Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

THE SCRAP BOOK.

Vol. I. APRIL, 1906. No. 2.

A MARVELOUS RECEPTION.

Nothing is a success until it is a proved success. The ideas that seem best frequently turn out the worst. If it were not for this fact, a fact with which we are thoroughly familiar, we should feel that we have in THE SCRAP BOOK the hit of a century. Indeed, it is difficult not to let ourselves go a bit, even now, and talk about this new creation in magazine-making in a way that would sound like high-pressure fiction.

Six weeks ago THE SCRAP BOOK was nothing but an idea. It had had a good deal of thought in a general way, but nothing effectually focuses until actual work begins. Filmy, desultory thought, in cloudland, counts for little.

In the early conception of THE SCRAP BOOK it was as unlike this magazine as a mustard-seed is unlike the full-grown tree. Rebelling as I did, and still do, at the restraints of the conventional magazine, and realizing the added strength that should come from the rare old things and the best current things--the scrap bits that are full of juice and sweetness and tenderness and pathos and humor--realizing all this, I undertook to incorporate in MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE a department which I intended to call THE SCRAP BOOK.

I had special headings and borders drawn for this department, with a view to differentiating it from other parts of the magazine. I had sample pages put in type, and more or less work done on the department. But it did not fit MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, and MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE gave no scope for such a section. It was atmospherically antagonistic to a magazine which consisted wholly of original matter. This was the beginning of THE SCRAP BOOK--the thought nebula.

* * * * *

It was as late as the middle of January when I came to my office one morning and startled our editorial force by saying that THE SCRAP BOOK would be issued on the 10th of February. Up to this time no decisive work had been done on it. As I stated in my introduction last month, we had been gathering scrap books from all over the world for some time, and had a good deal of material classified and ready for use. It was an accepted fact in the office that THE SCRAP BOOK would be issued sooner or later. Indeed, the drawing for the cover was made more than a year ago. But no one on the staff, not even myself, knew just what THE SCRAP BOOK would be like or when it would make its appearance.

With a definite date fixed for the day of issue, however, and that date only about three weeks away, intense work and intense thought were necessary, and from this thought and work was evolved THE SCRAP BOOK as we now have it. From the first minute, as it began to take shape, it became a thing of evolution. Enough material was prepared, set up, and destroyed to fill three issues of THE SCRAP BOOK, and display headings were changed and changed--and a dozen times changed--to get the effect we wanted.

As it was something apart from all other magazines, we had no precedents to follow, no examples to copy, either in the matter itself, the method of treating it, or the style of presenting it. Our inspiration in producing THE SCRAP BOOK was mainly, and almost wholly, our conception of what would appeal most forcefully to the human heart and human brain--to all the people of all classes everywhere. This, supplemented by our experience in publishing, was our guide in evolving this magazine.

I have told you this much about the beginning and the development of THE SCRAP BOOK because such information about the beginning of anything of any consequence appeals to me individually, and I think generally appeals to all readers. If THE SCRAP BOOK, therefore, is to make an important place for itself in the publishing world, as certainly looks probable at this time, it will perhaps be worth while to have the story of its inception and evolution.

* * * * *

While I have created in THE SCRAP BOOK a magazine for the public, as I interpret the public taste--and this is always my purpose in anything I publish--I find that in THE SCRAP BOOK I have unconsciously created a magazine for myself. I mean just this, that for my own reading THE SCRAP BOOK as it is, and THE SCRAP BOOK in its possibilities, has all other magazines, every phase and kind of magazine the world over, beaten to a standstill.

And why? Simply because THE SCRAP BOOK in its scope is as wide as the world. It has no limitations, within the boundaries of decency and good taste. It has as broad a sweep in the publication of original articles and original fiction and original everything as any magazine anywhere. It has, in addition, in its review phases, recourse to the best current things throughout the world--the daily press, the weekly press, the magazines, the pulpit, and the platform. And best of all, it has the vast storehouses of the centuries to draw from--the accumulation of the world's best thoughts and best writing.

FRANK A. MUNSEY.

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While.

The Presidents of Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell Discuss
Questions Bearing on the Practical Training of the Young Men
of America--Maeterlinck Calls New York a City of Money,
Bustle, and Noise--John Morley Offers Some Valuable
Suggestions on the Reading of Books--Edward S. Martin
Praises City Life--Ex-President Cleveland Speaks of the
Relation of Doctor and Patient--And Other Notable People
Express Themselves on Matters of Current Interest.

_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

IS THE RICH YOUNG MAN HANDICAPPED?

President Eliot, of Harvard, Tells of
the Blessings of Poverty and the
Penalties of Great Wealth.

Is wealth a hindrance to a young man starting out in life? Men who have built their own fortunes are almost unanimous in answering yes. To have nothing to begin with means, they say, illimitable opportunity, and opportunity is the great developing factor; poverty means the stimulus of real need, which impels men to take advantage of opportunity. To quote the present Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Walter V. Morgan:

The best thing that can happen to a young man is to be poor.
Extreme poverty may sometimes hamper a youth's progress,
but, in my opinion, he is far more likely to make his way in
the world if he starts with the proverbial half-a-crown in
his pocket than with a thousand-pound note.

Riches carry their own penalty. President Eliot, in a recent address before the student body at Harvard, said:

The very rich are by no means the healthiest members of the community, and to escape the perils of luxurious living requires unusual will-power and prudence.

