HERBERT ATCHISON COX. A LITERARY ORDER. TO THE LATEST CELEBRITY. Dr. Sir:--Send us at once post-haste 1000 words--no matter what The theme; 2 ideas--just a taste-- But make ’em up-to-date and hot. P.S. We find for 2 we have no room; Babb’s soap requires a 2 pg. ad; But never mind; we mean to boom Your name while ’tis the newest fad. Who cares a ---- for what’s inside Now you are on the rising tide? ADAM QUINCE. A NEW BILL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO READERS. Some of the things our industrious writers of today are doing, rather incline us to regret that the craft has become so exemplary and respectable. It may be that morality is served by the reformation of Grub Street, but industry in literature is rather a fearful thing when unaccompanied by other qualities of mind; and a good many contemporary writers are more industrious than anything else. Indeed, it has occurred to me, though I personally take nothing stronger than tea, that a revival of loose living in the literary world would be a God-send to discriminating readers, as we might then cherish the hope that some of our popular novelists would perish ignominously, like poor Kit Marlowe, before they could put in their cheap, slop literature on the strength of their first bit of genuine work. It is noticeable that of nearly all our contemporary writers it is true that their best work was done first in obscurity. With success came easy writing and slop literature for the bag-men of the syndicates. This is the most severe criticism that can be made on them, for a writer who respects himself should strive to continue developing until forty. It is a pity some of our writers cannot meet a bad end early in life, for in that case they would leave a fame unspoiled and unsmirched with endless scamp work done for the speculators in literary reputations. If, perhaps, two-thirds of the present brood of fiction writers had died, or been cut off in their first flush, we should have just so much good literature without being compelled to sift it out of much “boomed” rubbish. Max Nordau claims that the writers of today are degenerates. As far as our literature is concerned, the majority of our popular writers have no such valid claim to serious consideration. It is conceivable that degenerates may produce priceless and imperishable literature. Our writers are mostly merely sober and respectable tinkers, and they imperil the intellectual development of the race by coddling themselves so well that they threaten to live as long as Queen Victoria.