SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SOUL EASEMENT AND WISDOM INCIDENTALLY.
Subscribers to the Philistine not fully understanding my jokes will be supplied with laughing gas at club rates.
The St. Louis Mirror is flashing the light on to one W. J. Arkell, who it says has a habit of carrying on a brilliant conversazione with himself through his chapeau. Just what this means I do not know, but Arkell is not the only man in this country who owns an Unjust Judge.
The city of Cork in Ireland has one hundred thousand inhabitants, one-half of whom can neither read nor write. Able-bodied men can be hired for forty cents a day, and women who get a dollar a week and board are very fortunate. The city of Cork has no street cars, nor electric lights; the best hotel has no elevator, nor gas; so you can neither fall down the shaft nor asphixiate. At bed-time you are given a candle which is duly charged in your bill. Three-fifths of the citizens are Catholics and yet the city of Cork boasts the finest Protestant Episcopal church of its size in the United Kingdom. I refer to the Church of St. Fin Barre. It cost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The bronze gates that separate the chancel from the nave, alone cost twenty thousand dollars; sixteen thousand dollars were paid for one window, and the grill-work, hand carved, in the choir, took two men five years to make. The building of this beautiful temple was made possible only through the generosity of one Mr. Guinness, manufacturer of a certain “stout” that is known as “XXX.” This mixture is highly recommended for nursing mothers and those in need of a tonic.
And now a resident of Chicago proposes to build in the Windy City a church patterned after the beautiful church at Cork, but whose steeple is to be twice as high, and which is to cost a full million dollars. Cork can keep her rags and illiteracy; she may continue sending her guests to bed with a candle; but no longer shall she be able to boast her supremacy in things ecclesiastic—not by a dam sight!
The East Aurora Summer School of Literature: The season of 1896 opens July 1st, and will last for two months. The idea of the course being to prepare beginners that they may score a success in the fall publishing season.
A feature of our system is the Art of Sonneting which is imparted in three lessons, leaving the pupil then free to take up Novel Writing, Essay Composition or Dramatic Construction. The Modern Sex Novel Department is under the special care of the Matron.
For prospectus, address with stamp,
Doctor John Peascod, D. D., Principal,
Room 1001, Philistine Building,
East Aurora, New York.
A small but lusty Philistine is now following Strange Gods in one of the Buffalo (N. Y.) newspapers. In his “Philistine Talk” he cites certain authors who he claims have an itch for fame; and for their benefit and the benefit of Organized Charity he gives the following Fable:
The Emperor Claudius on going up the steps of the Capitol at Washington one day found a Beggar who had a bad case of Eczema. Now the Eczema had staked off its claim on that particular spot on the Beggar’s back where he could not scratch it. The Emperor being a tenderhearted man, and a generous, acceded to the fellow’s prayer and ordered a slave to scratch the Beggar’s back. Next morning on mounting the Capitol steps the Emperor found two Beggars in place of one. But instead of assigning two slaves to scratch the backs of the two Beggars, he remarked in a sweet imperial falsetto: “Here you shabby sons of guns! scratch each other!!” and passed on in maiden meditation fancy free.
To Jehn Z.—No, Way & Williams do not publish The Short Horn Register.
I descend again to Mr. Bok, and apologize to the Philistines for having once seemingly coupled his name with that of Mr. Howells. That particular issue of the Philistine is now listed at seven dollars with no copies to be found. Whether the scarcity arises from the agents of Mr. Howells having bought up all obtainable copies and destroyed them, or whether Mr. Bok’s emissaries scoured the book stalls for them, to keep as precious heirlooms, or both, I cannot say.
The New York World recently gave two full columns to old epitaphs, and how the writer missed this, the choicest of them all, I know not. I hope, by the way, that none of the enemy will be deceived by its typographical form and quote it as a Stephen Crane poem:
Here lies,
Foundered in a fathom and a half,
The shell
Of
Hawser Trunnion, Esq.,
Formerly Commander of a Squadron
In his Majesty’s service;
Who broached to, at 5 P. M., Oct. 10th
In the year of his Age
Three-score and nineteen.
He kept his Guns always loaded,
And his Tackle ready manned,
And never showed his poop to the enemy,
Except when he took him in tow.
But,
His shot being expended,
His Match burnt out,
And his upper works decayed,
He was sunk
By Death’s superior weight of metal.
Nevertheless,
He will be weighed again
At the Great Day,
His rigging re-fitted,
And his Timbers repaired;
And with one broadside
Make his old Adversary
Turn tail.
When George Haven Putnam said, “The chief business of the True Publisher is to discourage the publication of books,” he made a strong bid for immortality. The mot deserves to rank with Tallyrand’s concerning the gift of language.
In a recent issue of Harper’s, “the pastor of Mt. Clemens” has something to say. And who would ha’ thought Mark Twain had a pastor?
Any writer who poses before the country as being the winner of A Big Prize is no longer like Caezar’s wife.
