Amateur Newspaper Makers.
How familiar this sounds: Louis O. Brosie, publisher of the Little Magnet, Pittsburg, says that when he began his paper, two years ago, he sent out 100 sample copies, expecting to get from them a large number of subscriptions. Instead he got four. People were afraid to pay their money, expecting the paper would last only a few months. But Sir Louis triumphed at last. He got subscriptions and advertisements, and expects to continue his paper. He printed a Good Will Mite, and some months ago sent us $2. He now prints 500 copies.
William C Meintzer, Easton, Md., wants to join an amateur press association, especially one in Maryland. To do the latter he should write to the secretary of the Maryland Club of the N. A. P. A., G. Edward Harrison, 708 Fidelity Building, Baltimore, who is president, vice-president, or secretary of half a dozen or so other amateur clubs, and wants to make the acquaintance of other Baltimore and Maryland members of the Order. E. M. Wallace, Monmouth, Ill., wants to hear from publishers of amateur newspapers.
Wheat Sheaf Leaflets is the name of a new quarterly which we have received bearing the compliments of the scholars and teachers of Wheat Sheaf School, the names of those teachers being Misses A. C. Cocker and Elizabeth Baillie. The paper, a neat eight-page one, is filled with letters written to the Priscilla Chapter, formed of pupils of the school, preceded by a song and an explanation of what the Chapter is. Modesty forbids the editors, but it does not forbid us, saying that the Priscilla is among the very best Chapters in the Order, whose work in the way of correspondence, collections, etc, has been helpful and practical. The price of Leaflets is five cents a copy, and its address is Wheat Sheaf School, Frankford, Philadelphia, Pa.
A Very Clever Kink.
Two men declared they could name the prettiest rural drive in all England. The dispute waxing warm, they agreed to write out the route each thought to be the prettiest and hand their respective slips of paper to a third party. They did this, and when the disinterested third party, in the presence of the disputants and a few of their respective friends, opened the sealed papers it was found that one had written: "Coventry to Stratford-on-Avon, by the way of Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick." And the other: "Stratford-on-Avon to Coventry, by the way of Warwick, Leamington, and Kenilworth."
Of course a general laugh followed, but when it subsided, one disputant, a little piqued that he had not won beyond further cavil, remarked with some warmth that he could name to the other disputant and his friends there present the amount of a certain nobleman's fortune, doing so in plain terms, in no enigmatical phrase, and yet they, in thirty minutes' time, could not name the amount in pounds sterling. Everybody present knew the nobleman mentioned, and all were desirous of learning the amount of his wealth—a sum which the speaker, through supposed business relations, was thought to be in a position to know.
Challenged to name the sum, the man read the following, from Macbeth, Act V., Scene V.:
If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution; and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend,
That lies like truth: "Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:"—and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane.—Arm, arm, and out!—
If this, which he avouches, does appear.
There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.
I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.—
Ring the alarum bell!—Blow wind, come wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.