The drama is queer. Life’s queer, for that matter, but queerness does most abound when Mr. Mansfield gives up elevating the stage and begins hoisting the lecture platform—or doesn’t, whichever is the latest news. Mansfield can earn some hundreds a week acting; wants to make it thousands, managing; fails, naturally, not having a spreadeagle mustache and sufficient capacity for the tender passion; abuses people for not supporting Art. Mansfield reminds the irreverent reader of Jno. Glimmer Screed, bewailing in the Forum that he can only make five thousand dollars a year by his puissant pen and that his children must eat breadless butter or butterless bread, or other incomplete dietary, and live in a flat. These considerations suggest a legislative enactment of the “be and hereby is” sort, assessing upon the taxpayers the cost of paying fifty thousand dollars a year each to all people who are so lacking in the sense of humor as to suppose it makes any difference whether they eat bread or snow.

The drama isn’t queerer than literature. Laureate Austin, mere mention of whose name has been known to split a horse’s sides, dedicates England’s Darling to the Princess of Wales by permission. No knowing whether the darling is the Princess or the Laureate without reading the verses, and that’s too much trouble.

Mr. Moulting Storrs Bigelow has lost the tail feathers of his prestige in the insurance business, which than his requires cheek even more adamantine.

Mr. Richard Harding Davis is being congratulated upon his “manly words about the Monroe doctrine,” wherewith the fifteen dollar a week hired-man-of-intellect in the Harper factory saved his fifteen thousand dollars a year article upon Venezuela from being quite so idiotic as it might have been. Dr. Conan Doyle prescribes peace with Great Britain to Uncle Sam, with a canny view to the sale of sedative Tales, uninterrupted by blockades. B’rer Crockett also loves the Americans. So does Sarah Grand. So would Screed and Beau Brummell Mansfield, if——

The way to get rich is to sell paper, not like the newspaper publisher, who sometimes makes a hit buying tree paper at two cents a pound and selling it at the rate of one hundred fakes for five cents; that’s an uncertain business and requires a disciplined conscience, not to speak of capital, which is more rare. No, sell paper of the kind recommended by the Bucyrus Authors’ Journal or the Dutch Flats Cable Railway to Parnassus. Here is the whole snap:

1. Personal Intelligence: “Du Maurier is to receive fifty thousand dollars and a paid up accident policy for The Martian.”

2. Helps for Young Authors: “Write only on one side of the paper. Use good cream paper, unruled, seven by ten. Mr. Gilder always writes his sonnets with violet ink. Keep a written record of all manuscripts sent out, etc.”

3. Advertisements.

Wherefore hath Mr. Screed written himself down an ass. Yea, a wild ass. If he values money more than doing what he wants to do, let him sell seven by ten paper, violet ink and manuscript records, and let us have Peace.

Mr. Sothern makes an announcement. For production next year he has accepted An Enemy to the King, and thus tosses into the arena Mr. R. N. Stephens, of Philadelphia, who made the play. Mr. Stephens has a past. Having endured for some years as a dramatic editor the honeyed wheedlings of theatrical advance agents, he crouched for a spring last year while painstaking audiences beheld his dramatic works, The White Rat, The Sidewalks of New York, Girl Wanted and others, and then he began working out swift and cosmopolitan vengeance as an agent on all the remaining dramatic editors. One afternoon before that, however, Mr. George Marion, the veteran though happy stage director for Messrs. Davis and Keogh, contractors, sat in their Herald Square Factory smoking the most dynamic cigar ever taxed.

“What are you doing, George?” piped a voice.

“Oh, I’m not very busy,” replied Mr. Marion, apprehensively.

“Well, you go over to Pittsburg and tell John Kernell we’ll have a new play ready for him tomorrow;” and turning around, the voice, though twisted, remarked, “Stevens, you write Kernell a play and send it to him tonight. Call it The Irish Alderman.”

Mr. Stephens has written eighty plays in a single week. His nights he spends with Sherlock Holmes, and in his dreams he converses with the White Robed Mahatmas. His brain food is scrapple, and he draws his strength from Johann Malt’s street car poster. Mr. Sothern’s courage must proceed from the gods.