Great capital at the disposal of a single individual confers on its possessor great power over the course of industrial development, over his fellow men and sometimes over the course of great public events, like peace or war between nations. It enables a man to do good or harm, to give joy or pain, and places him in a position to be feared or looked up to.

There is pleasure in the satisfaction of directing such a power, and the greater the character the greater may be the satisfaction. In giving this direction the great capitalist may find an enjoyable and strenuous occupation. For a conscientious, dutiful man a great sense of responsibility accompanies this power. It may become so powerful as to wipe out the enjoyment itself.

The most serious disadvantage under which the very rich have labored is the bringing up of children. It is well-nigh impossible for a very rich man to develop his children from habits of indifference and laziness. These children are so situated that they have no opportunity of doing productive labor, and do nothing for themselves, parents, brothers, or sisters, no one acquiring the habit of work. In striking contrast are the farmer's children, who cooperate at tender years in the work of the household.

Among President Eliot's hearers were many young men to whom the blessings of poverty were unknown.

TO TEACH TRADES TO YOUNG WORKERS.

Dean Balliet Emphasizes the Importance
of Trade-Schools in the Adjustment
of Our Economic Problems.

A box of tools, and not a bundle of books, will be the burden of many a school-child, if the trade-school system becomes firmly established. In Germany the public trade-schools have proved very effective. In the United States there has been an encouraging seven-year experiment at Springfield, Massachusetts, and two schools have recently been established in New York City.

The trade-school differs from the manual training-school. Manual training is educational. "It develops the motor and executive sides of a child's nature," to quote Dean T.M. Balliet, of the School of Pedagogy in New York University. Also it fits young men for higher technical training. The trade-school, on the other hand, teaches young people how to work at actual wage-paying trades--how to be plumbers, electrical fitters, carpenters, masons, ironworkers.

Dean Balliet, having made an exhaustive study of the system, not long ago gave the following answer to an interviewer from the New York _Tribune_ who asked what the trade-school meant:

The aim must be entirely practical, but not narrowly so.
Students must be trained to perform specific kinds of
skilled labor which has a commercial value. But the learning
of a trade must include the scientific principles underlying
it, and must not be confined to mere hand-training. In the
case of the mechanical trades, instruction in drawing, in
physics, and in mathematics applicable to the trade must be
included.

Trades frequently change, and the invention of a new machine
may make a trade suddenly obsolete. Instruction must,
therefore, be broad enough to make workmen versatile and
enable them to adjust themselves to these changes. The
apprentice system is gone. In a shop a man can at best learn
only a small part of his trade, and that only the mechanical
part. Shop-training, even where it is still possible, is too
narrow to make a man versatile. If the one machine which he
has learned to run becomes obsolete he is stranded. We need
trade-schools for just such men, to enable them to learn the
whole of their trade and to receive instructions in the
principles underlying it.

Years ago men read medicine in the office of physicians; now
they go to a medical school. Lawyers read law in an office
only; now they attend law schools. In like manner the
learning of a trade in the shop is rapidly becoming
obsolete, and trade-schools must take the place of the shop.
The fact that some things can be learned only in the shop is
no argument against the school. There are things in the
training of a lawyer which can be learned only in an office.

A COLLEGE CAREER--IS IT WORTH WHILE?

President Butler, of Columbia, Points
Out That Self-Made Men Wish
Their Sons to Go to College.

Business men are sometimes contemptuous toward the young college graduate's bumptiousness and lack of practical knowledge. Educators, on the other hand, give a strong argument, backed by statistics and corroborating detail, to prove that a college education is the best foundation in all the work of life. The subject has been discussed probably since men of education first left the cloisters and went out into the world.

President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, presents this brief for the college man:

No doubt there are many who believe a college education is a
hindrance to the necessary business wisdom of the age. There
are merchants down-town who will tell you how they started
at ten or fourteen to sweep out the office and rose, by
virtues and industry, to become members of the firm. This is
true. But you follow the career of the office-boy who began
his utilitarian studies with a broom, and the college boy
who began with his books, and you will find that when the
office-boy reaches thirty he is still an employee, whereas
the college graduate is probably at that age his employer.

Statistics show that out of ten thousand successful men in
the world, taken in all classes of life, eight thousand are
college graduates. Look at the tremendous increase of
educational effort all over the United States in the last
few years. Why, I have parents come to me with tears in
their eyes and ask me to tell them how they can get their
boys through college with only the small sum of money they
can afford to do it with. Even your self-made man isn't
satisfied unless his son can go to college.

ATHENIAN CULTURE IS AMERICA'S NEED.

President Schurman Would Like to See
Here a Little More of "The Glory
That Was Greece."

Jacob Gould Schurman, president of Cornell University, has taken to heart the contrast between American culture of to-day and the culture of the ancient Greeks. In an address before an association of teachers last February, he charged that while our people "knows something of everything," its knowledge is "superficial, inaccurate, chaotic, and ill-digested." Furthermore, he says that we are indifferent to esthetic culture and suspicious of theory, of principles, and of reason.

These are serious, fundamental charges. But let us hear President Schurman's fuller statement of his case:

If the American mind is to be raised to its highest potency,
a remedy must be found for these evils. The first condition
of any improvement is the perception and recognition of the
defects themselves.

