Mr. Howells maunders weekly in a column called “Life and Letters” in Harper’s journal of civilization. This “Life and Letters” reminds me of the Peterkin’s famous picnic at Strawberry Nook. “There weren’t any strawberries and there wasn’t any nook, but there was a good place to tie the horses.” So it goes through the whole list. There are people, however, who believe that Romance is not dead, and that there is literature to be made which is neither inane nor yet smells of the kitchen sink. This is a great big merry world, says Mr. Dana, and there’s much good to be got out of it, so toward those who believe as we do—we of Philistia—this paper starts upon its great and perilous voyage at one dollar a year. It was Balzac, or some one else, who used to tell of a flea that lived on a mangy lion and boasted to all the rank outside fleas that he met: I have in me the blood of the King of Beasts. * * * * * It is a comforting thought that somewhere, at some time, every good thing on earth is brought to an accounting of itself. Thereby are the children of men saved from much tyranny. For the good things of earth are your true oppressors. For such an accounting are Philistines born in every age. By their audit are men perpetually set free from trammels self-woven. Earnest men have marvelled in all times that convention has imputed to husks and symbols the potency of the things they outwardly stand for. Many also have protested, and these, in reproach, have been called Philistines. And yet they have done no more than show forth that in all things the vital purpose is more than the form that shrines it. The inspirations of to-day are the shams of to-morrow—for the purpose has departed and only the dead form of custom remains. “Is not the body more than raiment”—and is not life more than the formulæ that hedge it in? Wherefore men who do their own thinking, and eke women betimes, take honor rather than disparagement in the name which is meant to typify remorseless commonplace. They hesitate not to question custom, whether there be reason in it. They ask “Why?” when one makes proclamation: “Lo! Columbus discovered America four hundred years ago! Let us give a dance.” There have been teachers who sought to persuade mankind that use alone is beauty—and these too have done violence to the fitness of things. On such ideals is the civilization of Cathay founded. Neither in the grossness of material things nor in the false refinements that “divorce the feeling from its mate the deed” is the core and essence of living.