The scholarly and courtly editor of the "Weekly Lard Journal and Literary Companion," Professor A. J. Lyvely, criticised Sappho very freely as he stood at the corner of Clark and Madison Streets, waiting for the superb gold chariot drawn by twenty milk-white steeds, and containing fifty musicians, to come along. "Just because she lived in the dark ages," said he, "she is cracked up for a great poet; but she will never be as popular with the masses of Western readers as Ella Wheeler and Marion Harland are. All of her works that remain to us are a few fragments, and they are chestnuts; for they have been printed within the last ten years in the books of a great many poets I could name, and I have read them. We know very little of Sappho's life. If she had amounted to much, we would not be in such ignorance of her doings. The probability is that she was a society or fashion editor on one of the daily papers of her time,—a sort of Clara-Belle woman, whose naughtiness was mistaken for a species of intellectual brilliancy. Sappho was a gamey old girl, you know. Her life must have been a poem of passion, if there is any truth in the testimony of the authorities who wrote about her several centuries after her death. In fact, these verses of hers that are left indicate that she was addicted to late suppers, to loose morning-gowns, to perfumed stationery, and to hysterics. It is ten to one that she wore flaming bonnets and striking dresses; that she talked loud at the theatres and in public generally; and that she chewed gum, and smoked cigarettes, when she went to the races. If that woman had lived in Chicago, she would have been tabooed."
The amiable gentleman who reads manuscripts for Rand, McNally & Co. says that Sappho's manuscripts were submitted to him a year ago. "I looked them over, and satisfied myself that there was nothing in them; and I told the author so. He seemed inclined to dispute me, but I told him I reckoned I understood pretty well what would sell in our literary circles and on our railroad-trains."
But while there was a pretty general disposition to criticise Sappho, there was only one opinion as to the circus-parade; and that was complimentary. For the nonce, we may say, the cares and vexations of business, of literature, of art, and of science, were put aside; and our populace abandoned itself to a hearty enjoyment of the brilliant pageant which appealed to the higher instincts. And, as the cage containing the lions rolled by, the shouts of the enthusiastic spectators swelled above the guttural roars of the infuriate monarchs of the desert. Men waved their hats, and ladies fluttered their handkerchiefs. Altogether, the scene was so exciting as to be equalled only by the rapturous ovation which was tendered Mdlle. Hortense de Vere, queen of the air, when that sylph-like lady came out into the arena of Forepaugh's great circus-tent last evening, and poised herself upon one tiny toe on the back of an untamed and foaming Arabian barb that dashed round and round the sawdust ring. Talk about your Sapphos and your poetry! Would Chicago hesitate a moment in choosing between Sappho and Mdlle. Hortense de Vere, queen of the air? And what rhythm—be it Sapphic, or choriambic, or Ionic a minore—is to be compared with the symphonic poetry of a shapely female balanced upon one delicate toe on the bristling back of a fiery, untamed palfrey that whoops round and round to the music of the band, the plaudits of the public, and the still, small voice of the dyspeptic gent announcing a minstrel show "under this canvas after the performance, which is not yet half completed?"
If it makes us proud to go into our bookstores, and see thousands upon thousands of tomes waiting for customers; if our bosoms swell with delight to see the quiet and palatial homes of our cultured society overflowing with the most expensive wall-papers and the costliest articles of virtue; if we take an ineffable enjoyment in the thousand indications of a growing refinement in the midst of us,—vaster still must be the pride, the rapture, we feel when we behold our intellect and our culture paying the tribute of adoration to the circus. Viewing these enlivening scenes, why may we not cry in the words of Sappho, "Wealth without thee, Worth, is a shameless creature; but the mixture of both is the height of happiness"?