I repeat, then, that while as a people we are wonderfully
energetic, industrious, inventive, and well-informed, we
are, in comparison with the ancient Athenians, little more
than half developed on the side of our highest rational and
artistic capabilities.

The problem is to develop these potencies in an environment
which has hitherto been little favorable--and to develop
them in the American people, and not merely in the isolated
thinker, scholar, and artist.

If no American city is an Athens, if no American poet is a
Homer or Sophocles, if no American thinker is a Plato or
Aristotle, it is not merely because Americans possess only a
rudimentary reason and imagination and sensibility, but
because, owing to causes which are part of our national
being--causes which are connected with our task of subduing
a continent--the capacities with which nature has generously
endowed us have not been developed and exercised to the
fulness of their pitch and potency.

Our work in the nineteenth century was largely of the
utilitarian order; in the twentieth century we are summoned
to conquer and make our own the ideal realms of truth and
beauty and excellence which far more than material victories
constitute the true greatness of nations.

Pedagogic methods might be employed to stimulate American culture. President Schurman suggests that in the common schools greater emphasis be laid upon art and literature. There remains, however, as he points out, something greater than the intellectuality of the Greeks, and that is the ethical consciousness of the Hebrews.

Noble and exalted and priceless as reason and culture are,
there is a still higher end of life both for individuals and
nations. That end, indeed, was very inadequately conceived
by the Greeks. In the creative play of reason and
imagination, in their marvelous productions of speculation,
science, and art, in their exaltation of mind above sense
and of spirit above matter, in their conception of a
harmonious development of all the rich and varied powers of
man--in all these the Greeks have left to mankind a legacy
as priceless as it is to-day vital and forever imperishable.

But the Greeks, even the Greek philosophers, even the
"divine Plato," have not given us enough to live by. It was
the Jews, the outcast, oppressed, and much-suffering Jews,
who first sounded the depths of human life, discovered that
the essential being of a man resides in his moral
personality, and rose to the conception of a just and
merciful Providence who rules in righteousness the affairs
of nations and the hearts and wills of men.

If even our literary men now tell us that conduct is
three-fourths of life, it is because Hebraism and the
Christianity which sprang from Hebraism have stamped this
idea ineffaceably upon the conscience of mankind. The
selfishness and sensuality in us may revolt against the Ten
Commandments and the Golden Rule, but the still small voice
of conscience in us recognizes their authority and
acknowledges that if they had might as they have right, they
would absolutely govern the world. The most, the best, of
greatness is goodness. The greatest man on earth is the man
of pure heart and of clean hands.

NOTABLE NEGLECT OF INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

A Plea for Arts and Crafts as the Logical
Basis of a National Development
of the Fine Arts.

In line with President Schurman's criticism of American culture is the plea by Charles de Kay, the New York art critic, for more attention to the industrial arts. His argument is that out of the arts and crafts the fine arts naturally develop; that out of the artist-artisan comes the highest class of artist, as, for example, Augustus Saint Gaudens, who began as a cameo cutter. To ignore the industrial arts is, so to speak, to leave out of count that solid middle class upon which alone the aristocracy of art can safely rest. Writing in the New York _Times_, Mr. de Kay says:

Plainly enough there is a field scarcely plowed at all in
the arts and crafts. These arts in the Middle Ages, and
latterly in Japan and India, absorbed and absorb the
energies of the cleverest hands and brightest minds; but in
America and England to-day are neglected for the fine arts,
because the rare prizes in the latter, whether of fame or of
wealth, dazzle the imagination.

Fashion rather than taste has set easel paintings so
absolutely in the forefront that with most people this
represents art in its entirety, and though the appreciation
of the minor arts of Japan has opened the eyes and enlisted
the sympathies of thousands, this one-sided view of art
holds on; so encouragement of native arts and crafts is
slack and uncertain.

Yet a democracy like ours, while the most difficult of all
communities to rouse to a vivid sympathy with the industrial
arts, owing to cheap processes and the influence exerted by
traditions that began in aristocratic lands, is of all
others that community where they are needed most.

The huge engine of the public schools is forever milling
over the raw material of the Union, educating the native
children, assimilating to the commonwealth the young people
of immigrant stocks. The higher education of taste and
refinement ought to go hand in hand, but it is sadly
deficient.

No one should expect that the public-school system could add
this to a task already appalling for its size and
complexity. It can be coped with only by organizations apart
from the existing schools, which might attempt for the
youthful artisan what the art schools attempt for the
training of architects, sculptors, and painters.

It is the fate of democracies to waste energy and attack
each problem by the wrong side. Commend us to a democracy to
put the cart before the horse every time! In the arts we
have been doing this imbecile trick steadily, persistently,
for a hundred years, trying to foster the fine arts while
our minor arts and crafts are too contemptible for
criticism.

Is it not about time to show that even a democracy can learn
something? Certainly if we can convince this community that
the most crying need is a thorough regeneration of the
industrial arts, the object will be attained. For though
democracies are often clumsy, when they once strike the
right path they rush forward to the highest places with a
speed and an irresistible force no other communities attain.

BELGIAN DRAMATIST CRITICIZES NEW YORK.

Money, Bustle, and Noise Are the Principal
Things Named as Characteristic
of Our Young Nation.

Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist and mystic philosopher, is by no means dull in his appreciation of practical conditions. People who know him say that he is not in the least lackadaisical or spiritually remote, but is simple and frank and full of interest in every-day occurrences. A short time ago he was asked to express his opinion of America. He replied--to quote from the _Theater Magazine_:

I should be afraid to live in a city like New York. I
understand that money, bustle, and noise are its chief
characteristics. Money is useful, of course, but it is not
everything. Bustle and noise, also, are necessary adjuncts
of human industry. But they do not add to man's comfort nor
satisfy his soul's cravings.

America is too young a nation to seek the beautiful. That
may come when you Americans grow weary of being rich. Then
you will, as a nation, cultivate art and letters, and--who
knows?--one day you will surpass the Old World in the
splendor of your buildings, the genius of your authors. You
are a great people, but your highest powers are still
slumbering.

At present you are too busily occupied in assimilating the
foreigner, too busily engaged in affairs purely material, to
leave either time or taste for either the beautiful or the
occult. When America does take to beautifying her own home
she will astonish the world.

WHAT "PUNCH" HAS MEANT TO ENGLAND.

London's Famous Funny Paper is Really
Funny to Those Who Know How
to Appreciate Its Jokes.

Sir Francis C. Burnand has resigned the editorship of London _Punch_ after a service of twenty-three years. It is hard to think of him as old, but, being in his seventieth year, doubtless he had begun to find the cares of his position somewhat irksome.

Eminent as was his fitness for the editorship he held so long, he started out in life with no notion of becoming a humorist. Amateur dramatic performances took much of his time at Cambridge. After leaving the university, he became a barrister. Converted to the Roman church, he studied for the priesthood, but abandoned this prospective future in order to devote himself to the stage. Though he did not become an actor, he wrote many stage pieces--plays, librettos, etc.; at the same time he was writing jokes for the humorous papers, and when he was twenty-five years of age he became a regular contributor to _Punch_. Says the New York _Evening Post_:

The resignation of Sir Francis C. Burnand, for twenty-five
years editor of London _Punch_, reminds one how little it
has been subject to the vicissitudes of journalism. As if
by fore-ordination, the admirable parodist, Owen Seaman,
takes the head of the historic table, and _Punch_ will, if
anything, be more _Punch_ than ever. Others may change, but
_Punch_ retains a kind of Olympian uniformity. From its
first number, sixty-five years ago, to the last, its outward
appearance and inward savor are practically identical.
England has been in conspiracy to provide it with talent.

During the editor's term of office the paper lost such
artists as Charles Keene, Du Maurier, and Sir John Tenniel;
but it also saw the rise of Mr. Linley Sambourne's forceful
caricature, of Mr. Raven-Hill's delightful rusticities, of
the nervous and most expressive art of the lamented Phil
May. In fact, barring an inclination to overindulgence in
rather trite doggerel, _Punch's_ jorum has rarely been more
tasty than in the past quarter century. Its only serious
rival in the comic field has been _Fliegende Blaetter_.

There is, of course, the prevailing American view that
_Punch_ is dull. Dull it is, in the sense that the best fun
of the most jocose family may be merely tantalizing to the
outsider. A nudge to the initiated may be sufficient to
recall jokes proved by a thousand laughs; the uninitiated
needs a clue. Now, _Punch's_ family is London--a family
whose acquaintance is tolerably worth while--and probably no
one who has not imaginatively made himself familiar with the
mood of London has any business with _Punch_ at all. It is
the homesickness for London that extends the subscription
list to the bounds of the empire; it is the desire to know
what London thinks of itself, of the provinces, of the
world, that makes readers for _Punch_ in every land. It
represents London in the mood of intellectual dalliance as
thoroughly as _Fliegende Blaetter_ does non-Prussian Germany.
This representative quality gives to these two comic papers
something of the solemnity of institutions.

THE OLD JOURNALISM COLORED BY THE NEW.

Norman Hapgood Declares that Yellow
Journals Have Shaken the Newspapers
Out of Their Old Rut.

"Yellowness," in the newspaper sense, means sensationalism; sensationalism means exaggeration; exaggeration means wrong proportion and the distortion of truth. On the other hand, it is pointed out that yellowness means interest; interest means closer attention from a larger audience; the larger audience means wider editorial influence.

Aside from the main arguments for and against yellowness, there are noticeable effects which the new journalism has had indirectly upon the old. Speaking recently before the League for Political Education, in New York City, Norman Hapgood, the editor of _Collier's Weekly_, attributed the increased boldness and popular tone of the conservative newspapers to the influence of yellow journalism:

Yellow journalism has its faults, but it was the first to
shake the newspapers out of the old rut and give them new
vigor. Before the advent of this class of journals there was
no organ among the conservative press to speak down to the
people. It was the consequence of a growing democracy and
had for its purpose the establishment of a press wherein the
laboring classes would have expression.

HOW TO ASSIMILATE THE BEST IN BOOKS.

John Morley, the English Statesman and
Scholar, Tells the Secret of Making
One's Reading Pay.

When a man knows books as thoroughly as John Morley knows them, his opinions as to what and how to read are worth having. Mr. Morley has revised and put together as an article for _The Critic_ several of his extemporaneous addresses on books and reading. From this article the following paragraphs have been culled and condensed with care to select those passages which contain practical advice for people who desire to make their reading count for something:

The object of reading is not to dip into everything that
even wise men have ever written. In the words of one of the
most winning writers of English that ever existed--Cardinal
Newman--the object of literature in education is to open the
mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to
comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over
its own faculties, application, flexibility, method,
critical exactness, sagacity, address, and expression.

