Read Ebook: The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. II No. 4 March 1896) by Various

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Ebook has 172 lines and 16170 words, and 4 pages

My heart tonight is wild and free, My heart tonight is Westerly; But I'm living again those old, glad days, Roaming at pleasure the grassy ways,-- Only a herder ridingtthe swales Of the prairie trails.

JOHN NORTHERN HILLIARD.

PAUL KNEW.

"When letters of appeal to the newspapers are sent to a board of review," our critic says, "impulse will be put in cold storage." Possibly, but it would no longer be easier for people to work the newspapers than to work themselves. "Catalogue poverty," he says, "quiz it, register it, dub it Case One; let hunger wait for an investigation, and if a bar sinister appears anywhere, deny food and shelter." The last sentence could never have been written if its author had made some preliminary inquiries such as modern charity requires. The invariable rule of true charity is to relieve urgent distress instantly, and to forgive errors seventy times seven even, with a sympathy which never grows callous, if there is still a chance of helping. Paradoxical as it may seem, money is not a panacea for poverty. If drink has made a man poor, money will feed not him but his drunkenness. If improvidence is his fault, free lodging, free food, free clothes, or even work found ready-made, will only foster his improvidence. There are so-called charitable institutions which spend huge sums in gathering about them colonies of thriftless, indolent loafers, whose only hope of regeneration lies in the very spur of hunger which devoted men and women are laboring night and day to remove. It is "moral murder" to teach the poor that drunkenness, indolence and improvidence will be toled along and that a "poor face" will draw doles. To interfere lightly with the severe laws of Nature is to assume a grave responsibility. "Suppose the Father of us all did administer His beneficence on such a plan?" says our critic. Are we sure he does not?

The Moses has not yet appeared who shall lead the suffering masses out of the bondage of poverty, and we know not even which road he will go, but perhaps the smoothest way and the nearest way is not the one which will prevent backsliding. "And it came to pass that God led them out, not through the way of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure they return to Egypt, but God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea."

FREDERIC ALMY.

THE PORT OF SHIPS.

Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'ral speak--what shall I say?" "Why, say, 'Sail on! Sail on! and on!'"

"My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly, wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Adm'ral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" "Why you shall say, at break of day, 'Sail on! Sail on! Sail on! and on!'"

They sailed, and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: "Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'ral; speak, and say--" He said: "Sail on! Sail on! and on!"

They sailed! They sailed! Then spake the mate: "This mad sea shows its teeth to-night; He curls his lip, he lies in wait With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Adm'ral, say but one good word-- What shall we do when hope is gone?" The words leaped as a leaping sword: "Sail on! Sail on! Sail on! and on!"

JOAQUIN MILLER.

THE FILLING OF THE JONESES.

Sunset hour at the meridian of Paradise Flats: but no sunset was visible. It was the worse end of a bad December day. Out doors, all was one color, and the rain froze as it fell.

Before the big tenement stood a Russian sleigh, with an impatient pair of clipped chestnuts. A Roman sentinel in furs sat on the box, and his liveried mate groped in the dark hall for the habitat of John Jones, who had been "recommended." John Jones lived there, but there was no evidence of it on the first floor. This tenement was not provided with a hall directory and a battery of bells. Poverty makes residence uncertain from month to month. Many a good man has been returned "not found" or "a fake," because he had to try elsewhere when the rent came due.

On the fifth floor, a room that looked back over a net of railroads held John Jones's treasures. Three little girls were keeping the stove warm. There was some coal in it, but the way it acted was proof that warmth is not always provoked by poking. The fire had a hungry look like the children, and like them, moreover, evinced an anxious desire to go out, cheerless as it was beyond the ineffective screen of the walls. The footman's knock created a flutter in the little group. Who would knock at that door?

"It's a p'liceman," suggested little four-year-old Kit. The coal in the stove and a grape basketful more had been picked up on the tracks.

