My brother Anthony’s little girl calls all medicine Nasty Stuff. The little girl much resembles her uncle. Not many grown-ups know as much as she. She is very smart, which surely is better than to be big, for instance like Conan Doyle, who was described by that Barnum of Art, James B. Pond, in his catalogue as “a large man, weighing full two hundred and twenty pounds.” Now the distinguished Veterinary, just named, besides lecturing, also writes on medical topics, putting his theses in form of novels. He just grovels in pathology and wallows in therapeutics. He is ever administering boluses to his heroes and emetics to his heroines—and readers. In that story of a box-stall, _The Stark-Monroe Letters_, he displays vials, bottles, droppers, corks, iodoform gauze, trepanning tools, silver treacheas, catgut thread, antiseptic cotton and scalpels. The man who can read two of the _Stark-Monroe Letters_ without being salivated shall have THE PHILISTINE gratis for a year. I beg of Dr. Doyle that he will read _Science and Health_ by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, and forever eschew Nasty Stuff in literature. * * * * * Brander Matthews’ little tinkle is heard again in _Harper’s_ this month. He arrives with a belated Vignette, in which he tells as usual all about Many Things. The Maverick’s plan is simple. It doesn’t tax the inventive powers and at the same time it is capable of almost infinite extension, for it consists merely in describing the places of amusement and the familiar parks and street corners of the metropolis. Slight variations in the attenuated love story are necessary and care must be taken to work in something appropriate to the season or that has a newspaper vogue, but all the rest is purely topographical. There is absolutely no end to it, for the hero can be made to have his emotion of triumphant or disappointed love at the football game, at the opening night at the opera, at a chrysanthemum show, at St. Thomas church or at the Duke’s wedding, and in each case there is material for a separate story. It is a limitless sausage with link added to link so it can go clear around the world, and the Maverick’s world is small, anyway. The scheme is glorious; it is limitless. All up and down Fifth Avenue bits of romance can be woven into every block. A case of disappointed affection at Washington Square for story No. 1; true love at the Brevoort House for No. 2; hopeless longing at the corner of Tenth street for No. 3, and so on up to Harlem. Call these _Vignettes of Fifth Avenue_. They would be the first of _The Avenue Series_, which when completed, would be followed by _The Side Street Series_, and this in turn by a set of sketches arranged according to wards or voting precincts in the lower part of the city. Then take up all the parks in order, the theaters, the hotels, the music halls.