I note a somewhat guarded statement by Dr. Swan M. Burnett denying that he and his wife have separated or are undergoing that mutually humiliating process. All there is of it, he says, is that her work keeps her abroad and his keeps him in Washington. The doctor’s friends say, however, that the doctor and the writist live apart and have done so for years and that he is tired of being referred to as Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s husband. I think more likely he objects to being identified at the banks and elsewhere as the father of Little Lord Fauntleroy. * * * * * The _Pell Mell Gazette_ of last Saturday contains a cablegram from Mr. Hall Caine, dated at East Aurora, N. Y., wherein the author of _The Manxman_ reports that the prospect for next year’s crop of ginger is very promising. * * * * * I suppose it’s all right for the publisher of _Munsey’s_ to tell how he made that magazine jump from 20,000 to half a million copies a month by shutting out middlemen and reaching the hungering and thirsting public direct. That’s his cue. If the publisher didn’t blow his horn who would? I opine, however, that the fish would sell without it, and that the editor of _Munsey’s_ could tell them something a good deal more interesting in the same space. What does the great public, with its multitude of aims and desires, care how such an effect was accomplished? All that could safely remain within the veil. It would be more to the point if the editor or publisher of Mr. Bok’s collection of wax works would tell by what miracle he got a circulation. It is easy in the other case, regardless of the smart publisher. The time passed long ago when a horse being led to water could be forced to drink. The public must have wanted _Munsey’s_ when it was shut out by the middleman or they wouldn’t have compelled the dealers to send for it, and that implies that there’s something in it besides self-consciousness and the publisher’s tactical brilliancy. But how on earth came the embodied ego and its sisters and cousins and aunts to get a hearing anywhere? Is Ruth Ashmore, _alias_ Bab, at the bottom of it? * * * * * A certain gentleman of my acquaintance, having heard until he is sick of it that it takes nine Taylors to make a man, continues to boldly assert that it takes two Chatfields to make a Taylor. * * * * * When the PHILISTINE was started six months ago I had no idea that it would now have half a million subscribers. * * * * *