criticism, outside of the diabolism of blasting reputations for virtue, the law provides adequate remedy, and if it does not, then it were idle to say that the exasperated victims of criticism should not have recourse to their fists, although decent criticism, free from malice, addressed to people in position semi-public would not seem to call for violence under pretense of resenting something much worse. As a rule I should say that the criticism which does not call for extreme and desperate punishment calls for no notice at all, or if it does, in the case of men, there are laws, civil and criminal, that cover the case, with ample punishment for the offense. This is the practical view of the remedies against "carrion journalism." A public sentiment strong enough to support private vengeance is strong enough to support the law. There are laws for the punishment of slander. More rigorous laws could be enforced. If the people hate slanderers bitterly enough to kill them, then they should hate them enough to see that the laws against slander are enforced. The moral sentiment that can sustain the one could sustain the other. But the individual execution of vengeance is a turning away from the law. It is the fostering of the bully and the killer for drunken pastime. It is a bulwark for boodlers, blackguards, frauds and lechers. It gives rein to individual passion without limit. Such chivalry is barbarism.--Pasquin. BRANN, THE FOOL. BY ELBERT HUBBARD, EDITOR OF THE PHILISTINE. It's a grave subject. Brann is dead. Brann was a fool. The fools were the wisest men at court; and Shakespeare, who dearly loved a fool, placed his wisest sayings into the mouths of men who wore the motley. When he adorned a man with a cap and bells it was as though he had given bonds for both that man's humanity and intelligence. Neither Shakespeare nor any other writer of books ever dared to depart so violently from truth as to picture a fool whose heart was filled with perfidy. The fool is not malicious. Stupid people may think he is, because his language is charged with the lightning's flash; but they are the people who do not know the difference between an incubator and an egg plant. Touchstone, with unfailing loyalty, follows his master with quip and quirk, into exile. When all, even his daughters, have forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his own cloak. And when in our own day we meet the avatars of Trinculo, Costard, Mercutio and Jacques, we find they are men of tender susceptibilities, generous hearts and intellects keen as a rapier's point. Brann was a fool. Brann shook his cap, flourished his bauble, gave a toss to that fine head, and with tongue in cheek, asked questions and propounded conundrums that stupid hypocrisy could not answer. So they killed Brann. . . . Brann was born in obscurity. Very early he was cast upon the rocks and nourished at the she-wolf's teat.