OUR "MONTHLY POPS."
In the New York Critic a suggestion is made that it would be a graceful thing for Editors of Magazines to bring out occasionally a "Consolation Number," containing only rejected contributions. But why not give the Editor's reasons for rejecting them as well? This would be such a "consolation" to the public, if not to the authors! A specimen number might be made up somewhat as follows:—
1. "A Dream of Fair Wages."—A Rondel by Tennyson Keir Hardie Morris Snooks.
[Rejected as a mixture of bad politics with worse poetry.]
2. "Children of Easy Circumstances."—By Ω. Φ.!
[An up-to-date story, with several risky situations in it; the risk, however, has been reduced to a minimum by the gifted Authoress having contracted to indemnify the Publisher and Editor against any legal consequences that may ensue. Printed "without prejudice," and should be read in a similar spirit.]
3. "On the Magnetisation of Mollusca." By Leyden Jarre, F.S.L.
[Rejected because, although an extremely able and interesting paper in itself, it is found by experience that this sort of high-science essay requires high people to write it if it is to have a chance of being read. Nobody under the rank of a Duke should dabble in magazine science. What's the use of calling it a Peery-odical otherwise, eh?]
4.
"Is Madagascar really the Largest Island but Two?" "How I Never Went to Korea." "China as my Great-Uncle said that he once Knew It." "A Muscovite Moujik, by a British Bore."
[Rejected because this kind of "symposium" on topical subjects can be got much better, as the above writers have chiefly got it, from the daily papers. Without some magazine padding of the sort, however, "none is genuine," and the above is not much more hopeless drivel than is usually inserted.]
On the List.—Without going back to the still undiscovered horrors in the East End, we have sufficient material in the two diamond robberies Holborn district and a bomb in Mayfair to warrant us in asking where is that much-wanted Sherlock Holmes?
"Holmes, Holmes, Holmes, Sweet Holmes,
Wherever we wonder is one chap like Holmes!"
The L.C.C. and the Church.—"The church was condemned as dangerous by the London County Council." Is not such a paragraph as the above calculated to frighten all the good people who are so anxious on the subject of religious education? Why, certainly. Fortunately the church in question is only "All Saints Church, Mile End," which had to be repaired and restored, and which was re-opened by "Londin" (which signature, with "B" for "Bishop" before it, would become "Blondin") last Thursday. "All's well that ends well," as says the Eminently Divine Villiams.
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.