The Humphrey Ward nightmare is stalking through the land again already. It is evident this female survival of the Inquisition has awakened to the glorious possibilities of the American market, and in future we may expect to meet Marcella and the whole string of British boobies that she has imported (they did not need creating) into fiction at every turn in our periodical literature. And we had hoped we had seen the last of the little snob Marcella and the rest of them for at least another year. But the world is pressing Mrs. Ward for the solution of the servant girl question and she is becoming more industrious than ever. Subtle studies of snobocracy seem out of place, though, in the periodicals of a democratic country. * * * * * I have just seen the latest portrait of Mrs. Humphrey Ward in the “Century.” It explains the aridity of the atrocious Robert Elsmere. Mrs. Ward’s physiognomy is severe. She is no hero to her maid servants and man servants, but a terror to evil doers. British superiority is in evidence; but the benignity of genius is not. * * * * * There are certain aspects of Stephen Crane’s literature that appeal to the risibilities of a man who is blessed or cursed with some humorous perception. His mystic, weird lines outrage all the laws of prosody, and can only stand as the audacious flings of a fantastic and untrammeled imagination, that is impatient of form and loves the hot splash of thought. But it must not be rashly judged that any fool can do this sort of thing. It demands a feeling for words and an abundant, bubbling imagination. Still, the grave critics who have seriously accepted Mr. Crane’s little book of verses as poetry and literature of a high order appear in a rather ludicrous light. It is an interesting freak of a quick fancy playing over life and thought and taking all that comes to the surface in all seriousness. It is, however, something new in print, for the unchastened whimsies of a perfervid imagination seldom get into print--except in a few periodicals where there is no one appointed to edit the editor. * * * * * The article of Jonathan Penn in this number seems to raise an uncomfortable theory that this sort of inspiration is infectious, and that a million new poets may spring up any morning. But Mr. Penn is really only surprised at his own versatility, which does not surprise us in the least, for he is one of the most imaginative and brilliant prose writers in contemporary journalism. It is a pity that his necessities and the conditions governing the literary market in America compel him to write advertisements for his living. But if Mr. Crane and others can only manage to put into their serious efforts such fine limpid prose and such delicious fancies and quirks of humor as Mr. Penn puts into his alluring advertisements, a great future awaits them in prose literature.