“The growth of modern life is in great measure the Parisianising of the civilized world. The worship of the senses is insensibly taking hold on the world, and so in the land of Milton and the Martyrs is set up the flaunting sign of the growing worship, this hair-brained comedienne--the Yellow Girl. Bare armed, bare throated, great hatted, with parasol a-kimbo, with flapping gown of gold, and snakey boa bristling in the breeze, with tripping toes a la Chinoise, with waspy waist, with painted cheeks and sparkling, wine-fed eyes, and a monkey grin of daftest daftness--there flaunts the Yellow Girl, the she Baal, the new born goddess of Today, laughing the amazed to scorn. She is the Spirit of the Age--Circe herself again--Venus in a Regatta gown, the Devil in petticoats, as he always was.” This is strong as well as picturesque. But the truth is that the Yellow Girl puts a splash of color into the dulness of city life, with its endless bricks and placards and blank walls, and come upon in a sudden turning her gleaming, impish eyes remind us that it is our own fault if we take life too sadly, for the spirit of fantasy and joy lurks forever in nature and life. As for our morals--they are less safe with drab folk than they are with the Yellow Girl, who simply reminds us that Pan rules in modern life as much as in the olden days. BEN FRANKLIN, JR. A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS. The Americans are the most curious people since the Athenians. Our big American periodicals buy their “great features” by contracting with the busy bees of the London literary world, for so many thousands of words before there are even ideas to be put into words. It is a way of encouraging literature which destroys the personality that is the soul of literature. It develops the taste of readers of literature by strangling all the original thinkers and writers who may spring up here in America. These periodicals aim simply to put before the public a bill of well known names--which usually belong to some of the busiest, most slip-shod and worthless writers of our time. But genius two thousand miles away has twice the potent fascination of genius that lives in Boston or Hoboken. They command the services of all the writers of England and the Continent who are on the topmost wave of the hour’s popularity, and whose names and achievements are viewed in this country through a rosy and delusive glamor of European reputation that effectually silences all criticism. If English romancers cost such a pretty penny, surely no obscure American critic or man of letters will dare to be so captious as to declare that at least half the literature made in England for this appreciative American people is palpable balderdash, wholly out of tune with the large democratic spirit of our age.