assembled.

At this gathering of the comic writers various means whereby the Young
Man of Talent should be destroyed were discussed.

“It would be better,” said a hoary and solemn humorist, whose calling
was indicated by a cane made in imitation of a length of stovepipe,
with a handle of goat’s horn, “much better, I think, if we were to
prevail upon him to enter Society as a literary celebrity, and make
a practice of attending kettledrums and receptions, where he will be
encouraged by women to talk about his literary methods, and where he
will be tempted to partake of the tea and cake and weak punch which
have ruined so many brilliant careers. If, in addition to that, we
can arrange with the Society reporters to publish his name among ‘the
well-known literary and artistic people present’ as often as possible,
his descent will be swift and sure.”

“There is one thing necessary to make that combination invincible,”
said a paragrapher whose sound logic and conservatism had long since
gained for him the name of “The Sage of Schoharie”: “we must call the
attention of somebody like Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Howells to his work, and
induce him to express a favorable opinion of it. If Mr. Aldrich would
only say that he has a ‘dainty style,’ or if Mr. Howells would praise
him for his ‘subtle delineation of character,’ his book, which is
coming out in a few weeks, would fall flat on the market. Then, if he
showed any signs of life after that, Edmund Gosse might administer the
_coup de grâce_ with a favorable review in some English fortnightly.”

These measures having received the indorsement of every member of the
union, it was resolved that they should be promptly carried through;
but before the meeting adjourned the Professional Humorist arose and
begged to be allowed to say a few words.

“I have no doubt,” he said, “that the course we have decided upon will
result in driving this newcomer from the field of letters; but if it
does not I have a plan in my head which has never failed yet. It has
already, within my own memory, driven several of our most promising
writers to the Potter’s Field, and if desperate measures become
necessary we will try it, but only as a last resort.”

       *       *       *       *       *

A year rolled by, and again the members of the union assembled for
their annual convention.

As they passed through Fourteenth Street on their way to the hall
of meeting, a sad-eyed, despondent figure stood on the sidewalk and
endeavored to sell them lead-pencils at their own price. A smile of
triumph lit up the face of the Professional Humorist as he directed the
attention of his fellow-members to the mournful, ill-clad wretch on the
curb-stone. “I told you my scheme would work,” he said.

It was even so. Neither the kettledrums nor the commendations of
the wiseacres of literature had had any effect on the Young Man of
Talent, who had gone steadily on with his work, unspoiled by feminine
flattery, and heedless of the praise or commendations of the critics.

It was only when these attempts upon his reputation and popularity had
failed that the Professional Humorist threw himself into the breach
with a paragraph--which was given instant and wide publicity by the
rest of the Association--stating that the gifted young writer was _the
Dickens of America_.

And then the Young Man of Talent tottered to his fall.




THE SOCIETY REPORTER’S CHRISTMAS


Early morn in the little parlor of a humble white cottage, where Susan
Swallowtail sat waiting for her husband to return from the ball. It
lacked but a few days of Christmas, and she had arisen with her little
ones at five o’clock in order that William, her husband, might have
a warm breakfast and a loving greeting on his return after his long
night’s work.

Seated before the fire, with her sewing on her lap, Susan Swallowtail’s
thoughts went back to the days when William, then on the threshold of
his career as a Society reporter, had first won her young heart by his
description of her costume at the ball of the “Ladies’ Daughters’
Association of the Ninth Ward.” She remembered how gallantly and
tenderly he had wooed her through the columns of the four weekly and
Sunday papers in which he conducted the “Fashion Chit-chat” columns,
and then the tears filled her eyes as memory brought once more before
her the terrible night when William came to the house and asked her
father, the stern old house and sign painter, for his daughter’s hand.

“And yet,” said Susan to herself, “my life has not been altogether an
unhappy one in spite of our poverty. William has a kind heart, and I am
sure that if he had anything to wear besides his dress-suit and flannel
dressing-gown he would often brighten my lot by taking me out somewhere
in the daytime. Ah, if papa would only relent! But I fear he will never
forgive me for my marriage.”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of familiar footsteps in the
hall, and the next moment her husband had clasped her in his arms,
while the children clung to his ulster and clamored for their early
morning kiss.

But there was a cloud on the young husband’s brow and a tremor on
his lips as he said, “Run away now, little ones; papa and mama have
something to say to each other that little ears must not hear.”

“My darling,” he said, as soon as they were alone, “I fear that our
Christmas will not be a very merry one. You know how we always depend
on the ball of the Gilt-edged Coterie for our Christmas dinner?”

“Indeed I do,” replied the young wife, with a bright smile: “what
beautiful slices of roast beef and magnificent mince-pies you always
bring home from that ball! Surely they will give their entertainment on
Christmas eve this year as they always have?”

“Yes, but--can you bear to hear it, my own love?”

“Let me know the worst,” said the young wife, bravely.

“Then,” said William, hoarsely, “I will tell you. I am not going to
that ball. The city editor is going to take the assignment himself, and
I must go to a literary and artistic gathering, where there will be
nothing but tea and recitations.”

“Yes,” said Susan, bitterly, “and sandwiches so thin that they can be
used to watch the eclipse of the sun. But what have you brought back
with you now? I hope it is something nourishing.”

“My darling,” replied William Swallowtail, in faltering tones, “I fear
you are doomed to another disappointment. I have done my best to-night,
but this is all I could get my hands on;” and with these words he
drew from the pockets of his heavy woolen ulster a paper bag filled
with wine jelly, a box of _marrons glacés_, and two pint bottles of
champagne.

“Is that all?” said Susan, reproachfully. “The children have had
nothing to eat since yesterday morning except _pâtés de foie gras_,
macaroons, and hothouse grapes. All day long they have been crying for
corned-beef sandwiches, and I have had none to give them. You told me,
William, when we parted in the early evening, that you were going to a
house where there would be at least ham, and perhaps bottled beer, and
now you return to me with this paltry package of jelly and that very
sweet wine. I hope, William”--and a cold, hard look of suspicion crept
into her face--“that you have not forgotten your vows and given to
another--”

“Susan!” cried William Swallowtail, “how can you speak or even think of
such a thing, when you know full well that--”

But Susan withdrew from his embrace, and asked in bitter, cold
accents, “Was there ham at that reception or was there not?”

“There was ham, and corned beef too. I will not deny it; but--”

“Then, William, with what woman have you shared it?” demanded the young
wife, drawing herself up to her full height, and fixing her dark,
flashing eyes full upon him.

“Susan, I implore you, listen to me, and do not judge me too harshly.
There _was_ ham, but there were several German noblemen there
too--Baron Sneeze of the Austrian legation, Count Pretzel, and a dozen
more. The smell of meat inflamed them, and I fought my way through them
in time to save only this from the wreck.”

He drew from his ulster-pocket something done up in a piece of paper,
and handed it to his wife. She opened the package and saw that it
contained what looked like a long piece of very highly polished
ivory. Then her face softened, her lips trembled, and her eyes brimmed
over with tears. “Forgive me, William, for my unjust suspicions,” she
exclaimed, as she threw herself once more into his arms. “This mute
ham-bone tells me far more strongly than any words of yours could the
story of the Society reporter’s awful struggle for life.”

William kissed his young wife affectionately, and then sat down to the
breakfast which she had prepared for him.

“I hope,” she said, cheerfully, as she took a dish of lobster salad
from the oven, where it had been warmed over, “that you will keep a
sharp lookout for quail this week. It would be nice to have one or two
for our Christmas dinner. Of course we cannot afford corned beef and
cabbage like those rich people whom you call by their first names when
you write about them in the Sunday papers; but I do hope we will not be
obliged to put up with cakes and pastry and such wretched stuff.”

“Quail!” exclaimed her husband; “they are so scarce and shy this winter
that we are obliged to take setter-dogs with us to the entertainments
at which they are served. But I will do my best, darling.”

As soon as William had gone to bed Susan took from its hiding-place the
present which she had prepared for her husband, and proceeded to sew
it to the inside of his ulster as a Christmas surprise for him. She
sighed to think that it was the best she could afford this year. It was
a useful rather than an ornamental gift--a simple rubber pocket, made
from a piece of an old mackintosh, and intended for William to carry
soup in.

But Susan had a bright, hopeful spirit, and a smile soon smoothed
the furrows from her face as she murmured, “How nice it will be
when William comes home with his new pocket filled with nice, warm,
nourishing bouillon!” and then she glanced up from her work and saw
that her daughter, little golden-haired Eva, had entered the room and
was looking at her out of her great, truthful, deep-blue eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Christmas eve, and as Jacob Scaffold trudged through the frosty
streets the keen air brought a ruddy glow to his cheeks and tipped his
nose with a brighter carmine than any that he used in the practice of
his art. Entering the hall in which the ball of the Gilt-edged Coterie
was taking place, the proud old house and sign painter quickly divested
himself of his outer wraps and made his way to the committee-room.

Then, adorned with a huge badge and streamer, he strolled out to
greet his friends, who were making merry on the polished floor of the
ball-room. But although the band played its most stirring measures and
the lights gleamed on arms and necks of dazzling whiteness, old Jacob
Scaffold sighed deeply as he seated himself in a rather obscure corner
and allowed his eyes to roam about the room as if in search of some
familiar face.

The fact was that the haughty, purse-proud old man was thinking of
another Christmas eve ten years before when his daughter Susan had
danced at this same ball, the brightest, the prettiest, and the most
sought-after girl on the floor.

“And to think,” said the old man to himself, “that, with all the
opportunities she had to make a good match, she should have taken up
with that reporter in the shiny dress-suit! It’s five years since I’ve
heard anything of her, but of late I’ve been thinking that maybe I was
too harsh with her, and perhaps--”

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a servant, who told him
that some one desired to see him in the committee-room. On reaching
that apartment he found a little girl of perhaps eight years of age,
plainly clad, and carrying a basket in her hand. Fixing her eyes on
Jacob Scaffold, she said:

“Please, sir, are you the chairman of the press committee?”

“I am,” replied the puzzled artist; “but who are you?”

“I am the reporter of the _Sunday Guff_. My papa has charge of the
‘What the Four Hundred are Doing’ column, but to-night he is obliged to
attend a chromo-literary reception, where there will be nothing to eat
but tea and cake. Papa has reported your balls and chowder excursions
for the past five years, and we have always had ham for dessert for a
week afterward. We had all been looking forward to your Christmas-eve
ball, and when papa told us that he would have to go to the tea and
cake place to-night mama felt so badly that I took papa’s ticket out of
his pocket when he was asleep and came here myself. Papa has a thick
ulster, full of nice big pockets, that he puts on when he goes out to
report, but I have brought a basket.”

The child finished her simple and affecting narrative, and the members
of the press committee looked at one another dumfounded. Jacob Scaffold
was the first to break the silence.

“And what is your name, little child?” he inquired.

“Eva Swallowtail,” she answered, as she turned a pair of trusting,
innocent blue eyes full upon him.

The old man grew pale and his lips trembled as he gathered his
grandchild in his arms. The other members of the committee softly left
the room, for they all knew the story of Susan Scaffold’s _mésalliance_
and her father’s bitter feelings toward her and her husband.

“What!” cried Jacob Scaffold, “my grandchild wanting bread? Come to me,
little one, and we’ll see what can be done for you.”