Literature consists of all the books--and they are not so
many--where moral truth and human passion are touched with a
certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. Poets,
dramatists, humorists, satirists, masters of fiction, the
great preachers, the character-writers, the maxim-writers,
the great political orators--they are all literature in so
far as they teach us to know man and to know human nature.

What I venture to press upon you is that it requires no
preterhuman force of will in any young man or woman--unless
household circumstances are more than usually vexatious and
unfavorable--to get at least half an hour out of a solid
busy day for good and disinterested reading. Some will say
that this is too much to expect, and the first persons to
say it, I venture to predict, will be those who waste their
time most. At any rate, if I cannot get half an hour, I will
be content with a quarter.

Multiply the half-hour by three hundred and sixty-five, and
consider what treasures you might have laid by at the end of
the year, and what happiness, fortitude, and wisdom they
would have given you during all the days of your life.

You may have often heard from others, or may have found out,
how good it is to have on your shelves, however scantily
furnished they may be, three or four of those books to which
it is well to give ten minutes every morning, before going
down into the battle and choking dust of the day. Perhaps it
matters little what it may be so long as your writer has
cheerful seriousness, elevation, calm, and, above all, a
sense of size and strength, which shall open out the day
before you, and bestow gifts of fortitude and mastery.

If a man is despondent about his work, the best remedy that
I can prescribe to him is to turn to a good biography; there
he will find that other men before him have known the dreary
reaction that follows long-sustained effort, and he will
find that one of the differences between the first-rate man
and the fifth-rate lies in the vigor with which the
first-rate man recovers from this reaction, and crushes it
down, and again flings himself once more upon the breach.

A taste for poetry is not given to everybody, but anybody
who does not enjoy poetry, who is not refreshed,
exhilarated, stirred by it, leads but a mutilated existence.
I would advise that in looking for poets--of course after
Shakespeare--you should follow the rule of allowing
preferences, but no exclusion.

Various mechanical contrivances and aids to successful
study are not to be despised by those who would extract the
most from books. The wise student will do most of his
reading with a pen or pencil in his hand. He will not shrink
from the useful toil of making abstracts and summaries of
what he is reading.

Again, some great men--Gibbon was one, and Daniel Webster
was another, and the great Lord Stafford was a third--always
before reading a book made a short, rough analysis of the
questions which they expected to be answered in it, the
additions to be made to their knowledge, and whither it
would take them.

Another practise is that of keeping a commonplace book, and
transcribing into it what is striking and interesting and
suggestive. And if you keep it wisely, as Locke has taught
us, you will put every entry under a head, division, or
subdivision. This is an excellent practise for concentrating
your thought on the passage, and making you alive to its
real point and significance.

ARE WE SURFEITED WITH WIT AND HUMOR?

Jerome K. Jerome Says that the American
Sense of Humor Has Been Overfed
by Brilliant Humorists.

More great humorists have arisen in the United States during the last seventy-five years than in any other country. Among the professionals are, or have been, Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, Petroleum V. Nasby, Mark Twain, and George Ade. Who of these have been and who still are there is no need of saying. But certainly the constellation is brilliant with these names alone, though the lesser stars have been many.

Have we had too much humor? Are we sated? Jerome K. Jerome, after several months of personal observation, answers yes. Near the end of his recent tour of the country he said:

It seems to me that the American people have been surfeited
with humor. So many brilliant men have written their jokes
for so long that they have become jaded. I thought at first
that the American sense of humor was radically less subtle
than ours in England, but now I know better. It is simply
overfed.

Mark Twain is, I think, the only living humorist of the old
American school, and he, like _Falstaff_, is growing old.
But the subtle touch that England likes still and America
liked once is still his. You laugh with him now, I think,
more from a sense of duty than a sense of the ridiculous.
You have grown tired and need coarser fare to stimulate your
appetite. And I've discovered the cause of it, too. It is
the comic supplement of the Sunday papers.

The New York _World_ takes exception to Mr. Jerome's remarks, and answers him as follows:

In the name of Punch and the Prophet, figs! The history of
American humor is a chronicle of development to a present
pitch of refinement and subtlety with which the work of the
earlier humorists suffers by comparison. It is the history
of the evolution of the pun into the witticism.

Could Petroleum V. Nasby get a hearing to-day? Or the
Danbury News Man, or "Peck's Bad Boy"? Would not a Burdette
writing for the more exacting twentieth-century perception
find his occupation gone? Even an Artemus Ward and a Josh
Billings appealing to latter-day readers would perceive the
essential need of a purification and refinement of method if
they were to hold their audience under anything like the old
spell.

Progress from broad lines approaching buffoonery to
delicacy, from the obvious and the apparent to the elusive,
is observable in all humorists who hold their public. It was
seen in Eugene Field. It is discernible in Mark Twain, whom
Mr. Jerome cites as a survival of the "old American school."
Between "The Innocents Abroad" and "Pudd'nhead Wilson" and
"The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" is all the contrast of
the changed taste of a new generation. _Falstaff_ is not now
the fashion.

WOMAN'S REAL PLACE IN LITERARY WORK.