Mr. Daniel Frohman, the theatrical manager, to distinguish himself from whom Mr. Charles Frohman bills his name with an emphatic score under the “Charles,” has achieved for the drama something dignified enough to be called an episode. He saw what Mr. Beerbohm Tree, Mr. George Alexander, Mr. Richard Mansfield and others denied—that Mr. Anthony Hope’s novel, The Prisoner of Zenda, needed very little mending to make a play of the first class. For this lonely act Mr. Frohman richly deserves a monument in Fourth avenue opposite his templar Lyceum. A Daniel certainly came to judgment. Zenda on the stage is great. Mr. Edward Rose, who made the play, has not attempted to clear up the moats and castles and bridges, which in an infantry novel I never could understand, but he has made very human beings and used a precious lot of Mr. Hope’s dialogue. Zenda has a bad ending. There is no question about that. I can just imagine my friend, Mr. Adv. W. Bok, sitting through the martyr separation of Rassendyll and Flavia and scuffling away thinking “Ugh, how mean!” People that croak over Mercutio’s untimely taking off are of the same ilk; and they wish A Tale of Two Cities ended happily. Mean, are these nobilities. Rupert in the play, scornful-merry, thinks it is the meanest ending possible; and chained he goes laughing away, taunting Rassendyll with being the biggest of fools for giving up love and a kingdom for honor’s sake. Fritz thinks not, though. Manfully he strides up to Rassendyll, a great chunk of grief on his palate, and taking the unwounded hand, shakes it fiercely and silently, as if his allegiance were bound with that clasp, and when he let go he would be a traitor forever. And when he goes away, old Sapt comes; and he thinks not, like Fritz. He grips the “lad’s” hand while a tear falls on the bloody bandage Rassendyll wears, and a magnet somewhere somehow snaps his loyal old knee to the floor in reverence for this “lad” that ought to be king if he isn’t. Flavia? She thinks not, too. She is not to die, like Camille, but is doomed to a more horrible tragedy: she must live on. She speaks the brave, spirit-crushing word that decrees the parting, and Rassendyll goes away, too. The red badge of courage is on his rag-slung arm, and there is a royal Vestal flame in his agonizing heart. “Is love the only thing?” The tear-blinded eyes of many a spectator of Mr. Sothern and Miss Kimball’s sweet and pathetic performance testify that the average man or woman thinks, yes. I don’t know.

In a late number of the Paris edition of the New York Herald I find this: “According to the new etymology a Philistine is one who believes in health, good cheer and manly self reliance as opposed to languid, mawkish sentimentality—that sure breeder of refined vice and degeneracy.” I really could not put the matter better than this myself.

My, My, My! but the “Note” that took the Five Dollar Prize was rotten!

In the American reprint of “Without Prejudice” sixty errors occur; the proof reading was left to Miss Mayme, who came up from the bindery: the Only Lynx-Eyed being on a journey.

My correspondents still continue to chew about the statement that this world is Hell and we are now being punished for sins committed in a former life. One woman writes me that if this world is surely Hell then there must be many devils here. “This being so, who are they?” she asks. I can only answer this in the words of a great poet who on being asked who the Decadents were, replied testily: “The others—always the others.”

The reason that it is called “Children’s Department” is because it is conducted by papa’s little boy.

I call the attention of Gunner Antonio Kumstalk to the fact that while the Youth’s Companion and the Ladies’ Boklet furnish the pictures for Art and Underwear, the Boston Commonwealth still supplies the text.

Law is now being successfully taught by correspondence. In fact the most brilliant legal lights of the future will probably be men who never went to school a day in their lives—simply hit the principles of Blackstone by correspondence while working on a farm. Journalism, too, is taught by correspondence and also in night schools. Twenty first-class lessons can be had for five dollars, with promise of position as Managing Editor to all who run the course and are glorified—that is graduated.

I am informed that the reason young Mr. Bumball of Chicago is often spoken of by his father as Issachar is fully explained in verse 14 of Chapter xlix of Genesis.

