In calling such stories as the lady mentioned “literary” I presume apologies are due the Penrose-Overstreet Commission. While both the stories are “brand-new,” are well written, each teaching a lesson—have, in short, all the essential elements of “currency and periodicity”—yet that commission, in the anxious interest it displayed to secure “a general exclusion act” against fiction in periodicals, would, possibly, see nothing of literary merit in either of the stories the lady mentioned.
I shall, however, offer no apologies to the commission for classing the two stories as literature and of exemplary currency. On a previous page I have given my reasons for differing from the commission on its strictures on current fiction as run in our standard monthlies and weeklies. The lady’s expressed opinion of the two stories is another reason for differing from that expressed by the commission. In my judgment, the lady who spoke has a broader, juster and far more comprehending knowledge of literature—of its merits and demerits, whether fiction, historical, biographical or classic—than has any member of that commission.
But to return to our tea party. Those six ladies scanned and thumbed through my magazines. As said, there was comparatively little talk or comment about the body-matter of the periodicals. But those women—all married, five of them mothers, two of them (three, counting the hostess), grandmothers—gave fully three-fourths of their time to the advertising pages.
But that is not all. Their scanning of the advertising pages of those periodicals developed some business action. The business talk started when one lady called attention to the “ad” of a military school in a town in Wisconsin, “where Thomas attends,” Thomas being her son. It developed that the lady seated next to her had a son Charles whom it was desired to start in some preparatory school in the fall. Another matron had a daughter she desired to have take a course at some school for girls. Both of the ladies with candidates for preparatory courses, however, were of the opinion that all the “good schools” appeared to be in the East and each would prefer to send her son or daughter to some school nearer home. To this opinion the mother of the boy attending the Wisconsin school earnestly protested.
“We have just as good preparatory schools, colleges and universities in the West as they have in the East,” she declared. “My boy is doing splendidly at the——, Wisconsin. He has been there two terms now. If you don’t want to send Charles to a military school, there are a score or more of excellent schools for either boys or girls in the West and South—some of them right near us, too. Just look here!”——
And then began a scurrying through the school “ad” pages of three or four of the magazines for the names and locations of preparatory schools. The advertisements of a number were found.
“Take the names and addresses and write all of them for their catalogues or prospectuses or pamphlets, giving the courses of study that pupils may take, the advantages they offer and other information. That’s what I did before deciding where to send Thomas. I wrote twenty-two different military schools in the country and got a prompt reply from each of them. In fact some of them wrote me four or five times, besides sending their little printed books which gave their courses of study and set forth the special advantages their students enjoyed.”
Of course, it was Thomas’ mother who spoke. Her suggestion, however, gripped the rails at once. The two matrons with children to place in preparatory schools asked for pencil and paper. I relieved them of the immediate labor of writing out their lists, by gallantly inviting them to take home with them such of the magazines as they thought would serve their purpose, and, as they were near neighbors, they could scan them at their leisure and address directly from the advertisements. I lost three of my favorite magazines on my tender.
“This has no bearing on the point!” Eh? Well, let us see about that.