An Unkind Frenchman Says That Her
Limitations Must Always Keep
Her in a Secondary Role.

We have often been told by Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman that woman, as a type, ranks higher in almost every respect than man; and there are many people of both sexes who agree with her. Nevertheless, the champions of feminine superiority may find it hard work to shout down the glorifiers of masculine achievement.

Here is a Frenchman, Georges Pellisier, a literary critic, who argues that woman cannot write great literature, because she is intellectually as well as physically inferior to man. He assigns to her the secondary literary role of acting as mistress of the literary salon--a position which, he thinks, has a valuable influence. He expresses his views as follows, in _La Revue_ (Paris), the translation being that of the _Literary Digest_:

Philosophy, criticism, and history are beyond her mental
scope, and I know of none who has made a lasting impression
in these domains. Philosophy requires a force of abstraction
and a power of application rarely possessed by women, the
power of reflection being, with them, as one of the greatest
of them has admitted, "rather a happy accident than a
peculiar or permanent attribute." Naturally impulsive, they
fail to follow out the logic of their ideas.... In the
domain of criticism woman is too much the slave of first
impressions, or preconceived notions, which must be
admitted, however, to be generally very vivid and often very
just.

Her personal preferences, nevertheless, obscure her views
and misguide her opinions, while she lacks almost wholly the
faculty of weighing her judgments.... A proper study or
understanding of history is impossible without the
philosophic and the critical faculties, and, above all, a
disinterested love of truth. Woman colors events according
as passion or sentiment sways her. The real historian must
totally efface both himself and his bias; and this, woman,
of her nature, is incapable of doing....

There remain to her the drama, poetry, and the novel. In
dramatic art, no woman has produced anything of lasting
note, the reason being that the dramatist must, perforce, be
without egotism and be capable of detaching the Ego from the
action of the play--a thing impossible in woman.

In poetry this critic allows to woman but "the shadow of a name"; for few women, he argues, have written verse that endured. "The principal defect she evinces in poetry," he says, "is a lack of artistic execution." Woman's best work, he thinks, has been done in romance, though he refuses to class any woman with the master-novelists. Even this small credit he awards grudgingly and carpingly. He cannot ignore success, but he tries to belittle it.

Apart from the fact that they may indulge in solecism and
anachronism without being severely called to task by the
critics, their composition is faulty. Even Georges Sand was
not above suspicion. There is palpable in their novels an
incoherent notion of logical plot, while their imagination
is subjected to no salutary discipline. Their work lacks
vigor, and in its weakness, not an unattractive quality in
woman herself, there is something commonplace that is not
redeemed by elegance. Above all, woman's temperament recoils
from a depiction of the stern reality of life.... She has no
sense of proportion, and for her the beautiful and the
pretty are interchangeable terms.

RACE SUICIDE MAY PROVE A BLESSING.

Welfare of the Offspring Is Much More
Important Than Their Number, Says
This Cincinnati Professor.

Dr. Charles A.L. Reed, of the University of Cincinnati, has published an address on "The American Family," in which he makes this strong statement: "We see in a declining birth-rate only a natural and evolutional adjustment of race to environment--an adjustment that insures rather than menaces the perpetuation of our kind under favoring conditions." Thus he argues that "race suicide" may prove a blessing, since, as a matter of fact, it implies an intelligent regard for the rights and necessities of children rather than an aversion to motherhood:

If reduced to its last analysis, it does not indicate a
loss, but rather a development, if not an actual exaltation
of the maternal function. American women recognize,
subconsciously, possibly, certainly not in definite terms,
but they nevertheless recognize, the force of the law
enunciated by Mr. Spencer that whatever conduces to the
highest welfare of offspring must more and more establish
itself, since children of inferior parents reared in
inferior ways will ever be replaced by children of better
parents reared in better ways.

A much greater danger, according to Dr. Reed, is overpopulation. As influences inimical to the American family he classes "everything that tends to the early and wide dispersion of its members," such as--

The development of residential schools, the extension of
far-reaching transportation facilities, the diversification
of industries, the industrial employment of women, the
popularization of hotels and apartments for residential
purposes, and, finally, the development of clubs for both
men and women at the expense of the home.

WORTH WHILE TO LIVE IN A LARGE CITY.

The Real Blessings of Urban Life Have
Been Too Much Neglected By
the Apostles of the Country.

City life has been more or less maligned--unintentionally. Unhealthful crowding, lack of the inspiration of outdoor life, and greater immorality are the principal charges. Lately, however, people have begun to believe that the city is little if any more immoral, proportionately to its inhabitants, than the country; that the absence of outdoor life has compensations, especially when one can spend part of the year in the country; that most of the dangers of crowding can be averted by improved sanitary methods and a greater number of parks. Edward S. Martin, writing in _Appleton's Magazine_, states the case attractively:

After all, there is an unrivaled attraction about human
society, and it is considerably wholesome. It takes superior
people to thrive on solitude even with quiet thrown in.
Feebler folk have been known to regenerate even in the
blessed country. It is no more possible in these days to
stop the country people from coming to town than to stop the
rivers from flowing to the sea.

The cities offer the best opportunities to the people who
are qualified to improve them. The cities are the great
markets for talent and skill, as well as for commodities.
They would be badly off if the energy that makes them hum
were not perpetually re-enforced out of the great country
reservoirs. The country would be a worse place if the
superfluous vigor that is bred there had not the cities in
which to spend itself.

