And do my PHILISTINE readers think this is all good fooling? Do they think that no such circular was ever issued? I hope they do. It is pleasant to retain our old fashioned belief that men write because they have something to say: because like Charles Reade they have a purpose to accomplish; because like Thackeray they can dazzle us with the satire of a master, or because like Stevenson they can take us to Treasure Island or on that Inland Voyage where were days of such delight as come rarely to men. This circular, however, is a stubborn reality printed in muddy black and gory red, and the word Combined is evidently pronounced Combin-ed. It will be sent to poor devils who imagine that by subscribing to a fifteen-dollar share of stock, their wares may be marketed like peaches in September, by men whose names are known because they are signed to “verselets, squibs and jokes” in Harper’s Drawer. Thus may the salaries of the officers be paid. It’s a lovely plan, and could originate in no better place than Franklin, Ohio. Then, too, “American Tract Building” sounds good. Surely nothing else than sincerity could issue from a Tract Building, and a guarantee of “commercial independence” is worth something. But it’s none the less pathetic, for all that. Many shares of stock will be taken, and many weary days will be spent waiting for the promised halo which, after all, wouldn’t fit if it came. It was the father of Jules St. Ange, if I remember correctly, who made “the so best sugah in New Orleans,” And he died and never sold a barrel of it. He was happy because he knew it was the best, though the commercial men told him it was not. So, too, as all the World’s Louis has said, “He who has meant good work has done good work, though he has not the time to sign his name.” I knew a man once, though, who worked many weary hours one Christmas time, and made a holiday story for a morning paper. It was a story of such truth as moved men to give to a hospital in a great city such money as supported it for half a year, and sick children were made well because of it. But he was not a man of “marked literary ability” and he never knew what he had done. He was not an Adam Smith, and he knew little and cared less about the wealth of nations. He simply wrote the truth from a heart that knew its own. Such men do not need to be told if their work be good or bad. They give us the best there is in them, and we are comforted because they have told us the things we knew before, only we didn’t know how to put them on paper. H. P. TABER. TO ROBERT HERRICK. Jocund Herrick tho’ this age Leaves uncut thy merry page, Leaves thy song, thy robust jest For Quixotic modern quest; Thinks that all poetic bliss Is summed in soul-analysis; Swinburne’s strange erratic flight, Weird desire and wild delight;