“But what have the Christian Endeavorers to do with literature?” asks my doubting and critical friend. They have a great deal to do with literature just now, more’s the pity. I did not drag them into these pages by the neck and ears simply to say what I thought of them (although I am not sorry to do that), but to give my audience an idea of one of the elements--and it is a large one, too--to which our magazine publishers are obliged to cater, if they wish to hold their own in point of circulation. It is because of just such people as these that our periodical literature is constantly defaced by matter of the sort that I have mentioned, and we are all the time saying, just as Bonner said to the Pfaff poet, “It’s one thing in real life, but another in _Harper’s_ and the _Century_.” So it happens that intelligent human beings must have their nostrils assailed with rubbish about the Maine Liquor Law putting a stop to profanity, because, forsooth, it is supposed to tickle the palates of a lot of sniveling humbugs, who are so busy with prayers and psalm-singing that they have not time to perform the commonest acts of decency and charity for one of their own kith and kin. Understand me, I am not blaming the barons for putting stuff of this sort into their publications. If I were the proprietor of a great magazine I would have a picture of Robert Bonner over my desk, and the walls of my editorial rooms and business offices should be hung with the great _Ledger_ maxims. There are a thousand mediocre people in this country to where there are five of superior intelligence; but, after all, the five have _some_ rights that magazine barons are bound to respect, and I think that about Christmas-time every year some little attention ought to be shown them. CHAPTER V. MENDACITY DURING THE HOLLAND PERIOD OF LETTERS. The Holland age of letters may be said to have extended over the eighth decade of this century, and that it was an era of change and progress can be readily seen by a glance at the periodical literature of the seventies. It is during this era, however, that we find indications of a deplorable tendency on the part of the good doctor to pander to the prejudices of the gas-fitter and the paper-hanger element, by the publication of stories and articles which were either spurious as literature or else absolutely mendacious as to the facts which they recorded and the scenes which they described.