To get to some town is the natural and legitimate aspiration
of a considerable proportion of the sons and daughters of
American farmers. But as the waters that run to the sea are
carried back by the process of evaporation, so there must
be, as our cities grow greater, a return current out of them
countryward for the people for whom town life is no longer
profitable, and whose nerves and thews need nature's
medication.

There is such a current as it is. People who get rich in
town promptly provide themselves with country homes, and
spend more and more of the year in them as their years
increase and their strength declines. But for the people who
don't get rich, the combination, or the transition, is not
so easy. A due proportion of the people who are game to
stand more noise, canned food, and struggle in their lives,
and who ought to get to town, will get there.

The other process--to get back into the country the
families, and especially the children, who have had more
continuous city life than is good for them--needs a good
deal of outside assistance, and gets some, though not yet as
much as it requires.

MAKING MONEY IS A RELIGIOUS DUTY.

John D. Rockefeller Recounts His Own
Early Struggles and Shows to Young
Men the Virtues of Economy.

It may be, as sometimes has been said, that more is to be learned from the mistakes of other men than from their successes. If that be true it is because the reasons for their mistakes can hardly be concealed. Whether or not successful men betray the secrets of their successes, however, usually rests with themselves. In studying success, it is the occasional intimate disclosure that bears value rather than the superficial record.

John D. Rockefeller has addressed to the Bible class over which his son presides a pamphlet entitled "First Ledger of a Successful Man of Affairs." In it he tells of the ledger he kept as a young man, in which all his receipts and expenditures were most carefully recorded; and starting with this reminiscence he gives his advice to the young men of to-day. He begins with the dictum that "it is a religious duty to get all the money you can"--that is, "honestly and fairly"--and he sings the virtues of rigid economy. Speaking of his own efforts to "get a footing," he says:

If you all feel as I did when I was just starting in, I feel
sorry for you. But I would not be without the memory of that
struggle. And, discussing the struggle for success, what is
success? Is it money? Some of you have all you need.

Who is the poorest man in the world? I tell you, the poorest
man I know is the man who has nothing but money, nothing
else in the world upon which to devote his ambition and
thought. That is the sort of man I consider to be the
poorest in the world. Money is good if you know how to use
it.

Now, let me give you a little word of counsel. Keep a
ledger, as I did. Write down in it all that you receive, and
do not be ashamed to write down what you pay out. See that
you pay it away in such a manner that your father and mother
may look over your book and see just what you did with your
money. It will help you to save money, and that you ought to
do.

It is a mistake for any man who wishes for happiness and to
help others to think that he will wait until he has made a
fortune before giving away money to deserving objects.

LET DOCTORS TELL WHAT THE MATTER IS.

A Plea by Grover Cleveland for a Greater
Degree of Confidence Between
Physician and Patient.

Our only living ex-President, Mr. Cleveland, gave a bit of advice to the doctors a few weeks ago. Speaking before the New York State Medical Society, in session at Albany, he pleaded the rights of the patient to know what his physician was doing to him. He humorously represented himself as attorney for the great army of patients in their appeal to the powerful minority of doctors:

In all seriousness I desire to concede without the least
reservation on behalf of the great army of patients that
they owe to the medical profession a debt of gratitude which
they can never repay, on account of hard, self-sacrificing
work done for their benefit and for beneficent results
accomplished in their interest.

But at the same time we are inclined to insist that while
our doctors have wonderfully advanced in all that increases
the usefulness and nobility of their profession, this thing
has not happened without some corresponding advance in the
intelligent thought and ready information of their patients
along the same lines.

We have come to think of ourselves as worthy of confidence
in the treatment of our ailments, and we believe if this was
accorded to us in greater measure it would be better for the
treatment and better for us. We do not claim that we should
be called in consultation in all our illnesses, but we would
be glad to have a little more explanation of the things done
to us.

FOOD AS A PRIME FACTOR OF CHARACTER.

What We Eat May Be More Important
Than Where We Live or Who
Our Parents Are.

Food makes the man; not heredity, not environment. Thus speaks John Spargo, socialistic lecturer and author. The badly fed or underfed baby quickly departs from the normal; imbecility, crime, pauperism all are directly or indirectly due to the lack of food or its poor quality during the plastic years.

Without accepting the doctrine that food is the sole factor in evolution, some profit may be drawn from a more extended statement of Mr. Spargo's views given in the New York _World_:

The nervous, irritable, half-ill children to be found in
such large numbers in our public schools represent poor
material. They are largely drawn from the homes of poverty,
and constitute an overwhelming majority of those children
for whom we have found it necessary to make special
provision--the dull pupils found year after year in the same
grades with much younger children.

In a measure the relation of a child's educability to its
physical health and comfort has been recognized by the
corelation of physical and mental exercises in most
up-to-date schools, but its larger social and economic
significance has been almost wholly ignored. And yet it is
quite certain that poverty exercises the same retarding
influences upon the physical training as upon mental
education.

There are certain conditions precedent to successful
education, whether physical or mental. Chief of these are a
reasonable amount of good, nourishing food and a healthy
home. Deprived of these, physical or mental development must
necessarily be hindered. And poverty means just that to the
child. It denies its victim these very necessaries with the
inevitable result--physical and mental weakness and
inefficiency.