And putting on his heavy ulster he took little Eva by the hand and led
the way to the great thoroughfare, on which the stores were still open.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a happy family party that sat down to dinner in William
Swallowtail’s humble home that bright Christmas day, and well did the
little ones enjoy the treat which their generous new-found grandparent
provided for them. They began with a soup made of wine jelly, and ended
with a delicious dessert of corned-beef sandwiches and large German
pickles; and then, when they could eat no more, and not even a pork pie
could tempt their appetites, Grandpa Scaffold told his daughter that he
was willing to lift his son-in-law from the hard and ill-paid labor
of writing Society chronicles, and give him a chance to better himself
with a whitewash brush. “And,” continued the old man, “if I see that
he possesses true artistic talent, I will some day give him a chance at
the side of a house.”




THE DYING GAG.


There was an affecting scene on the stage of a New York theatre the
other night--a scene invisible to the audience and not down on the
bills, but one far more touching and pathetic than anything enacted
before the footlights that night, although it was a minstrel company
that gave the entertainment.

It was a wild, blustering night, and the wind howled mournfully around
the street-corners, blinding the pedestrians with the clouds of dust
that it caught up from the gutters and hurled into their faces.

Old man Sweeny, the stage doorkeeper, dozing in his little glazed box,
was awakened by a sudden gust that banged the stage door and then
went howling along the corridor, almost extinguishing the gas-jets and
making the minstrels shiver in their dressing-rooms.

“What! you here to-night?” exclaimed old man Sweeny as a frail figure
muffled up in a huge ulster staggered through the doorway and stood
leaning against the wall, trying to catch his breath.

“Yes; I felt that I couldn’t stay away from the footlights to-night.
They tell me I’m old and worn out and had better take a rest, but I’ll
go on till I drop;” and with a hollow cough the Old Gag plodded slowly
down the dim and drafty corridor, and sank wearily on a sofa in the big
dressing-room, where the other Gags and Conundrums were awaiting their
cues.

“Poor old fellow!” said one of them, sadly, “he can’t hold out much
longer.”

“He ought not to go on except at matinées,” replied another veteran,
who was standing in front of the mirror trimming his long, silvery
beard; and just then an attendant came in with several basins of gruel,
and the old Jests tucked napkins under their chins and sat down to
partake of a little nourishment before going on.

The bell tinkled and the entertainment began. One after another the
Jokes and Conundrums heard their cues, went on, and returned to the
dressing-room; for they all had to go on again in the after-piece. The
house was crowded to the dome, and there was scarcely a dry eye in the
vast audience as one after another of the old Quips and Jests that
had been treasured household words in many a family came on and then
disappeared to make room for others of their kind.

As the evening wore on the whisper ran through the theatre that the Old
Gag was going on that night--perhaps for the last time; and many an eye
grew dim, many a pulse beat quicker at the thought of listening once
more to that hoary Jest, about whose head were clustered so many sacred
memories.

Meanwhile the Old Gag was sitting in his corner of the dressing-room,
his head bowed on his breast, his gruel untasted on the tray before
him. The other Gags came and went, but he heeded them not. His thoughts
were far away. He was dreaming of old days, of his early struggles
for fame, and of his friends and companions of years ago. “Where are
they now?” he asked himself, sadly. “Some are wanderers on the face
of the earth, in comic operas. Two of them found ignoble graves in
the ‘Tourists’’ company. Others are sleeping beneath the daisies in
Harper’s ‘Editor’s Drawer.’”

“You’re called, sir!”

The Old Gag awoke from his reverie, and started to his feet with
something of the old-time fire flashing in his eye. Throwing aside his
heavy ulster, he staggered to the entrance and stood there patiently
waiting for his cue.

“You’re hardly strong enough to go on to-night,” said a Merry Jest,
touching him kindly on the arm; but the gray-bearded one shook him off,
saying hoarsely:

“Let be! let be! I must read those old lines once more--it may be for
the last time.”

And now a solemn hush fell upon the vast audience as a sad-faced
minstrel uttered in tear-compelling accents the most pathetic words in
all the literature of minstrelsy:

“And so you say, Mr. Johnson, that all the people on the ship were
perishing of hunger, and yet you were eating fried eggs. How do you
account for that?”

For one moment a deathlike silence prevailed. Then the Old Gag stepped
forward and in clear, ringing tones replied:

“The ship lay to, and I got one.”

A wild, heart-rending sob came from the audience and relieved the
tension as the Old Gag staggered back into the entrance and fell into
the friendly arms that were waiting to receive him.

Sobbing Conundrums bore him to a couch in the dressing-room. Weeping
Jokes strove in vain to bring back the spark of life to his inanimate
form. But all to no avail.

The Old Gag was dead.




“ONLY A TYPE-WRITER.”


SCENE. _Cave of the experienced_ MANAGER _in the centre of a labyrinth
under the stage_.

MANAGER (_to energetic young_ DRAMATIST _who has tracked him to his
lair_). Yes, young feller, I’ve read your play, and, while it’s
first-class in its way, it ain’t exactly what I want. Now you seem to
be a pushing, active sort of a feller--if you hadn’t been you never
would have found your way in here--and if you can only get me up the
sort of piece I want we can do a little business together. In writing
a play you’ve got to bear one thing in mind, and that is to adapt
yourself to the public taste and the resources of the theatre. Are you
on?

DRAMATIST. Certainly, sir; and I shall be only too happy to write
something especially for your theatre. I think I can do it if I only
get a chance. Sardou is my model.

MANAGER. Well, Sardou is all right enough in his way, but I’m looking
after something entirely different. Now I want a strong melodrama, and
I’m going to call it _Only a Type-writer; or, The Pulse of the Great
Metropolis_. There are twenty thousand type-writers in the city, and
they’ll all want to see it, and each of them will fetch her mother or
her feller along with her. Then they’ll gabble about it to all the
people they know--nothing like a lot of women to advertise a piece--and
if there’s any go in the play at all it’ll be talked about from Harlem
to the Battery before it’s been on the boards a week. Now, of course,
there’s got to be a moral; in fact, you’ve got to come out pretty d--d
strong with your moral. My idea is this: In the first act you show the
type-writer--whose folks are all gilt-edged people and ’way up--in an
elegant cottage at Newport. She’s a light-hearted, innocent girl in a
white muslin dress with a blue sash. I’m going to cast Pearl Livingston
for the part, and she’s always crazy to make up for an innocent girl.
Recollect you can’t spread the innocence and simplicity on too thick.
Livingston wants to say a prayer with her hair hanging down her back,
so if you can ring that in somehow it’ll be all the better. You must
give her a good entrance, too, or she’ll kick like a steer.

DRAMATIST. Excuse me, but I don’t see exactly how a type-writer could
live in a Newport cottage.

MANAGER. I’m coming to that right away. You see this act is just to
show her as a light-hearted, innocent girl whose father has always been
loaded up with dust, so she’s never known what it was to holler for a
sealskin sack and not get it. But in the end of the act the father goes
broke and exclaims, “Merciful heavens, we are beggars!” and drops dead.
His wife gives a shriek, and all the society people rush on from the
wings so as to make a picture at the back, while the daughter--that’s
Livingston, you know--takes the centre of the stage and says, “No,
mother”--or “mommer” would sound more affectionate, maybe--“No,
mommer,” she says, “not beggars yet, for I will work for you!” Curtain!
Are you on to the idea?

DRAMATIST. Well, I believe I understand your scheme so far. But who’s
the hero, and where do you get your comedy element?

MANAGER. Oh, the comedy is easy enough to manage, and as for the hero,
I forgot to tell you that he shows up in the first act and wants to
marry her, but she gives him the bounce because he’s poor as a crow.
Better make him an artist or something of that sort. It might be a good
idea to have him a reporter, and then he can read some good strong
lines about the dignity of his profession or something of that sort,
just so as to catch on with the press boys. Well, the next act shows
the girl living in a garret in New York, supporting herself and her
mother by type-writing. Lay it on thick about their being poor and
industrious and all that, and have some good lines about the noble
working-girl or the virtuous type-writer or something of that sort.
Livingston’s got an elegant new silk gown that she says she’s going to
wear in that act, so you’ll have to give her a few lines to explain
that although they’re poor she still has that dress and won’t part
with it because her father gave it to her, and so she wears it at home
nights when the other one’s in the wash.

DRAMATIST. Excuse me, but isn’t it rather strange for a poor
type-writer to appear in a handsome new silk dress when she’s having
hard work to support herself and her mother? Why not put her in a plain
gingham gown--?

MANAGER. Plain gingham be blowed! Say, young feller, when you know that
cat Livingston as well as I do, you won’t sit here talking about plain
gingham gowns. No, siree; she won’t touch any part unless she can dress
it right up to the handle. Well, this act is in two scenes. The first
is a front scene showing the humble house on the virtuous-poverty plan,
with the old lady warming her bands at a little fire and saying, “Oh,
it is bitter cold to-night, and the wind cuts like a knife.” And then
we can have the wind whistling through the garret in a melancholy sort
of way. The next scene shows a broker’s office where the type-writer
is employed. Here you can run in a little comedy and show them having
a lot of fun while the old man is out at lunch. Livingston’s got some
first-rate music--sort of pathetic-like--and you can write some words
to it for her to sing. Write something appropriate, such as, “I’m only
a working-girl, but I’m virtuous, noble, and true.” How does that
sound, hey? Well, in this act her employer insults her, and she leaves
him, though she hasn’t a cent in the world and doesn’t know where to
go. You must give her a good strong scene, and have the curtain fall
on a tableau of indignant virtue rebuking the tempter. You must have
a picture there that we can use on a three-sheet poster. In the next
act we have the grand climax. The villain still pursues her to her new
place, for she gets a job with the aid of the poor young lover who was
bounced in the first act. Just as the old villain is about to seize her
and carry her off by main force, the young lover rushes in and knocks
him out with a fire shovel. He falls and breaks his skull. In comes
the doctor--the lover goes to fetch him--and meanwhile the type-writer
gives him some pious talk and converts him. Maybe it would be a good
idea to ring in the prayer in this act. Livingston’s dead stuck on
having it in the piece. Well, he repents of his wickedness, and when
the doctor says he has only ten minutes to live he says, “Oh, if I but
had the time I would make a will and leave all my wealth to this noble
girl; but there is not time enough to write it.” And then Livingston
says, “What’s the matter with my doing it on my faithful type-writing
machine?” or words to that effect. So she takes it down like lightning,
and he has just time to sign it before he expires. Now, young feller,
you’ve got my idea of a play. You go to work and write something on
that basis; and mind you don’t forget what I said about Livingston’s
prayer and silk dress, but don’t work ’em both in in the same act.
Fetch it around to me and maybe we can do business. Do you want to
tackle the job?

DRAMATIST (_dubiously_). I’ll try, sir, but I’m afraid it’s a little
out of my line.




THE CULTURE BUBBLE IN OURTOWN.


You must know, in the first place, that I am a resident of the thriving
city of Ourtown, where for twenty years past I have held the position
of librarian in the town library--a place which has, of course, brought
me into contact with the most intellectual circles of society, and has
won for me general recognition as the leader of literary and artistic
thought in my native city.

Last winter I returned to Ourtown after a six months’ absence, and
found to my dismay that the social life of the place was altered almost
beyond recognition. “And is the Coasting Club still flourishing?” I
inquired, eagerly, for there was a foot of snow on the ground, and my
memory went back to the jolly moonlight slides that we used to enjoy on
the North Hill, and the late suppers of fried oysters, beer, cheese,
and even hot mince-pie which had no terrors for us.