Hand-in-hand they lined up at the door and eight-year-old Annie opened it. Kit and the two-year-old pulled hard on the line when the towering footman entered.

"Does John Jones live here?"

"Yes," said the eldest girl.

"John Jones, who registered at the Work and Aid Bureau?"

"I think so," said the girl, cautiously.

"Sure!" put in the four-year-old.

"Where is he?"

"He's out looking for some work, sir."

John was a mechanic until over-production or under-distribution or something else turned everything upside down. Now he was looking for work of any kind--and not finding it.

"Where's your mother?"

"She's sick in bed, sir," said Annie.

"Say, mister! Do you know what we've got?" piped the four-year-old. "We've got a new baby, and it's a boy!"

A grunt of disgust was the lackey's only answer. Well, what then? If John Jones had work, or a little money in the bank, it would be no reproach to him that the miracle of life had been wrought once more over in the corner of that room, and that there was one more mouth to feed. But this wasn't business.

"Can you write?" the footman said to the girl.

"Yes, sir, a little," she said.

"Write your name here," he said, producing a receipt book.

The girl made a scratch where he indicated, with some tremor. Then he handed her a large package which he had held in his gloved hand. "This is for your father," he said; "don't open it until he comes," and the vision of furry magnificence faded from sight.

John Jones, coming up the narrow stair, was almost crowded down again by the swelling cape of the man who was looking for him, passing down. Of course neither knew the other. A moment later the father with a heavy countenance entered the back room and asked in an anxious whisper how mamma was. Before the elder girl could answer the younger cried out, "O Papa! there was a splendid man here for you and he brought you somefing nice."

The square package was a problem to the man. So large and so light. When it was opened the puzzle was no less. It was a picture--a beautiful woman's head, with a pensive, tender look that might have been the Sphynx's own schoolmarm stare for all it meant to him. As he looked for an explanatory mark somewhere a card dropped to the floor. This is what he read on it:

John Jones, Esq.:

DEAR SIR--At the last meeting of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor the following resolution was unanimously adopted:

WHEREAS, The refining influence of art is almost wholly lost to the poorer classes by reason of their lack of means and time to enjoy the exhibitions open to others, and

WHEREAS, The degradation of poverty is to be cured not alone by teaching self-dependence by means of a labor test for applicants for relief but also by making the poorest conversant, so far as may be, with the works of the great masters of Literature, Music and Art; therefore be it

ELEANOR GOULD MARTIN, Secretary.

All this but the address line was printed. Below a form was filled in as follows:

"Papa," said four-year-old Kit, as the card fell from the nerveless hand of John Jones, "I fought it was somefing good to eat."

The Latest Revision tells after this fashion what followed the Trial in the Wilderness:

"And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights he was afterward an-hungered.... And behold, angels came and patronized him."

WILLIAM MCINTOSH.

A COMPLAINT OF SOME EDITORS.

Yes, most potent seignors, a complaint! Persuade me not; I will make a star chamber matter of it.

Which of us--humble and much enduring devotees of the Muse--having somehow got our song or sonnet accepted and in the course of years published, has not waxed wroth to find it mischievously meddled with, the trail of the editor's blue pencil over all its printed lines?

In prose editorial interference is exasperating enough. But in verse, where a comma misplaced, arbitrarily inserted or omitted, may change the whole meaning or effect of a pet phrase! And when the editor comes to manipulating words instead of punctuation marks, and juggling with rhymes even and with titles, what is to be said? What the author commonly says cannot be printed here.

I once knew a poetaster who wrote a handful of little rhymes which he called rather happily after his own notion, "Songs of a Year," and which in due time appeared in print. The editor, however, had thought "The Four Seasons" a more taking title. The poetaster disagreed with him, but it was too late. Another effort of this same unfortunate he protested tearfully that he could not recognize in its printed form except by the strawberry mark, that is, the signature; and he said he wished the editor had revised that, too, while he was about it.

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