reflex of Society’s own immediate mood--the mood of killing time at all costs, even to the degradation of its own honour, for want of something better to do! THE “STRONG” BOOK OF THE ISHBOSHETH There are two trite sayings in common use with us all--one is: “Circumstances alter cases,” which is English; the other is: “Autres temps, autres mœurs,” which is French. But there lacks any similar epigrammatic expression to convey the complete and curious change of meaning, which by a certain occult literary process becomes gradually attached to quite ordinary words of our daily speech. “Strong,” for instance, used to mean strength. It means it still, I believe, in the gymnasium. But in very choice literary circles it means “unclean.” This is strange, but true. For some time past the gentle and credulous public has remained in childlike doubt as to what was really implied by a “strong” book. The gentle and credulous public has been under the impression that the word “strong” used by the guides, philosophers, and friends who review current fiction in the daily Press, meant a powerful style, a vigorous grip, a brilliant way of telling a captivating and noble story. But they have, by slow and painful degrees, found out their mistake in this direction, and they know now that a “strong” book means a nasty subject indelicately treated. Whereupon they are beginning to “sheer off” any book labelled by the inner critical faculty as “strong.” This must be admitted as a most unfortunate fact for those who are bending all their energies upon the writing of “strong” books, and who are wasting their powers on discussing what they euphoniously term “delicate and burning subjects”; but it is a hopeful and blessed sign of increasing education and widening intellectual perception in the masses, who will soon by their sturdy common sense win a position which is not to be “frighted with false fire.” Congratulating the proprietors of _Great Thoughts_ on its thousandth number, the sapient _Westminster Gazette_ lately chortled forth the following lines: “A career such as our contemporary has enjoyed, shows that the taste for good reading is wider than some would have us believe. We wish _Great Thoughts_ continued success.” O wise judge! O learned judge! The public taste for good reading is only questioned when writers whom Thou dislikest are read by the base million!