“The Coasting Club!” retorts Mrs. Jack Symple, to whom my remark was
addressed; “mercy, no! We haven’t even _thought_ of coasting this
winter. As for me, I’ve been so interested in the Saturday Night Club
that I haven’t had a moment’s time for anything else. Oh, you’ll be
surprised when you see how much more cultured the town is now than it
was when you went away! You never hear anything now about skating or
coasting or sleigh-rides or doings of that sort. It’s all Ibsen and
Browning and Tolstoï and pre-Raphaelite art and Emerson nowadays, and
Professor Gnowital says that there’s as much real culture in Ourtown,
in proportion to the number of inhabitants, as there is in Boston.”

My eyes dilated as Mrs. Symple rattled off this jargon about the
intellectual growth of Ourtown. A year ago I had regarded her as a
young woman with brain-cells of the most primitive form imaginable,
picking up pebbles on the shores of the Shakespeare class; and here she
was drinking deep draughts of advanced thought, and talking about Ibsen
and Tolstoï and Emerson as glibly as if they were old acquaintances.

“And who is Professor Gnowital?” I asked, “and by what formula does
he estimate the comparative degrees of culture to the square foot in
Boston and Ourtown? He must be a man of remarkable gifts.”

“Remarkable gifts!” echoed Mrs. Symple, “well, I should think so.
He comes from Boston and he’s been giving readings here before the
Saturday Night Club. And oh, you _must_ come and make an address at
the meeting next week! It’s to be the grand gala one of the whole
course. Professor Gnowital is coming on to attend it with some really
cultivated people from Boston, and you’ll be surprised to see what a
fine literary society there is here now.”

I agreed to address the Saturday Night Club, but I saw with deep sorrow
that the town had simply gone mad over what it termed “culture.” People
whom I had always regarded as but little better than half-wits were
gravely uttering opinions about Carlyle and Emerson, or “doing” German
literature through the medium of English translations. And all this
idiocy in place of the Shakespeare Club, sleigh-rides, late suppers,
and coasting, that once made life so delightful for us all.

Mrs. Symple had asked me to address the club on whatever topic I
might select, and while I was considering the invitation a great
idea took possession of my brain. To think was to act; and without a
moment’s delay I sat down and wrote a long letter to my old friend, Dr.
Paulejeune, begging him to come up and address the club in my stead,
and by so doing render a service not only to his lifelong friend, but
to the great cause of enlightenment and human progress as well.

Now Dr. Paulejeune is not only an educated man with the thinking habit
long fastened upon him, but also that _rara avis_, a Frenchman who
thoroughly understands the language, literature, and social structure
of America. Moreover he possesses in a marked degree the patriotism,
wit, and cynicism of his race, and has a few hearty prejudices against
certain modern vogues in art which are remote from the accepted ideals
of the Latin race. Happily enough his name was well known in Ourtown by
reason of his little volume of essays, which had just then made its
appearance.

Our town society never gathered in stronger force than it did on
the evening of the Saturday Night Club meeting at the Assembly
Rooms. At half-past eight the president of the club introduced the
first speaker, Mr. W. Brindle Fantail, a young man who made himself
conspicuous in Boston a few years ago by means of Browning readings,
which he conducted with a brazen effrontery that compelled the
unwilling admiration of his rivals. In the words of Jack Symple, “He
caught the Browning boom on the rise and worked it for all it was
worth.” Mr. Fantail advanced to the edge of the platform, ran a large
flabby hand through his dank shock of light hair, and then announced
as his subject, “Tolstoï, the Modern Homer.” Then, with that calm
self-possession which has carried him unharmed through many a dreary
monologue or reading, he told his hearers what a great man Tolstoï
was, and how grateful they ought to be for an opportunity to learn of
his many excellences. Of course he did not put it quite as broadly as
that, but that was the gist of his remarks. He told us, moreover, that
the whole range of English literature contained no such work of fiction
as _Sevastopol_, and that no writer of modern times excelled--or
even equaled--this Russian Homer. “In short,” he said, impressively,
“Tolstoï is distinctly epoch-making.”

The next speaker was the illustrious Professor Gnowital, who declared
that Ourtown would never experience any genuine intellectual
development unless a thorough study of the fantastic romances of
Hoffmann was begun at once. I cannot imagine what started the professor
off on that tack unless it was a desire to choose a subject of which
his hearers knew absolutely nothing. His words had a great effect,
however, for very few members of the club had ever heard of Hoffmann,
and it had never occurred to these that his ghostly tales were at all
in the line of that modern culture which they all adored.

The next speaker was Mrs. Measel, whose career I have watched with
feelings of mingled respect and amazement. Mrs. Measel has taught art
in a dozen towns, lectured on the Great Unknowable in at least two of
the large cities, and given “Mornings with Montaigne,” “Babblings from
Browning,” and “Studies from Stepniak,” in whatever place she could
obtain a hearing. On this occasion she talked about the renaissance
of something or other, I’ve forgotten exactly what--and, by the way,
there is no better word for use in culture circles than renaissance,
and that, too, whether you can pronounce it or not--well, she began
with her renaissance, but very soon branched off into a dissertation
on Tolstoï and Ibsen and a few more “epoch-making” people with whose
names she happened to be familiar. I remember she said that _The Doll’s
House_ was one of the grandest plays of modern times, whereat Dr.
Paulejeune, who had listened to everything up to this point without
turning a hair, smiled broadly. On the whole Mrs. Measel’s was a
good shallow talk for good shallow people, and I am sure she made a
delightful impression on us all.

Then, at a signal from the president, Dr. Paulejeune made his way to
the platform and delivered an address which I am sure will never be
forgotten by those who heard it. It was a daring speech for any one to
make, and particularly so for a stranger, and that it proved effective
in a far higher degree than either of us had ever expected was due to
the tact, scholarship, subtlety, and sincerity of my distinguished
friend, Dr. Émile Paulejeune.

The doctor began with a graceful tribute to the eloquence, wit, and
scholarship of the speakers who had preceded him, and then went on
to say that he had chosen as the subject of his discourse one of the
greatest writers of fiction that the world has ever known--Daniel De
Foe.

There was hearty applause at this, and some scratching of heads and
obvious efforts on the part of certain guests to remember who De Foe
was and what he had written. I could not help turning in my chair to
take a look at Mrs. Symple. The poor little woman was leaning forward
with an expression of absolute dismay on her silly face. I could read
her thoughts plainly: “Oh dear, this new doctor has been and gone and
dragged up another man for me to read about, and I’m sure if I get one
more book into my head it’ll crowd some other one out!”

But the look of dismay changed to one of blank, open-mouthed amazement,
which was shared by a large number of the guests, as Dr. Paulejeune
continued impressively: “And the book which I have come prepared to
speak of is _Robinson Crusoe_.”

Then the doctor took up, each in its turn, the writings and writers
whom we had heard commended by the previous speakers. “Tolstoï is all
very well,” he said, “if you happen to be fond of Russian pessimism,
and are not fortunate enough to be familiar with classic English
literature, which contains hundreds of stronger, better-drawn pictures
than _Sevastopol_.” He dismissed Hoffmann from the discussion with the
contemptuous remark that he was “simply a Dutch Poe, and very Dutch
at that.” In speaking of Ibsen he threw his audience into convulsions
of laughter by gravely comparing _The Doll’s House_ with Jacob
Abbott’s _Rollo Learning to Work_, a book which he assured us not only
surpassed Ibsen’s masterpiece in the simplicity and directness of its
style, but abounded in dramatic situations that were as thrilling as
any that the Northern writer had ever devised. “For instance,” he said,
“there is a chapter in that estimable little Rollo book which tells us
how the hero was making a woodpile, and, disregarding the sound counsel
of the conservative Jonas, insisted upon piling the sticks of wood
with the small ends out and the large ends inside against the wall of
the woodshed. Do any of you, my friends, recall the scene of the heap
toppling over? It is portrayed in Mr. Abbott’s most realistic style,
and is in itself an ideal Ibsen climax.

“Do you know,” he exclaimed, advancing to the edge of the platform and
shaking a long, bony forefinger at his auditors, “do you know--you who
call this Scandinavian a dramatist--that perhaps the most thrilling
dramatic situation in all literature is found here in this book,
_Robinson Crusoe_? If you want to know what a dramatic situation is,
read Daniel De Foe’s account of Crusoe finding the human footprint on
the shore of his desert island. And then read the whole book carefully
through and enjoy its vivid descriptions, its superb English, its
philosophy, and the great lessons which it teaches. And when you have
finished it ask yourselves if any man ever obtained as complete a
mastery of the magic, beautiful art of story-telling as did Daniel De
Foe!”

When the doctor finished his address he was greeted with thunders of
applause, while Fantail, Gnowital, and Mrs. Measel sat dazed at this
sudden attack on their stronghold.

“Thank Heaven for a little plain, ordinary sense at last,” was the way
in which some one expressed the common sentiment of the club.

“And to think,” chattered Mrs. Symple, “that we were cultivated all
along and didn’t know it! Why, I read the Rollo books and _Robinson
Crusoe_ when I was a child, and never dreamt that they were artistic
or literary or that sort of thing. I thought they were just stories.
The idea of our paying a dollar apiece for Mrs. Measel’s lectures, and
muddling our heads with Ibsen and Tolstoï and the rest of them that
Professor Gnowital told us were so grand, while all the time we were
really cultured and didn’t know it!”

The result of my friend’s lecture was that within a week we were
sliding downhill and enjoying ourselves in the old way, and in less
than a fortnight the prophets of culture had departed in search of
fresh pastures.

I do hope, however, that Mrs. Measel will succeed, for she deserves to
if ever a woman did. She has educated two children on the profits--or
rather the spoils --of the Browning craze, and has made Tolstoï pay
for the care of an invalid sister. She gives more culture for the money
than any one in the business, and I can heartily commend her to any
club or community that feels a yearning for the Unknowable.




SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION AND PRESERVATION OF JOKES.


I.--THE “JOKAL CALENDAR.”

Every joke has its appropriate season. The true humorist--one who finds
comedy in everything--gathers his ideas from what goes on about him,
and by a subtle alchemy of his own distils from them jokes suitable
to the changing seasons. The only laws to which childhood willingly
yields obedience are those unwritten statutes which compel the proper
observance of “trap-time,” “kite-time,” and “marble-time.” So even must
the humorist recognize the different periods allotted respectively to
goats, stovepipes, ice-cream, and other foundations of merriment.

The _Jokal Calendar_ begins in the early summer, when girls are leading
young men into ice-cream saloons, and keepers of summer resorts are
preparing new swindles for their guests. Soon the farmer will gather
in his crop of summer boarders; the city fisherman will entangle his
patent flies in the branches of lofty trees, while the country lad
catches all the trout with a worm. Then the irate father and the
bulldog will drive the lover from the front gate, while married men
who remain in the city during their wives’ absence play poker until
early morn and take grass-widows to Coney Island. About this time the
chronicler of humor goes into the country, whence he will return in the
early fall with a fresh stock of ideas, gathered in the village store,
at the farm-house table, and by the shores of the sounding sea.