Important as are the factors of proper housing and sanitary
and hygienic conditions--matters which have occupied an
ever-increasing amount of attention on the part of public
officials as well as philanthropists in recent years--it is
now generally confessed by science that, important as they
are in themselves, they are relatively unimportant in the
early years of child life.

"Sanitary conditions do not make any real difference at
all," was the testimony of Dr. Vincent before the British
Departmental Committee. "It is food, and food alone." That
the evils of underfeeding are intensified when there is a
unhygienic environment is true, but it is equally true that
defect in the diet is the prime and essential cause of the
excessive death-rate among the children of the poor, and of
those infantile diseases and ailments which make for
defective adults, moral, mental, or physical, should they
survive.

DR. W.S. RAINSFORD A FORCEFUL FIGURE.

Fearless Utterances of the Rector of a
Famous Institutional Church in
New York.

Militant Christianity has for many years had no more energetic champion than the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford, rector of St. George's Church, New York City. When he took charge of the church in 1883, as a young man thirty two-years of age, its congregation had greatly fallen off. In twenty-two years of untiring work he built up the parish until it contained more than seven thousand members, included in a varied system of parochial activities.

Dr. Rainsford, who has resigned his charge owing to ill-health, used to be a man of great physical vigor, a fact which emphasizes this suggestion of the New York _Sun's_:

The physical exhaustion which sent Dr. Rainsford abroad and
now compels his retirement from duties so arduous seems to
be a calamity afflicting clergymen more than other
professional men and men of affairs. Is this because the
emotional strain is so much greater in the case of a
clergyman?

Dr. Rainsford--who was born in Ireland and educated in England--was fearless in his pulpit utterances. In one sermon he said:

It is vain to cry out against a thing that a vast proportion
of mankind believes is not wrong. You can't make an Irishman
believe it is wrong to have beer with his dinner; you can't
make an Englishman believe it. And perhaps that is why I do
not believe it is wrong to have it with mine.

LESSONS THAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM BIRDS.

A Careful Study of the Turkey Buzzard
May Teach Us the Secret of Flight,
Says John P. Holland.

John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine war-ship, said some very interesting things at a recent banquet. The element that occupies his attention is not air, but water. He dreams of a time when his shark-like boats will make war on the sea a thing of the past. Yet he also has hopes of air-ships. His advice to Professor Bell was to forget about his kites and other artificial devices, and to study the turkey buzzard, which knows more about flying than all the colleges on earth.

The thing that beats you all, said Mr. Holland, is the
humble turkey buzzard. There is an incomprehensible mystery
which it is for mighty man to solve--how that bird can soar,
circle, and sweep over a radius of half a mile without an
apparent movement of its wings. Solve that mystery, and man
will conquer the air.

It is not surprising that two men so practical as Professor Bell and John P. Holland are joining the ranks of the air-ship enthusiasts. The air-ship is not altogether a thing of the future. It is here now. Last month the French government bought a couple for military purposes. The Wright brothers, in Dayton, Ohio, have flown twenty-five miles on their machine and carried with them a load of pig-iron besides. And at the recent automobile exhibitions in New York, two flying-machines were put on exhibition and sold.

Both Bell and Holland were called fools and dreamers thirty years ago, because they believed it possible to send words along a wire and travel under the sea. To-day they are regarded as practical men of affairs--wealthy and honored. It is a striking fact that both of these veteran inventors are looking for bigger things from the future than those which they dug from the past. The air-ship age, they say, is at hand, and the human race may get ready to fly.

CHINA IS SEEKING WESTERN LEARNING.

Eminent Oriental Commissioners Travel
Through the United States to Study
Our Prosperity.

Their excellencies Tuan Fang and Tai Hung Chi, imperial Chinese commissioners, came to the United States with open eyes to learn the advantages of Western civilization. The fact of their coming was in itself significant evidence of an existing state of affairs in China which the Chinese minister to the United States, Sir Chentung Liang Cheng, explained in the following words:

It has been a fervent wish that China would wake from her
sleep and join in the march of modern progress. The day of
her awakening is at hand. The unrest of our people proves
it. Large bodies move slowly, but when they begin to move
they gain momentum; and when China gets started in the
channels of progress it will be impossible to stop her. She
has always looked to the United States in every crisis of
her national career. I have no doubt that the result of the
coming of the Imperial Commission will bring the two
countries into closer relations.

This little speech was delivered a few weeks ago at a banquet in New York, where a number of representative Americans were gathered to meet the visitors. Tuan Fang spoke the same evening--using the Chinese language, his remarks being translated by his secretary, Alfred Sze, who is a graduate of Cornell University, class of 1901.

This translated address included the following passage:

Since our arrival in this country we have had every
opportunity to see the material side of your great nation.
All business and manufacturing establishments have thrown
their doors wide open to us, and afforded us ample
facilities to look into the American way of doing things.

Your government has likewise given us the same unrestricted
facilities, for all of which we are very, very grateful. It
is needless to say that we are deeply impressed with the
vast resources of the country and the marvelous energy of
its people. We are pleased to note, however, that in the
midst of this wonderful material expansion you have not lost
sight of the moral upbuilding of the country. We are,
therefore, glad to meet here this evening representative
Americans who are engaged in this beneficent labor.