Little Journeys
SERIES FOR 1896
Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors.
The papers below specified were, with the exception of that contributed by the editor, Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late G. P. Putnam, in 1853, in a book entitled Homes of American Authors. It is now nearly half a century since this series (which won for itself at the time a very noteworthy prestige) was brought before the public; and the present publishers feel that no apology is needed in presenting to a new generation of American readers papers of such distinctive biographical interest and literary value.
| No. 1, | Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis. |
| ” 2, | Bryant, by Caroline M. Kirkland. |
| ” 3, | Prescott, by Geo. S. Hillard. |
| ” 4, | Lowell, by Charles F. Briggs. |
| ” 5, | Simms, by Wm. Cullen Bryant. |
| ” 6, | Walt Whitman, by Elbert Hubbard. |
| ” 7, | Hawthorne, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. |
| ” 8, | Audubon, by Parke Godwin. |
| ” 9, | Irving, by H. T. Tuckerman. |
| ” 10, | Longfellow, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. |
| ” 11, | Everett, by Geo. S. Hillard. |
| ” 12, | Bancroft, by Geo. W. Greene. |
The above papers will form the series of Little Journeys for the year 1896.
They will be issued monthly, beginning January, 1896, in the same general style as the series of 1895, at 50 cents a year, and single copies will be sold for 5 cents, postage paid.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS,
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The ROYCROFT Printing Shop has in preparation GLYNNE’S WIFE, a story in verse by Mrs. Julia Ditto Young.
Mrs. Young is a Poet who has written much but published little. This, her latest and believed by her friends to be her best work, is the product of a mind and heart singularly gifted by Nature, and ripened by a long apprenticeship to Art. As a specimen of the pure “lyric cry,” illustrating the melody possible in the English tongue, the volume seems to stand alone among all books written by modern versifiers. The delicacy of touch, the faultless rhythm, the splendid vocabulary and the gentle tho’ sure insight into the human heart, make a combination of qualities very, very seldom seen. The author knows, and knowing blames not: a sustained sympathy being the keynote of it all.
The publishers have endeavored to give the story a typographical setting in keeping with the richness of the lines. Five hundred and ninety copies are being printed on smooth Holland hand-made paper, and twenty-five on Tokio Vellum. The copies on Holland paper will be bound in boards covered with antique watered silk; the Vellum copies are bound in like manner save that each will bear on the cover a special water-color design done by the hand of the author.
The price of the five hundred and ninety copies is two dollars each; the Vellum copies five dollars each. Every copy will be numbered and signed by Mrs. Young. Orders are now being recorded and will be delivered on September 1st, numbered in the order received.
THE ROYCROFT PRINTING SHOP,
East Aurora, New York.
Quarterly. Illustrated.
“If Europe be the home of Art, America can at least lay claim to the most artistically compiled publication devoted to the subject that we know of. This is Modern Art.”—Galignani Messenger (Paris).
“The most artistic of American art periodicals. A work of art itself.”—Chicago Tribune.
Fifty Cents a Number. Two Dollars a Year.
Single Copies (back numbers) 50 Cents in Stamps.
Illustrated Sample Page Free.
Arthur W. Dow has designed a new poster for Modern Art. It is exquisite in its quiet harmony and purely decorative character, with breadth and simplicity in line and mass, and shows the capacity of pure landscape for decorative purposes.—The Boston Herald.
Price, 25 Cents in Stamps,
Sent Free to New Subscribers to Modern Art.
L. Prang & Company, Publishers.
286 ROXBURY STREET, BOSTON.
We make a specialty of Dekel Edge Papers and carry the largest stock
and best variety in the country. Fine Hand-made Papers in great variety. Exclusive Western Agents for L. L. Brown Paper Company’s Hand-mades.
GEO. H. TAYLOR & CO.,
207-209 Monroe Street,
Chicago, Ill.
Have you seen the Roycroft Quarterly? The May issue is a “Stephen Crane Number.” 25c. a copy or one dollar a year.
The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora,
New York.
THE ROYCROFT
PRINTING SHOP at this time desires to announce a sister book to the Song of Songs: which is Solomon’s. It is the Journal of Koheleth: being a Reprint of the Book of Ecclesiastes with an Essay by Mr. Elbert Hubbard. The same Romanesque types are used that served so faithfully and well in the Songs, but the initials, colophon and rubricated borders are special designs. After seven hundred and twelve copies were printed the types were distributed and the title page, colophon and borders destroyed.
IN PREPARATION of the text Mr. Hubbard has had the scholarly assistance of his friend, Dr. Frederic W. Sanders, of Columbia University. The worthy pressman has also been helpfully counseled by several Eminent Bibliophiles.
Bound in buckram and antique boards. The seven hundred copies that are printed on Holland hand-made paper are offered at two dollars each, but the twelve copies on Japan Vellum at five dollars are all sold. Every book will be numbered and signed by Mr. Hubbard.
The Roycroft Printing Shop,
East Aurora, N. Y.