Beginning his autumn labors with the scent of the hay-fields in his
nostrils, and the swaying boughs of the pine forest still whispering
in his ears, the humorist offers a few dainty paragraphs on the simple
joys of rural life. The farmer who dines in his shirt-sleeves, the
antiquity of the spring fowl, the translucent milk, and the saline
qualities of the pork which grace the table; the city man who essays to
milk the cow, and the country deacon who has been “daown to York”--all
these are sketched with vivid pen for the delectation of his readers.
But it must be remembered that these subjects have been used during
the whole summer; and the humorist, after his return to the city, can
offer, at the best, but an aftermath of farm-house fun. If it be a late
fall the public may slide along on banana and orange peel jokes until
the first cold snap warns housekeepers of the necessity of putting up
stovepipes. (NOTE.--About this time print paragraph of gas-company
charging a man for gas while his house was closed for the summer.
Allusions to the extortions of gas-companies are always welcome.)

Stovepipe jokes must be touched upon lightly, for the annual spring
house-cleaning will bring the pipes down again, six months later, to
the accompaniment of cold dinners, itinerant pails of hot soap-suds,
and other miseries incident to that domestic event.

And now that the family stovepipe has ceased to exude smoke at every
joint and pore, the humorist finds himself fairly equipped for his
year’s work. The boys are at school; lodge-meetings have begun, and
sleepless wives are waiting for their truant lords; college graduates
are seeking positions in newspaper offices (and sometimes getting and
keeping them, though it won’t do to let the public know it); election
is at hand, and candidates are kissing babies and setting up the
drinks for their constituents; young men of slender means are laying
pipes for thicker clothes--in short, a man must be dull of wit who
cannot find food for comic paragraphs in what goes on about him at this
fruitful season. The ripening of the chestnut-burr, and the harvesting
of its fruit--beautifully symbolical of the humorist’s vocation--form
another admirable topic at this time.

Winter comes with its snow and ice, and the small boy, who is always
around, moulds the one into balls for destructive warfare, while
corpulent gentlemen and pedestrians bearing eggs and other fragile
articles slip and fall on the other. Oyster-stews, and girls who pine
for them; the female craving for matinee tickets, and the high hats
which obstruct the view of those in the back seats; nocturnal revelry
in saloon and ball-room; low-necked dresses; and the extortionate
idleness of the plumber now keep the pen of the comic writer
constantly at work. Chapters on the pawning, borrowing, lending, and
renovation of the dress-coat are also timely.

Spring brings the perennial spring poet with his rejected manuscript;
the actor with his winter’s ulster; the health-giving bock-beer; and,
above all, the goat, in the delineation of whose pranks and follies the
_Jokal Calendar_ reaches its climax.

What the reindeer is to the Laplander the goat is to the writer
of modern humor. His whole life is devoted to the service of the
paragraphist. He eats tomato-cans and crinoline; he rends the
theatre-poster from the wall, and consumes the bucket of paste; he
rends the clothes from the line, and devours the curtain that flutters
in the basement window; he upsets elderly men, and charges, with
lowered horns, at lone and fear-stricken women.

But as the encroachments of civilization have driven the buffalo from
his native plains, so is the goat, propelled by a stern city ordinance,
slowly but surely disappearing from the streets and vacant lots which
once knew him so well. He is making his last stand now in the rocky
fastnesses of Harlem. I have seen him perched on an inaccessible crag
on the border-land of Morrisania, looking down with solemn eyes on
the great city where he once roamed careless and free from can to
ash-barrel. Etched against a background of lowering clouds, his was,
indeed, an impressive figure, the apotheosis of American humor.


II.--THE IDEA AND ITS EMBELLISHMENT.

In the construction of a joke the chief requisite is the Idea.

Making jokes without ideas is like making bricks without straw; and
the people who tried that were sent out into the Wilderness to wander
for forty years and live exclusively on manna and water--a diet which
is not provocative of humor. Indeed it is a noteworthy fact that
although the children of Israel were accompanied in their journeying
by herds of goats, and were constantly hearing stories of the huge
squashes and clusters of grapes which grew in the Promised Land--the
California of that period--yet we have no record that they availed
themselves of such obvious opportunities for jesting.

The humorist, having procured his Idea, should divest it of all
superfluities, place it on the table before him, and then fall into a
reverie as to its possibilities. Let us suppose, for example, that his
Idea, in a perfectly nude condition, looks something like this:

“A girl is thin enough to make a good match for any one.”

Now it will not do to offer this simple statement as a joke. It is
merely an Idea, or the nucleus of a short story, and can be greatly
improved by a little verbiage.

There would be no point gained in calling the girl a New Yorker, or
even a Philadelphian, though the latter city is usually fair game for
the paragraphist. She should certainly hail from Boston. The girls of
that city are identified in the popular mind with eye-glasses, long
words, angularity and other outward and visible signs of severe mental
discipline and parsimony in diet. The ideal Boston girl is not rotund.
On the contrary, she is endowed with a sharply defined outline, and a
profile which suggests self-abnegation in the matter of food. A little
dialect will help the story along amazingly; therefore let the scene
be laid in rural New England, and let the point be made with the usual
rustic prefix of “Wa-al!” This will afford an opportunity to utilize a
few minor ideas relative to New England rural customs, the maintenance
of city boarders, the food provided, the economy practised, and other
salient features of country life.

So, by judicious expansion--not padding--the humorist will stretch his
little paragraph into a very respectable story, something like this:


_Sample of Short Story Erected on Paragraph._

A summer evening of exquisite calm and sweetness. The golden haze
of sunset sheds its soft tints on hill and plain, and pours a flood
of mellow light over the roofs and trees of the quaint old village
street. The last rays of the sun, falling through the waving boughs of
elm and maple, form a checkered, ever-moving pattern on the wall of
the meeting-house; they kindle beacon-fires on the distant heights
of Baldhead Mountain, and linger in tender caress on the dainty
auburn tresses of Priscilla Whitney, who is displaying her flounces,
furbelows, and other “citified fixin’s” on the front piazza of Deacon
Pogram’s residence.

(It will be seen that the beginning of this paragraph is written in a
serious vein; but the last two lines prepare the reader for a comic
story. He now makes up his mouth for the laugh which awaits him a
little farther along.)

From the kitchen comes a pleasant aroma of burnt bread-crusts, as
dear old Samanthy Pogram, her kindly face covered with its snow-white
glory, prepares the coffee for supper. Meanwhile the worthy deacon, in
stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, sits by the open door and enjoys the
cool evening breeze that sweeps in refreshing gusts down the fertile
valley of the Pockohomock.

“There ye be again, Sarah,” says Aunt Samanthy to the hired help, a
shade of annoyance crossing her fine old face. “Hain’t I told ye time
’n’ again not to put fresh eggs in the boarders’ omelet? I suppose ye
think there hain’t such a thing as a stale egg in the haouse, but ye
must be wastin’ good ones on the city folks! Sakes alive! but I’ll be
glad when they’ve cleaned aout, bag ’n’ baggage. I’m nigh tuckered aout
a-waitin’ on ’em ’n’ puttin’ up with their frills ’n’ fancy doin’s.”

“They tell me, Samanthy,” says the deacon, “that young Rube Perkins is
kinder makin’ up to one of aour boarders. I s’pose ye hain’t noticed
nothin’, mebbe?”

“I’ve seen him a-settin’ alongside o’ that dough-faced critter times
enough so he’d like ter wear aout the rocker on the piazzy; but I guess
Rube had better not set enny too much store by what _she_ says to him.
Them high-toned Whitney folks o’ hern daown Bosting way hain’t over ’n’
above anxious to hev Rube Perkins fur a son-in-law, I kin tell ye.”

“Wa-al,” drawls the deacon, reflectively, “I kalkerlate they’ve got an
idee she’d better make a good match while she’s abaout it.”

“She’s thin enough to make a lucifer match,” rejoins Aunt Samanthy; and
with this parting bit of irony she goes in to put the saleratus biscuit
on the tea-table.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of course this is not a model of a humorous story, but it will pass
muster. It is, however, a very creditable specimen of a story built
up, as I have shown, on a very slender foundation. Some humorists
would give it an apologetic title, such as “Rural Sarcasm,” or “Aunt
Samanthy’s Little Joke,” in order to let the reader down easy.


III.--REVAMPING OLD JOKES.

It often happens that the humorist finds himself unexpectedly called
upon for jokes at a moment when he has no ideas about him. Perhaps
he is away from his workshop where his tools are kept, or perhaps he
has lost the combination of the safe in which his precious ideas are
securely locked up. The problem of how to make bricks without straw,
and the awful fate of the people who attempted it, stares him in the
face. But his keen intelligence comes to his aid. Like the trusty guide
in Mayne Reid’s story, he exclaims, “Ha, it is the celebrated joke-root
bush, called by the Apaches the ha-ha plant!” and seizing an ancient
jest, he tears it from the soil, carefully cleanses the esculent root
from its clinging mould, and then proceeds to revamp it for modern use.

The joke should be one that has slowly ripened under the suns of
distant climes and other days. It should be perfectly mellow, and care
must be taken to remove from it all particles of dust and lichen. Let
us suppose, for example, that the joke, divested of all superfluities,
presents this appearance:

“A man once gave his friend a very small cup of very old wine, and the
friend remarked that it was the smallest thing of its age he had ever
seen.”

I have selected this joke because it is one of the oldest of which the
world has any record.

The world has known many changes since civilization reached the point
that made old wine an appreciated and acknowledged delight to the
dwellers in the fertile valley of the Euphrates, and thus threw open
the doors for the appearance of this joke. The dust of him who gave and
of him who drank the wine are blended together in the soil of that
once populous region. Stately sarcophagi mark the last resting-places
of many who have enjoyed this ancient bit of merriment. Empires have
crumbled since then; mighty rulers have yielded the insignia of their
power at the imperative summons of the conqueror of all; yet nothing
has interrupted the stately, solemn march of this joke along the
corridors of time. It flourished in Byzantium; it lingered in tender
caress on each of the seven hills of Rome; when Hannibal led his
cohorts across the snow-clad Alps it stepped out from behind a crag and
said, “Here we are again!” And the astonished warrior recognized it at
once, although it wore a peaked hat and a goitre.

It has awakened laughter among effeminate and refined Athenians as
they lay stretched in languid and perfumed ease immediately after the
luxurious bath, and about two hundred years before Christ. It has been
said that cleanliness is next to godliness, and yet we find that in
this instance there was room to slip this joke in between the two, and
have two hundred years of space left.

It is found in the sacred writings of Confucius, side by side with his
memorable injunction to his followers not to shed a single cuff or
sock unless the ticket should be forthcoming. Under the iron crown of
Lombardy and the lilies of France this joke has lived and thrived. It
has even been published in the _Philadelphia Ledger_ which is a sure
proof of its antiquity.

Surely no one but an American humorist could look upon this hoary relic
without feelings of veneration. Let us see what the humorist does with
it:

That which has worn a toga in Rome and a coat of mail in the middle
ages, he now clothes in the habiliments of the present day. Watch him
as he arrays it in the high hat, the patent-leather shoes, the cutaway
coat, and the eye-glasses of modern times, and, behold, we have:

“Young Arthur Cecil, of the Knickerbocker Club, prides himself on his
knowledge of wines, and boasts of a cellar of his own which cannot be
matched on this side of the water. Bilkins dined with him the other
night, and as a great treat his host poured out into a liquor-glass a
few drops of priceless old ----.

