The Arena should not hide its light under a bushel. It should put out a sign, “Worlds reformed while you wait!”
The actress who finds herself too fat to be cast for the heroine (heroines are always slender) and has to thin down upon a diet of nothing but beef tea and hot water with a squeeze of lemon in it for three months, buys fame almost as dearly as do the poets. Ambition seems to have a trick of cheating the stomach; but asceticism and mortification of the flesh on the stage have strangely enough made their belated appearance with the advent of The Woman who Did.
The great trouble with human nature is that it is everywhere. If it were only confined like a mad dog and rampaged solely in one country or continent, we could take ideal views of life. And we could be patriots without being scoundrels.
To the sentimental: Please do not forget that it was Dr. Johnson and not the writer who said “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
THE LONDON ACADEMY
The Leading Critical Literary Journal of London, in a long review of “Meditations in Motley,” by Walter Blackburn Harte, says, among other things:
“When any book of good criticism comes it should be welcomed and made known for the benefit of the persons who care for such works. The book under notice is one of these. It is, so far as I know, the first from the author’s pen; but his writings are well known, and those who read his present book will, with some eagerness, await its successor. For it is a book in which wit and bright, if often satirical, humor are made the vehicle for no flimsy affectations, but for genuine thought. Mr. Ruskin has affirmed that the virtue of originality is not newness, but genuineness.
“In this true sense Mr. Harte’s book is original. Here is his own thought on several topics, pleasantly displayed, and no mere echo or second-hand production of the ideas of others. If Mr. Harte continues to act up to this sentiment, Price in Handsome Cloth, $1.25.