My good friend Walter Hippeau Merriam writes me from New York: “As a Philistine in good standing, with dues paid to 1901, I wish to exert my prerogative to protest. In your February issue you allow Mr. Macpherson Wiltbank to put forth some very startling “facts” concerning a musician named Chopin. The musician was not fertile enough in matters of revenge to ever originate that story of The Little White Black Bird. It was the work of an obscure poet named De Musset and can be found in his Contes, (Charpentier Librarie Editeur, 39 Rue de l’Universite, Paris, 1854.) If the Datary has not fined Mr. Wiltbank twenty-five skekels for trifling with truth, please see that it is done at once.”

The New Cycle has changed its name. Being essentially feminine, and this being leap year beside, of course it had a perfect right to do so. The move I understand was made to circumvent the joker who had a way of saying Wheels. Neith Boyce did not like this, for she said it was twitting on facts. She even threatened to resign if the name was not changed and a prettier cover used. The manager swore he would never be dictated by a woman, and swearing he would never consent, consented—changing the name (but not its nature) and getting that pretty cover. Phosphorus in editorial rooms is at a premium, and The Lotos (that’s the new name) cannot afford to lose Neith Boyce.

The Cosmopolitan (not the magazine composed merely of printers’ ink) contains on page 425 of its February, 1896, issue a poem (?) by one Gustav Kobbe, entitled Obediah Folger. In Hundred Choice Selections, 1872, No. 5, under the title The Nantucket Skipper, and in American Union Speaker, 1865, as The Alarmed Skipper, is the identical story now published by John Brisben Walker as something new! Nothing about it is new except the word combinations. The only possible excuse that I can see is that both the plagiarist-author and his publisher have never been in Boston and never heard of that eminent author and publisher, James T. Fields, (1817-1881), who composed the first poem on this idea.

It was well enough for Shakespeare to ask “What’s in a name?” seeing that he never realized what his own would stand for in the scroll of time; but do our modern writers who are not satisfied with one, but insist on forcing three and sometimes more names apiece upon public observation, take the same modest view of the significance of a cognomen? Not when there are three or more together, evidently. In short, and let us remember that “brevity is the soul of wit,” the natural inference is that they hold their signature as of more consequence than the screed that follows it. And perhaps they are right in this, though in some cases that is only a left-handed compliment.

The Revolutionary condition of Literature in America: Old Men sitting in shade on door steps; sometime smoking, always talking: of paper battles won in many magazines; of thrusts with pen; parries with pencil; ink bespattered veterans o’ercome, all in wordy warfare; of merry meetings turned to stern alarums; a so-long manuscript at so-much a page. Then Boys come by detached from Philistinic Hosts: make mud balls; revile; jeer; hiding behind bibelots. These two Factions, the Old and Young; the Senile and the Callow, the Wornout and the Willing: this is all there is to Literature in America. So saith that paper which with rare satire calls itself Truth.

Mr. John Langdon Heaton, who writes good poetry (and bad), suggests that the use of the fig leaf in these notes is “indelicate.”

Backed by the sanity of keen observation and good sense, the stories of “Octave Thanet” come out of the West like young Lochinvar. Recently from Miss French came a note of commendation enclosing the first stanza of a Philistine Hymn. Hearing that great things are in the air, I hasten to print these lines lest they be grabbed by greedy publishers:

The esteemed Whims of New York begins a new series. It will be followed rapidly by Jims, Skims, Limbs and Pims. We already have had Chips, Dips, Skips and Pips. I learn that Grandmother Chip-Munk is exceedingly proud of her interesting brood and is still laying eggs.

And the flood continues. I wonder what the definite aim of all the periodicals may be? At any rate I wish them all success, and hope they may “try to do which,” as the French say, “is that which it is that which it is what.” High aims are good things, we are told, and doubtless, like the mariners, we should steer our courses by the stars. Still there is good game which lies close to the earth if we knew how to hunt for it—and there’s the fun of hunting anyway, game or not.

Colonel Frank L. Stanton, able poet, of Atlanta, Georgia, is whirling his wheels too rapidly. Seventeen yards of poetry a day, seven days in the week, is too much for all concerned. The Colonel started with foam, and already is running to emptyings, namely:

The office boy can rhyme you in that style till the cows come home.