“‘There, my boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’ll not find a drop of that
anywhere in New York except on my table!’

“Bilkins took it down at a single gulp, smacked his lips, and said:

“‘I’ll tell you what it is, old man. There ain’t many things lying
around loose that are as old as this and haven’t grown any bigger.’

“The joke was too good to keep, and Cecil had to square himself at the
club by ordering up a basket of Mumm.”


IV.--THE OBVIOUS JOKE.

A large class of simple-minded people believe that the obvious joke is
the most delightful form of humor. An obvious joke is one whose point
or climax can be seen from the very start, and is, in fact, a natural
sequence to the beginning.

For example, when we begin to read of a city dude who professed
to understand the distinctively rural art of milking a cow, and
volunteered to show his friends how to do it, we know perfectly well
that he is going to get knocked out in the attempt, and that the
story will end in a humorous description of the indignities inflicted
upon him by the enraged animal. The only chance for variety in the
sketch lies in the manner in which the cow will resent the dude’s
impertinence. She may impale him on one or both of her horns; she
may hurl him on a dunghill and dance on his prostrate form; she may
content herself with kicking him; but whatever she does she will be
sure to upset the milk-pail and excite the laughter of the lover of
obvious humor. Of course a professional humorist never reads an obvious
joke. He knows exactly what is going to happen the moment his eye falls
on the first paragraph.

If a tatterdemalion appears at the county fair with a broken-down
plug which he offers to trot against any horse on the track, the
professional humorist knows that the decrepit charger is going to win
the race, and that his owner will go away with his pockets bulging out
with the money he has won from the too confiding.

If a man holding four aces is persistently raised by a gentleman of
quiet demeanor and bland, childlike face, we can call the latter’s
hand without looking at it, because we know from long familiarity
with American humorous literature, as well as poker, that he holds a
straight flush. Some writers have had the effrontery to deal him a
royal flush, forgetting that he has already given his opponent all the
aces.

If a gentleman of apparently delicate physique resents the impertinence
of a bully who is forcing his attentions upon a lady, we know, without
reading to the end of the chapter, that the man of effeminate build is
in reality a prize-fighter or a college athlete, and will bundle the
bully out on the sidewalk with great rapidity.

The professional humorist shuns these “comics” as he would the plague.
They make him tired. He knows how easy they are to construct. Moreover
he despises alike the mind that gives them birth and that which finds
them funny.

The recipe for their concoction is very simple:

Think of some acquaintance who habitually eats sugar on his lettuce
and sweetens his claret. The man who says, “I don’t want none of this
_I_-talian caterwaulin’. The good old-fashioned tunes, like ‘Silver
Threads among the Gold,’ suit me right down to the ground. I don’t want
none of yer fancy gimcracks ’n’ kickshaws in mine.” Try to remember the
sort of thing that has moved this man to laughter, and then fashion a
joke on the same plan, taking pains to make it apparent to the most
primitive intellect.

Persons of this description are found in large numbers in the rural
districts, and, therefore, any story tending to cast ridicule on the
city man who puts on airs, or, in other words, affects the amenities of
civilized life, is sure to be appreciated.

For example: It is the delight of sportsmen to fish for trout with
fly-rods and tackle of an elaborate description, to the intense
amusement of the yokel who catches fish, not for sport, but in order
that he may sell them at an exorbitant price to some ignorant stranger.
Now it is a very easy matter to compose a story on this basis suited to
the comprehension of such a rustic.

The following is a fair specimen of a story of the class I have
described:

“He was a real sportsman, just from the city, and he had come down into
the country to show the benighted inhabitants how to catch fish. He
had a new patent rod in his right hand and a brand-new basket over his
left shoulder. In his coat-tail pocket he carried a silver flask, and
in his breast-pocket a big wallet filled with all the latest devices in
newfangled flies. He walked down the road with the air of a man who had
come to catch fish and knew just how to do it.

“It was growing dark when he returned to the hotel, wet, muddy, and
weary, and sadly laid aside his implements of sport.

“‘Fish don’t bite in this blawsted country, yer know,’ was his reply to
the landlord’s cheery inquiry, ‘What luck?’

“And just at this moment who should come along but old Bill Simons’s
sandy-haired, freckle-faced boy Jim, with his birch-pole over his
shoulder, and a fine string of the speckled beauties in his brown paw.

“‘Good Gawd!’ exclaimed the dude, ‘how did you catch those, me boy?’

“‘Hook ’n’ line, yer fool! How d’yer s’pose?’ was Jim’s answer, as he
pulled a handful of angleworms, the last of his bait, from his pocket,
and threw them out of the window.”




McCLURE’S MODEL VILLAGE FOR LITERARY TOILERS.


I paid a visit yesterday to the model village of Syndicate, founded
by Mr. S. S. McClure for the benefit of the literary hands employed
in his great enterprises, and I am bound to say that in point of
neatness, order, and the completeness of its sanitary arrangements it
is infinitely superior to the similar town of Pullman or any of the
colonies established by the late Baron Hirsch.

It is situated on a bit of rising ground that overlooks the Hackensack
River, the site having been chosen with a view to economy and
convenience in the shipping of material by water. The village has
been in existence a little less than two years, but it already has
a population of nearly four thousand able-bodied authors, poets and
syndicate hands, together with their wives and families, most of whom
do their work in the village, though fully a hundred go each day to the
McClure factory, in Twenty-fifth Street, returning in the evening in
time to take part in the social life of the community.

On the banks of the river Mr. McClure has built a dock and warehouse
for the reception and storage of goods. Yesterday the scene on the
water-front was an animated one. A bark from Palestine, manned by the
swarthy children of the East, was discharging its cargo of photographs
of the Holy Land, reminiscences of the Hebrew patriarchs, bales of
straw garnered by Boaz especially for the McClure monthly, and other
raw materials to be used in the literary works. In the offing I saw
the fleet canal-boat _Potato Bug_, hailing from Galesburg, Ill., and
laden with hitherto unpublished photographs of Ulysses S. Grant and
recollections of that warrior, and of his uncles, his aunts, his
progenitors, his progeny, his man-servant, his maid-servant, his
cattle, and the reporter within his gates.

At the same time a stanch schooner was receiving its cargo of serials,
short stories, poems, and memoirs, destined for the New York office. I
observed that the greatest care was exercised by the men in the work of
stowing away the cargo, the ship having previously been ballasted with
humorous articles and pungent literary reviews.

I found the village apparently deserted; only the smoke from the
chimneys showed me that the place was inhabited. But very soon the
noon whistle blew, and almost immediately the streets swarmed with
well-fed, cheerful literary toilers. I was deeply impressed with the
evidences of contentment and happiness that greeted me on every side.
In the bright faces that smiled into mine I saw nothing to remind me of
the sullen, low-browed, haggard literary weavers that one encounters at
the Authors’ Club, or that may be seen lurking in the doorways of Union
Square, with poems clutched in their toil-stained hands.

Some of the work is done in the shops under the supervision of foremen,
but there is a great deal of piece-work given out and taken by the
authors to their homes. Nearly a hundred hands are kept constantly
busy on the Grant memoirs, under the careful supervision of Mr. Hamlin
Garland. Near by, working under glass, I saw half a dozen pallid young
men, all recent discoveries of Mr. W. D. Howells. The work of these
spring lambs will be placed upon Mr. McClure’s counters at an early day.

With Mr. McClure’s permission I talked with several of the authors
and questioned them closely in regard to the wages paid them and the
conveniences and luxuries that the village of Syndicate affords to its
inhabitants. Nearly every one of these frankly said that he preferred
his life there to the more diverting existence in the congested
sections of New York. “And,” he replied, “Mr. McClure frequently
drafts off a squad of us for some special work in New York, and that
makes a very pleasant variety in our lives. We are conveyed in a small
steamboat from here to the foot of Twenty-fifth Street, and then
transferred to the factory, near Lexington Avenue, where we work until
four o’clock, when we are returned in the same manner. Sometimes, when
there is a great pressure of work on hand, the cabin of the steamboat
is fitted up with benches and we do piece-work, both coming and going,
thus adding considerably to our pay.”

At one o’clock the factory whistle blew again and the men returned to
their work. Mr. McClure took me through one of the large buildings and
explained every detail of the work to me. Every morning the foreman
goes from bench to bench and gives an idea to each author. Just before
noon he passes along again and carefully examines the unfinished work,
and, late in the afternoon, a final inspection is made, after which the
goods are packed and sent down to the wharf for shipment.

I inquired whether there was any truth in the report that several
authors had been taken with severe illness immediately after beginning
work at Syndicate, whereupon the foreman explained that this had
happened several times, but it had always resulted from giving an
author a whole idea all at once--something to which very few of them
had ever been accustomed.

I learned, also, that child labor is strictly prohibited on the McClure
property. This was rather a surprise to me, for I have been a diligent
reader of “McClure’s Magazine” ever since it was started. The art
department has not been put into working order yet, but there is a
large blacksmith shop near the village, which is celebrated for the
inferior quality of its work, and, as its proprietor and foreman are
both drinking, shiftless men, the place will probably develop into
an art shop, in which case it will turn out all the pictures for the
magazine and syndicate.

As I was taking my leave, my attention was drawn to several large oat
fields in the neighborhood of the village, and I was thereby led to
suspect that Mr. McClure was turning out literature by horse-power.

“Not at all,” he said, when I questioned him on the subject.
“Everything here is made by hand, but I have made a contract with
a padrone for a force of Scotch dialect authors, whom I must feed,
clothe, and house while they are writing for me. I expect them within a
week. I shall put them at once on a serial called ‘Blithe Jockie’s Gane
Awee,’ which will be my ‘feature’ for the coming year.”




ARRIVAL OF THE SCOTCH AUTHORS AT McCLURE’S LITERARY COLONY.


Yesterday morning, at a very early hour, I was awakened by an
imperative summons from one of the trusty sleuths that patrol the
river-front in the interest of the paper on which I am employed and
informed that a band of celebrated literary men had just been landed
from a tramp steamer at a Hoboken pier.

The reticence of actors, singers, authors, practical evangelists,
and female temperance agitators concerning their movements renders
it necessary for a great daily paper to maintain a corps of reliable
spies, whose duty it is to meet every incoming steamer and see that
neither Henry Irving nor Steve Brodie nor Lady Henry Somerset lands
unobserved and unchronicled on our hospitable shores.

The human ferret who aroused me from my slumbers declared that the
newly arrived authors were met at the pier by an active, enthusiastic
little man, who instantly departed with them in the direction of the
setting sun.

“And what makes you think that they were literary men?” I inquired.
“Are they entered on the ship’s papers as able-bodied authors?”

“Naw,” rejoined the sleuth. “They’re beatin’ the contract labor law. I
knew they was authors the minute I seen the little man that met them at
the dock. He’s a regular author’s padrone. He’s got a hull town full of
’em back in Jersey some place. I’ve known him this five year or more.”

I waited to hear no more, for I knew that the active little man could
be none other than McClure; and so I started without a moment’s delay
for the village of Syndicate on the banks of the fragrant Hackensack.

On my way to the station for the authors’ settlement I met a small boy
hurrying along the dusty highway. I recognized him as the son of an
author who is now acting as timekeeper of the Grant memoir gang, and
stopped him to inquire about Mr. McClure.

“That’s him a-coming there now, I think,” replied the urchin.

