Literature is not a thing of limited editions, nor painting of spring exhibitions. While you are seeking the coming novelist between rich covers he may be doing a daily “story” for some sensational morning paper; and the new Raphael you think of as hid away in some sequestered north-lit studio may be designing labels for boxes in a lithograph factory.
Respect, therefore, the poster, though it is obtrusive, and despise not the Japanese print, though it be cheap. Admit that there is more merit in the pen and ink picture of which are printed a million copies, than in the etching on your library walls, of which there are only ten.
Believe that the baths and aqueducts of Rome, however marvellous, are puerile as feats of engineering compared with a city floated on Lake Michigan mud; and learn that while you drowse over your “standard authors” of today the work of him who will be the standard author of tomorrow may be appearing in these despised pages.
Claude Fayette Bragdon.
BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.
Let the world wag as it may, the wits must live by waggery.
The optimists who are so comfortably situated that they can support optimism without any severe strain upon their imaginations, say, “What is, is right.” But they fail to tackle the corollary proposition, “What isn’t, isn’t.”
I received a book the other day from one of the leading publishers for review, and for three days and nights I have labored with it. It is one of those dull and dreary affairs, without even the single redeeming grace of conscious striving egotism, and it is written by one of the most prominent members of the New York Scratchback Club, a man whose name is in everybody’s mouth in the country. I wrote a scorching review of the book, in my happiest vein of gory glee; but upon reflection I shall not print it. This author is too infernally stupid to deserve so good an “ad.”