I looked in the direction indicated, and saw what seemed to be a drove
of cattle slowly approaching and enveloped in a cloud of dust. I
sauntered along to meet them, and in a quarter of an hour at a sharp
turn in the road, I encountered the strangest literary gathering that
it has ever been my fortune to behold; and when I say this I do not
forget that I have frequented some of the most brilliant literary
and artistic salons that New York has ever known. At the head of
the cavalcade marched Mr. S. S. McClure, the noted philanthropist,
magazine editor, and founder of the model village of Syndicate. He
carried a pair of bagpipes under his arm, and presented such a jaded
and travel-stained appearance that I was involuntarily reminded of
the Wandering Jew. Behind him marched a band of strange-looking men,
attired in kilts and wearing broad whiskers, long bristly hair,
and bare knees. A collie dog, panting and dust-covered, but still
sharp-eyed and vigilant, trotted along beside them to prevent them from
straying away and losing themselves in the New Jersey prairies.

As soon as Mr. McClure’s eyes fell upon me a bright smile lit up his
face, and he stopped short in the road, raised the pipe to his lips,
and burst into a triumphant strain of Scotch music. Those that followed
him paused in their course, and with one accord began a masterly
saltatorial effort, which, I have since learned, enjoys great vogue in
Glasgow and Dundee under the name of the “Sawbath Fling.” While they
danced the collie squatted on his hindquarters and watched them with
bright, sleepless eyes.

“McClure,” I cried, “in the name of all that is monthly and serial,
what does this mean?”

“Ford,” he replied solemnly, as he advanced and took me by the hand,
“you know that I have published Lincoln and Napoleon and Grant and
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Dodge and Company Ward, but I have something
far greater than all these for the year 1897. Can you not guess the
meaning of this brave cavalcade that you see before you?”

“What! Have you actually secured Professor Garnier’s ‘Equatorial
Conversational Class’ as contributors to your monthly? That is, indeed,
a literary triumph!”

“Equatorial nothing,” retorted the great editor, testily. “I have just
imported a herd of blooded Scotch dialect authors under a one year’s
contract. We had to walk all the way out from Hoboken, because I only
agreed to pay their fares to that point, and you know it’s thirty cents
from there out, and a Scotchman always likes to walk and see scenery
when he can. The result was that I had to walk, too, for fear Scribner
or some of those pirates would coax them away from me, and I swear that
if it hadn’t been for that dog of mine I don’t think I could have got
them out here at all.”

At this moment the authors resumed their march, for they were eager
to reach their journey’s end, and we followed behind them, with the
faithful collie trotting contentedly along.

As we walked Mr. McClure continued: “We passed through a suburban town
about an hour ago, where one of those other Scotch authors was giving
a morning lecture, and, before I knew it, we were in front of the very
church in which he was at work. They heard him bleating, and there
would have been a regular stampede if it hadn’t been for that dog. He
had the leader of them by the throat before you could say ‘bawbee,’ and
then he barked and growled and snapped at them, and finally chased the
whole pack off the church steps and up the street. I got him of a firm
of Edinboro’ publishers, and I am going to have a kennel for him in my
New York office and use him in a dozen different ways. Look at him now,
will you!”

I glanced around and saw that one of the authors had contrived to
detach himself from the drove and was leaning over the fence engrossed
in the contemplation of an advertisement of Glenlivet whiskey, which
had caught his wandering eye, and as I looked, the dog came hurrying up
from behind, nipped him, with a snarl of assumed ferocity, in the calf
of his leg, and sent him scampering back to his place with the others.

We were now entering the principal thoroughfare of Syndicate, and the
authors looked about in wonder at the silent streets and long rows
of neat white cottages in which the literary toilers dwell. From the
large brick factory, where the posthumous works of great authors are
prepared, came the sound of busy, whirring wheels and the scratching
of steam pens. In the art department the sledge-hammers were falling
on the anvils in measured cadence--in short, everything told the story
of cheerful literary activity. Mr. McClure threw open the door of a
large whitewashed building, gave the word of command to the dog, and in
less than a minute the sagacious quadruped had rounded up the herd of
authors and driven them into their corral.

“Good-by,” said the editor as he closed and bolted the door and turned
to take my outstretched hand. “Good-by,” he continued solemnly, and
then raised his hands above my head. I took off my hat.

“Now is the time to subscribe,” said Mr. McClure, impressively.




THE CANNING OF PERISHABLE LITERATURE.


Saturday is a half holiday at Mr. McClure’s village of Syndicate. On
that day the noon whistle means complete cessation of work, as it
always has in every one of the departments of Mr. McClure’s great
enterprise.

On the occasion of a recent Saturday visit to this model settlement I
found scores of well-fed, happy-looking prosers and poets riding their
bicycles up and down the village street or sitting in rows on the fence
rails eagerly discussing the condition of the literary market and the
business prospects for the coming year. In the large playground which
lies to the north of the village an exciting game of football was in
progress between two picked elevens, one selected from the various
“reminiscence-of-celebrities” gangs employed about the works, and the
other made up from the day shift of “two-rhyme-to-the-quatrain” poets.

The Scotch dialect authors were seated on the piazza in front of their
quarters, mending their shoes, washing their clothes, and preparing in
other ways for the impending “Sawbath.” Mr. McClure tells me that they
are very shy and suspicious, and refuse to mingle socially with the
other hands. One of them, Dr. Bawbee MacFudd, was confined to his room
with brain fever, the result of having been asked to spend something
the last time he went out of the house.

Just beyond the barn devoted to the Scotchmen Mr. McClure showed me
a building which he erected last spring and which is now used as a
canning factory and warehouse for the storage of perishable goods.

“You see,” said Mr. McClure, “we are doing a very large business here,
and supplying not only my own magazine and newspaper syndicate with
matter, but also various other publications, which I cannot name for
obvious reasons, so it frequently happens that we find ourselves at
the close of some holiday season with a number of poems, stories, or
essays relating to that particular holiday left on our hands. These
‘perishable goods,’ as we call them in the trade, were formerly a total
loss, but now we can and preserve them until the holiday comes round
again.”

Mr. McClure directed my attention to the wooden shelves which encircled
the main room of the building, and which contained long rows of
neat tin cans and glass jars, hermetically sealed and appropriately
labelled. In the Thanksgiving department were to be found cans
containing comic turkey dinners in prose and verse, “First Thanksgiving
in America” stories of the old Plymouth Rock brand so popular in New
England, serious verses designed for “Woman and Home” departments in
provincial newspapers, and other seasonable goods. Some of these were
marked with a red X, indicating, as Mr. McClure informed me, that
they were of the patent adjustable brand, made popular throughout the
country by his syndicate, and could be changed into Christmas goods by
merely altering the name of the holiday.

We were still standing there, when one of the hands, who seemed to be
working overtime, appeared with a step-ladder, climbed up to one of the
highest shelves, and brought down three dusty Washington’s Birthday
jars, which he opened on the spot. Two were in good condition, but
the third containing a poem on “Our Uncrowned King,” was found to be
in a bad state of preservation and emitted such a frightful odor that
the workman hastily carried it outside the building, Mr. McClure and I
following to see what was the matter with it. The poem was lifted out
with a pair of pincers, and we saw in an instant that decay had started
in the third verse, in which “Mount Vernon” was made to rhyme with
“burning,” and had spread until the whole thing was ruined.

“I am very lucky to get off as easily as this,” said Mr. McClure, as
he noted the name of the author of the defective rhyme, “because it
sometimes happens that these jars containing rotten poetry explode and
do a great deal of damage.

“These are our odd lots,” he explained, as we continued our tour of
inspection. “Here are a few cans of ‘Envois’ for use in the repair
shops, and here are a lot of hitherto unpublished portraits of people
and pictures of houses and babies and all sorts of things that have
been left over from our serials, and will come in handy for the Grant
memoirs. Those pictures of the children of old Zachariah Corncob, who
used to live next door to Lincoln, will do very well for Benjamin
Franklin or Henry Clay in infancy, and there is that house that Mr. and
Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward used to live in, left over from a lot
of forty that I contracted for last year; that will look well as the
house that would be occupied by Andrew Jackson if he were alive now and
lived in Massachusetts. You see, I am reducing the literary business to
a system, and my plan is to have nothing go to waste.”

“It seems to me, McClure,” I remarked, as we left the building, “that
you have everything here but love poems; won’t they bear canning, too?”

“Certainly,” replied the great manufacturer, “but I have to put them
all in cold storage, even during the winter months.”




LITERARY LEAVES BY MANACLED HANDS.


The attempt of Warden Sage, of Sing Sing, to provide literary labor for
the idle convicts has excited so much interest that yesterday morning a
party of well-known literary men visited the state prison on invitation
of the warden, and made a careful inspection of the methods employed in
turning out convict-labor prose and verse.

Some of this work is done in the cells, and some is carried on in
the shops formerly devoted to the manufacture of clothing, brushes,
shoes, and other articles turned out under the old contract system.
In the corridors outside the cells and in the shops were to be seen
“trusties” going about with dictionaries, both Webster and rhyming,
which they supplied to any convict who raised his hand as a signal.

The visitors proceeded down one of the corridors, and, at the request
of the warden, examined some of the pieces of manuscript that were
passed out to them through the cell bars. On one tier they found a
squad of short-term men hard at work on a job intended for the “Home
and Fireside” department of a new weekly. They examined with much
interest a serviceable article called “How to Dress Well for Very
Little Money,” which bore the signature of “Fairy Casey,” and were
much pleased with its style and texture. Mr. Gilder, who was of the
party, and has had long experience in reading manuscript, was inclined
to criticise the paragraph which stated that linemen’s boots could be
worn at all times after dark, but it was explained to him that that
was merely carelessness on the part of Mr. Casey, who is a second-story
man, and who forgot he was not writing exclusively for his own
profession.

At the next cell they stopped to look at an essay called “Umbrellas and
Cake Baskets, Spoons and Candlesticks, or How to Make Home Beautiful,”
the work of “Slippery Dutch,” the prominent sneak thief.

Other specimens of manuscript examined by the visitors were “How to
Keep the Feet Warm, or What to Do with Our Kerosene and Shingles,” by
Mordecai Slevinsky, the only long-term man in the gang, and having
thirty-seven years yet to serve; “Safe Storage for Negotiable Railroad
Bonds,” by “Jimmy the Cracksman,” and a two-thousand-word poem in
hexameter named “Throwing the Scare, or the Chasing of the Comeback,”
an extremely creditable job turned out by Chauncey Throwdown, formerly
a ward detective, who partially reformed two years ago, and was caught
and sentenced while trying to lead a better life and earn a more
honest living as a bank thief. Mr. McClure, who was of the party, was
very much pleased with this poem, and asked permission to buy it of
the convict, saying that it was just wide enough to fit the pages of
his magazine; but his offer was refused on the ground that the verses
were part of the job contracted for by the editor of a new periodical.
A slight discussion on the higher ethics of poetry followed, to
which such of the convicts as were within earshot listened with deep
interest. Mr. Gilder claimed that the best, most serviceable, and
ornamental poetry to be had in the market was that which came in five
or six inch lengths, not counting the title or signature, and bore
the well-known “As One Who” brand that the “Century Magazine” has done
so much to popularize. Poems of this description, he explained, are
known to the trade as A1 sonnets, and are very beautiful when printed
directly after a section of continued story, affording, as they do, a
great relief to tired eyes.

“Do you think the idea and the verses should appear on the same page?”
inquired the warden, who is eager to learn all that he can of the
profession of letters.

“It has not been my practice to print them in that fashion,” replied
Mr. Gilder, “and in my own poems I am always careful to avoid such a
combination, believing it to be thoroughly inharmonious.”

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the noise of a
desperate struggle at the other end of the tier, and a moment later
four keepers appeared, dragging with them one of the most desperate
convicts in the prison. It was ascertained that he had expressed his
willingness to devote himself to literary work at the closing of the
quarries, but had requested that the fact should be kept a secret, as
it might be used against him in after life. He had been furnished with
pen and paper and a pan of Scotch dialect, but instead of taking hold
with the rest of the gang and working on his section of the serial
story, “The Gude Mon o’ Linkumdoodie,” he secretly constructed a fine
saw and was caught in the very act of cutting through the bars of his
cell.

The warden, who is a very just man, rebuked the keepers severely
for their carelessness in putting such temptation in the way of any
prisoner. He bade them take the offending convict down to the dark cell
and keep him there until he could find a rhyme for “sidewalk.”

“And remember,” he called after them, “in future see that no dialect of
any kind is issued to the prisoners until it is thoroughly boiled.”

The visitors then made their way to the shops, where they found gangs
of convicts at work under the supervision of keepers. The prison choir
was practising some new hymns and, at the warden’s request, rendered a
beautiful new song composed not long ago by the Rev. Gideon Shackles,
the prison chaplain, and entitled “Shall We Gather Up the River?”

They had just finished, when the tramp of heavy feet was heard, and
in a moment there came around the corner a line of men in prison
dress walking, single file, in lock-step. Under the leadership of two
trusties they made their way to a long table, seated themselves at it,
and began to write with great diligence.

“Who are those men?” inquired Mr. McClure, with some interest. “I hope
you are not putting any of your gangs on Washington or Lincoln or Grant
this winter, for that would throw a great many of my writers out of
employment.”

“No,” replied the warden, “that is simply the regular eight-hour shift
of Cuban war correspondents, and very busy we keep them, too. You see,
a number of newspaper editors are finding out that we can furnish just
as good an article of Cuban news here in Sing Sing as they can get from
Key West, where the bulk of the work has been done heretofore.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Mr. McClure remarked in a very
low voice, “I’ll take the names of some of those fellows down. One of
these days they’ll be good for reminiscences of ‘How I Freed Cuba,’ or
‘The True Story of the Great Conflict at Our Very Gates,’ or something
of that sort.”




McCLURE’S BIRTHDAY AT SYNDICATE VILLAGE.


Never since the foundation of McClure’s model village of Syndicate has
the valley of the Hackensack rung with such hearty, innocent mirth as
it did yesterday, when McClure’s birthday was observed in a fitting
manner by the inhabitants of the literary village. Mr. McClure, who
generously bore the entire expense of the merrymaking, arrived in the
village nearly a week ago, and since then has been engrossed in his
preparations for what he declared should be the most notable literary
gathering ever seen on this continent; and when the factories closed
at six o’clock on Saturday evening all the hands were notified
that they would not be opened again until Tuesday morning, and that
the piece-workers would be paid for Monday as if they were salaried
employees, in order that the holiday might cost them nothing. It is by
such acts of generosity that Mr. McClure has made himself beloved by
all literary workers whose good fortune it has been to do business with
him.

And it is because of this and many other acts of generosity on Mr.
McClure’s part that that upright and discriminating manufacturer found
no difficulty in securing a score of willing volunteers at an early
hour on Monday morning, when it became necessary to transfer to the
lighter _Paragraph_ several cases of Daniel Webster portraits and a
section of the new Kipling serial for immediate shipment to New York.
This work accomplished, the hands returned to the village in time to
prepare for the merrymaking, which began shortly after one o’clock.

At precisely twelve o’clock a special train arrived from New York
laden with invited guests, among whom were a great many men and women
well known in literary and artistic circles. Mr. McClure welcomed us
cordially as we alighted at the station, and then led the way to the
art department, where a toothsome collation had been spread. The fires
had been put out in the forges, the huge bellows were all motionless,
and the anvils now served to support the wide boards which were used
as a banqueting table. It was difficult for me to realize that this
well-swept, neatly garnished room was the smoky, noisy art department,
with fierce flames leaping from a dozen banks of glowing coals, that I
had visited but a few days before.

At the conclusion of the banquet the guests were escorted to seats
which had been reserved for them on the village green, and immediately
afterward the sports began.

The first athletic event was the putting of the twenty-pound joke
from “Harper’s Bazar.” There were eight competitors in this contest,
including Mr. Hamlin Garland, who mistook a block of wood for the joke,
threw it, and was disbarred, as were two other contestants who were
unable to see the jokes after they had put them.

The next event was an obstacle race for the cashier’s window, open
to members of the artistic as well as the literary section of the
settlement, the former being subjected to a handicap of three extra “O.
K.’s” on account of their superior sprinting qualities with such a goal
in sight. This contest was won by a one-legged man, whose infirmity was
offset by the fact of his long experience in cashier chasing in the
office of the “Illustrated American.”

Then came what was called a “Park Row contest,” open to all
ex-journalists, in the form of a collar-and-elbow wrestling match
for the city editor’s desk, catch as catch can. There were seven
contestants in this match, each of whom was obliged to catch all the
others in the act of doing something wrong and report the same at
headquarters. The prize was given to a gentleman who had filled every
position on the “Herald” from window-cleaner to editor-in-chief,
and is now spending his declining years at the copy desk in that
establishment, and taking a morose and embittered view of life.

The running high jump next occupied the attention of the spectators. A
huge pile of reminiscences of prominent statesmen, writers, and other
famous characters was placed on the ground, the prize to be awarded
to the author who could jump over the greatest number of them without
touching the top of the heap. This proved to be an exceedingly spirited
and interesting contest, and the pile slowly increased in height until
there was but one contestant left who could clear it. He proved to be a
complete outsider, the grand-uncle of one of the poets, who had asked
permission to take part in the sports as a guest of Mr. McClure’s. The
old gentleman was visibly affected when the prize was handed to him,
and explained his success by remarking that for many years he had been
in the habit of skipping all the reminiscences in “McClure’s Magazine”
whenever he came across them, and this habit, coupled with his regular
mode of life, had enabled him to lead all his competitors, even at his
advanced age.

Mr. Gilder, of the “Century Magazine,” was kind enough to lend his
aid in the manuscript-throwing contest which followed. Forty poets,
armed to the teeth with their wares, assailed the “Century” editor
with poems, and got them all back again without an instant’s delay.
The speed with which the experienced editor returned each wad of
manuscript to its sender was the subject of general admiring comment to
all present except the poets themselves, who found themselves unable
to land a single verse. Mr. Gilder was so fatigued with his efforts
that he asked to be excused from playing the part of the bag in the
bag-punching contest which the poets were anxious to have given.

The sports closed with a novel and interesting game, in which everybody
joined with hearty good-will and enthusiasm. This game was called
“Chasing the Greased Publisher.” An agile Harper, having been greased
from head to foot, was let loose on the common and pursued for twenty
minutes by the excited literary citizens. The skill which he displayed
in eluding his pursuers, doubling on his tracks and breaking away from
the insecure hold of some ravenous poet, served to make the contest the
most exciting and enjoyable event of the whole day’s programme. He was
finally caught by Mr. Joel Benton, who floored him with a Thanksgiving
ode, delivered between the eyes.

It was 4:30 o’clock when the games closed, and I was compelled to
return to the city without waiting to enjoy the literary exercises
which were held during the evening.

I had a short conversation with Mr. McClure, however, and asked him if
he did not find that it paid him to keep his workmen in good health and
spirits the year round. Mr. McClure replied that he did, and that he
proposed to encourage all sorts of innocent pastimes--of the kind that
we had witnessed--and permit his literary and artistic hands to enjoy
festivals and merrymakings at frequent intervals throughout the year.

As the train steamed out of the depot I heard the inhabitants begin
their evening hymn:

  “Thou art, McClure, the light, and life
  Of all this wondrous world we see.”




LITERATURE BY PRISON CONTRACT LABOR.


The enforced idleness of state prison convicts has led some of the
large manufacturers and dealers to seriously consider the advisability
of giving employment to some of them in the different branches of their
literary establishments.

Mr. Bok recently purchased a quantity of “Just Among Ourselves” goods,
but found them to be inferior in quality to the samples from which they
were ordered, so he refused to accept them, and they were subsequently
sold at a reduced rate to Mr. Peter Parley, who is now editing the
Sunday supplement of the “New York Times.” The Harpers have been more
successful, having had more experience in this peculiar line. It is an
open secret that the ten acres of historical and other foreign matter
contracted for two or three years ago and signed with the _nom de
plume_ “Poultney Bigelow” are really the work of a gang of long-term
men in the Kings County Penitentiary, while fully half their poetry
comes from the same institution.

Not long ago, however, the long-termers, hoping by working overtime
to secure a little money for themselves, prepared and offered to the
proprietors of the Franklin Square foundry a short story, which those
discerning publishers were compelled to decline because they did not
like its moral. The story is as follows, and is called:


CAFÉ THROWOUT;

OR, THE HEY RUBE’S DREAM.

It was a cold, blustering night in the very heart of the bitter month
of January, and the stranger who entered the front door of the Café
Throwout, on Sixth Avenue, let in after him a fierce gust of wind
that brought a chill to the two men who were seated at a table in the
corner, engaged in earnest conversation, and caused the bartender--the
only other occupant of the room--to look up quickly from the sporting
paper which engrossed his attention and closely scan the face of the
newcomer.

“Gimme a hot apple toddy, an’ put a little nutmeg on the top of it,”
said the newcomer as he dropped into an arm-chair by the stove and
stretched out his hands to catch some of the genial warmth.

The bartender silently prepared the drink, and the two men in the
corner continued their conversation, but in lowered tones and with
less eagerness than before, for both of them were sharply watching the
new arrival. It was a strange pair to find in a Tenderloin bar-room,
and it was not easy to conceive of two men, differing so widely in
appearance and manner, having anything in common. The elder of the two
wore a black broadcloth suit of clerical cut, deaconish whiskers of
iron-gray, a white lawn tie, and a mouth so devoid of expression that
its owner was perfectly safe in exposing it without the precautionary
covering of beard or mustache. His companion looked as if he might
have come in that very afternoon, in his best clothes, from some
point midway between Rochester and Elmira. He wore a checked suit of
distinctly provincial cut, a cloth cap similar to those worn by rustic
milkmen on cold mornings, a high, turn-down collar, and no cravat, and,
for ornament, a rather conspicuous bit of jewelry, which might have
been an heirloom known to the family as “gran’pa’s buzzom pin.”

As the bartender handed the hot drink to the man beside the stove, the
clergyman whispered in a low voice to his companion, “I wonder what his
graft is!”

“Graft--nothing!” retorted the other; “there’s one of him born every
hour--didn’t I tell you? Look at the roll he’s flashing up! He handles
money as if he’d never heard of the Café Throwout before.”

It was true. The newcomer, in paying for his drink, had drawn from his
pocket a large roll of greenbacks, displaying them as carelessly as if
he had been in a banking house instead of in one of the most famous
resorts for smart people that the Tenderloin precinct contains.

Of course by this time the reader has discovered that the man in
clerical garb and his companion of provincial aspect were “smart”
people, each working his own particular graft with skill and success.
The faces of both brightened when their eyes fell upon the newcomer,
who was a sucker of the kind sometimes sent by a beneficent Providence
to his afflicted people in times of drought.

The elder of the two men was known to those who contributed to the
orphan asylum that he conducted in Dreamland as the Rev. William
Cassock, but the workers of the town called him “Soapy Sam.” His
companion’s face adorns the largest and most interesting gallery of
portraits that the city contains, and is labelled in the catalogue and
explanatory text-book pertaining to the gallery, “Crooked Charlie, the
man of many grafts.”

The two had, indeed, known hard times since the close of the summer and
were now in no mood to let any stranger go unscathed. A sudden gleam
of intelligence came into “Crooked Charlie’s” face, and at the same
moment a bright light gilded the tips of the Rev. William Cassock’s
iron-gray whiskers.

“Gimme another o’ them toddies and don’t forgit the nutmeg,” cried the
stranger, and then the two smart people rose in their places and made a
mysterious signal to the bartender.

As the sucker by the stove slowly sipped his second drink, the
red-hot iron in front of him changed into the glowing base of the old
wood-burner that has warmed two generations of loafers in the little
manufacturing town of Bilkville Centre, Conn. He could hear the voice
of old Hiram Goodsell inviting him to a game of “setback” in the
back room of the tavern, and then some invisible force bore him up
to the big hall over the schoolhouse, where the firemen’s ball was
in progress, and he found himself balancing to corners with Mirandy
Tucker, her that was a Larrabee.

“Cross over! Cross back! Balance all and swing your partners!” chanted
old Bill Cady, and the sucker went swinging down the room and out into
the cold field and across the snow to the railroad train which whirled
him on to New York. He was filled with glad anticipations: he would
go to see Lydia Thompson, he would plunge into the heart of the gay
and beautiful Tenderloin, where the corks pop merrily all night long
and the ivory chips rattle, and the music of the banjo and piano fills
the air. Yes, here was New York at last, and here was the kindly old
gentleman, known affectionately as Grand Central Pete, who has directed
the urban revels of many a lonely stranger. The old man welcomes him
and explains that the city pays him to look after unsuspecting visitors
and keep them from being robbed before they get to Forty-first Street.
Arm in arm, the two bend their steps toward what is believed in the
provinces to be the merry quarter of the town, stopping only at a
saloon to enable the sucker to change a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill
for an obliging gentleman who hopes he will enjoy his stay in the city.

They are in the midst of gayety now, and as he sits there by the stove,
unconscious of where he is, he is living over again the delights of
many memorable nights in the great metropolis. He hears the glad
strains of the piano, the merry shouts of feminine laughter, and sees
the whirling skirts and flying feet of myriad fleet dancers. His throat
is parched and he must have wine, and so must they all, at his expense.
Kindly faces cluster around him, kind hands help to pull his money from
his pocket, and, lest he should lose them, his watch from his fob, his
rings from his fingers, his pin and studs from his shirt. These are
indeed swift passing, merry hours----

“Have to wake up, sir; it’s one o’clock, and I’ve got to close up!
Didn’t you have a watch-chain on when you came in here first?”

It is the bartender who has broken the spell, and the sucker’s glad
dream is over.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Well, suppose you take the watch, and I’ll take the pin and studs, and
we’ll divide the sleeve buttons,” says Crooked Charlie to his companion
as the two enter a saloon a few blocks away from the Café Throwout.

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” rejoins the Rev. William Cassock
as he stuffs his share of the bills away in an inside pocket, “but
in the meantime let us not forget that the same Providence that caused
the manna to fall in the desert and sent the ravens down to feed Elisha
brought this sucker to the Café Throwout and cast over him the mystic
spell of deep, painless sleep. By the way, let me compliment you on
a certain detail in your make-up which has attracted my attention. I
notice that you wear one of those dude collars, without either cravat
or pin. That is in keeping with your part. A jay would be content with
such a collar, but one of us would get a cravat and pin first.”




CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE SYNDICATE VILLAGE.


One bright morning about six weeks before Christmas Day the spirit
of diligence in well-doing descended like a dove and took complete
possession of the brain and soul of Mr. S. S. McClure, the benevolent
founder of the thriving literary village of Syndicate, which stands
on the banks of the Hackensack River, an enduring monument to his
far-seeing philanthropy.

From that moment he seemed to lose interest in the great loom-room,
where busy hands made the shuttles fly to and fro as they wove their
reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. At midnight, when the foreman
opened the furnace door and the fierce flames lit up the grimy but
intellectual faces of the workmen who stood watching the _History of
Our War with Spain_, as it was run into the moulds, Mr. McClure was
not present. His face was seen no more in the noisy blacksmith-shop,
where strong arms forged the hitherto unpublished portraits of American
statesmen. Even when a careless workman in the packing-room dropped a
railroad story and shivered that fragile bit of literary bric-à-brac
into a thousand pieces, the great Master forgot to reprimand him, so
busy was he with his own thoughts.

But the literary workmen did not take advantage of the preoccupation of
the great Master Mechanic of all modern letters and slight the tasks
that had been intrusted to them. On the contrary, they plunged into
their tasks with redoubled energy, for well they knew that it was some
plan for their happiness that filled the busy mind of the Master, some
scheme for the fitting celebration of Christmas Eve, which, next to
McClure’s Birthday, is the chief holiday in the literary calendar. And
so, into the web and woof of many a _Recollection of Daniel Webster_
and _Later Life of Lincoln_ were woven bright anticipations of the
merry Christmas which S. S. McClure was preparing for his trusty
employees.

Each year Mr. McClure devises a new form of holiday celebration, and
this year his bounty took the shape of a huge Christmas tree, from
whose branches hung the packages that contained presents for his guests.

Christmas Eve is always a half-holiday at the McClure works; and at
precisely noon on Saturday the factory whistle blew, the great wheels
began to slow up, the dynamos, which furnish light, heat, and ideas
for the entire factory, ceased to throb, and the cheerful workers put
aside their uncompleted tasks and set about the welcome labor of
making ready for their Christmas celebration. In less time than it
takes to tell it, the huge store-room, in which the winter supply of
literature had already begun to accumulate, was swept clean, garnished
with boughs of evergreen, and brightened with sprigs of holly. Scarcely
had this work been completed when a shout told of the arrival of the
Christmas tree, drawn by four oxen, on the huge extension-wagon used in
transporting Scotch serial stories from the foundry to the steamboat
landing. In the twinkling of an eye, a score of able-bodied bards
seized the great evergreen and placed it upright in the curtained
recess at one end of the room, and then every one withdrew, leaving Mr.
McClure himself, with four trustworthy aids, to deck the tree and hang
the presents on its limbs.

During the afternoon the happy littérateurs, released from their
daily toil, threw themselves heartily into the enjoyment of all
kinds of winter sport. Some put on skates and sped up and down the
frozen surface of the Hackensack, while others coasted downhill, threw
snowballs at one another, and even made little sliding-places on the
sidewalk, where they enjoyed themselves to their hearts’ content. When
twilight fell upon the settlement they all entered their homes, to
emerge half an hour later clothed in Sunday attire, with their faces
and hands as clean as soap and water could make them, ready to sit down
to the great Christmas banquet provided for them by their employer.

It is doubtful if there has ever been as large a number of literary
men seated at any banquet-table as gathered on this evening as the
guests of Master Mechanic McClure. The host sat at the upper end of the
great horseshoe table, and beside him were invited guests representing
the literary profession in its many phases. The guests were deftly
and quickly served by a corps of one-rhyme-to-the-quatrain poets who
had formerly been contributors to Mr. Spencer’s organ of thought, the
_Illustrated American_, and were thoroughly accustomed to waiting.

At the dose of the feast a huge pie was placed upon the table, and
instantly opened by Mr. McClure. Thereupon, to the delight of all the
guests, Mr. J. K. Bangs sprang forth and sang a solemn and beautiful
hallelujah in praise of the Harper publications.

After the applause which followed this unexpected encomium of the great
publishing-house had subsided, Mr. McClure introduced to his employees
the literary centipede, Mr. Harry Thurston Peck, who stood up in his
place, with a pen in each claw, and explained how it was possible not
only to work with all his tentacles at once, but also to give the lie
to the old story of the Crow and the Fox, by editing a magazine with
his teeth, and at the same time lecturing to the Columbia College
students without letting go of his job.

During Mr. Peck’s remarks the giver of the feast quietly withdrew, and,
as the speaker ended, the curtains were withdrawn, revealing the great,
brilliantly lighted tree, and Mr. McClure himself in the garb of Santa
Claus, ready to distribute the Christmas gifts. There was a present for
every one, and all had been chosen with special reference to individual
tastes. To one was given a sled, to another a pair of skates, to a
third a suit of warm underwear, and to a fourth a silver-mounted ivory
foot-rule for scanning poetry.

To such of the workmen as held an unusually high record for a year
of industrious work, not marred by any breakage of valuable goods,
Mr. McClure gave also an order for some article which could easily be
prepared in odd moments, and which would be liberally paid for when
completed and packed for shipment.

Among the orders thus given were twelve for plain, hand-sewed,
unbleached Christmas stories for actors, to sign in the holiday
numbers of the dramatic weeklies. The great annual syndicate article,
“Christmas in Many Lands,” was ordered from the foreman of each
department, in recognition of the high quality of goods turned out in
every part of the shop.

Other literary plums given out for the picking were “Christmas Eve
on the East Side,” “Christmas at the North Pole,” “Christmas in
Patagonia,” “Christmas at the South Pole,” “Christmas in the Lunatic
Asylum,” “Christmas in the Siberian Mines,” “Christmas with Hall
Caine,” and “Christmas in the Condemned Cell.”

While the delighted guests were opening their bundles and examining
their presents, the noble-hearted Master Mechanic stepped forward and
announced that the Christmas prize offered by the _New York Journal_,
to be competed for by the inhabitants of Syndicate, had been awarded to
the author of “Christmas Inside the Anaconda,” described by a _Journal_
representative who got swallowed on Christmas Eve.

Santa Claus then announced that there was still one present to be
given, but that the person for whom it was intended had been prevented
by reason of rheumatism and other infirmities incidental to old age
from being present. This person, he explained, was the oldest poet in
his employ, one who had for years innumerable labored faithfully at
bench and lap-stone, and had been one of the first to find employment
in the now bustling model village of Syndicate. “His poems,” cried Mr.
McClure, warmly, “lie scattered throughout the valley of American
letters, from the earliest pages of _Petersons’_ and _Godey’s_ down
to the very latest of the _Century_ and _Scribner’s_. Unlike the
distinguished gentleman who has already addressed you, he became wedded
in early life to the literary customs of an older generation, and has
never been able to learn how to write with his feet. For that reason
his output is limited. I am sure that you will all rejoice with him
over a gift which is designed to make him comfortable during the rest
of his days, and I call upon a committee of his friends to bear to his
humble home these nice warm blankets, these thick woolen socks, and an
order to write a weekly article on ‘Books that have Helped Me,’ so long
as the breath remains in his body.”

At this new instance of generosity on the part of their beloved
employer the entire company uttered a mighty shout of approval, and,
seizing the gifts from the hands of Santa Claus, departed in a body to
inform worthy old bedridden Peleg Scan of his good fortune.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.