Advance Proofs from Africa A few days before the new Contributing Editor of the Outlook departed for Africa for the purpose of equalling (perhaps even surpassing, who knows?) the exploits of the intrepid Tartarin of Tarascon, a breakfast was given to him by Mr. Robert Collier at which were present a number of men of conspicuous. prominence in the publishing and magazine world. The souvenir of the breakfast took the form of a little portfolio entitled "Advance Sheets From Africa," consisting of parodies of certain periodicals reproduced with typographical and artistic exactness. The parodies were the work of Mr. Wallace Irwin and are of such an unusual order of excellence that they deserve the widest possible circle of readers. The table of contents reads as follows: ON THE BOAT TO AFRICA BY YOU KNOW WHO EDITORIALS NORMAN HAPGOOD EDITORIAL ARTHUR BRISBANE Big Game Teddy, the Dynamite Drop My Castle on the River Nile Under the Bamboo Tree There'll Be a Hot Time in the Jungle To-Night He thinks He's the Biggest Thing in Africa But He Ain't Nature is getting ready for a Party in Africa to-day. A man is SURE just entering the Jungle. His teeth to suit his cruel tastes. This man thinks he is "hunting" tigers!! Wouldn't you THINK he would? Wouldn't it JAR you!!! This strutting biped with his $47 killing-iron thinks he is the Lord of Creation. He imagines the fan-palms are waving their broad leaves to keep him cool. He thinks all the black tribes of Zulus and Ashantis along Zambezi Creek feel grateful to him, simply because he once entertained Booker T. Washington to Lunch. He dreams these vain dreams because he does not KNOW. He does not KNOW that the VERY MONKEYS in the TREETOPS, his remote ancestors, are GIVING HIM THE COCOANUT LAUGH! He does not KNOW that Africa still remembers the Brownsville affair, that the Jungle is full of his enemies, that even the ladyostriches are laying for him. HE DOES NOT KNOW THAT, AT THE VERY MOMENT HE STRUTS SO MAJESTICALLY THROUGH THE FOREST, A FURTIVE-EYED, BENCH-LEGGED, SPIKE-TOOTHED, ROYAL BENGAL TIGER IS "HUNTING" HIM. If you should tell Mr. Roosevelt that Royal Bengal Tigers are to be found in that part of Africa he would doubtless call you a Nature Faker. That is where the tiger has the better of Mr. Roosevelt. When he sees the tiger he will not believe it, and the sensible beast can thus enjoy a square meal while Mr. Roosevelt is still unconvinced. If "A square deal for every man" is a good motto, Isn't "A square meal for every tiger" an equally righteous maxim? And so Mr. Roosevelt is eaten up, because he did not KNOW so much as the TIGER. OF IT!!!! But hold on, ignorant reader-don't think the Tiger's troubles are over when he catches Mr. Roosevelt. When a Tiger starts to gnaw Teddy he finds he has tackled a pretty serious food-problem. The savage brute might Swallow him Whole, but it would take a super-brute of a Tiger to FLETCHERIZE SUCH A MORSEL. And after eating, that Tiger will depart in a considerably saddened condition, carrying around a PERMANENT LUMP IN HIS INTERIOR ECONOMY. And that is where Teddy got it on the Tiger The Tiger did not KNOW what he was eating, but Teddy was DEAD SURE OF IT!!! He We reproduce the editorial column of the New York Evening Jungle with regret that a reproduction of the full page, with its comic pictures and its advice from Ella Wheeler Wilcox, is not quite feasible. Of the parody of the Brisbane editorial we say unhesitatingly that it is by far the best parody of a widely parodied writer. Mr. Bok's page of hints for African hunters is another gem. points out with great justice that many dainty hunters, used to cosy homes and refined surroundings, have objected to a certain air of disorder and untidiness found in almost every jungle. This, he maintains, is entirely unnecessary. A deft, homelike touch here and there will convert the wildest jungle into a thing of beauty and delight. In camping for the night, hunting parties should choose a spot where the colours of the vegetation harmonise with their hunting costumes. A sheath-knife that can be turned into a manicure set will be found convenient. Many of our most fastidious hunters are now loading their rifles with sachet powder. Violet, heliotrope, and white rose may be bought by the pound or in 5, 10 and 25c. packets. Now in front of us and America behind us, we are wondering if it would not be just about as pleasant to edit The Outlook from Mt. Kilima-Njaro as from a New York office. Much as we admire wild animals, we hate to be in a cage ourself. And an editor has an awful time, there's no getting around that. It is hard enough, heaven knows, to be a Great President-but to be a Great Editor! Has there ever been a Great editor? Horace Greeley had his flashes; but he had no sustained illumination. Benjamin Franklin wasted his time discovering electricity when he might have discovered the circulation of the Saturday Evening Post. Who, then, might we call a Great editor? Julius Caesar, 549 In answer to a query from Miss Tillie Titwillow, of Peoria, Illinois, Mr. Bok concludes: "No, Tillie, antelopes should not be eaten with a spoon. You are doubtless thinking of canteloupes." Harland and Beardsley The publication this month of Henry Harland's last book sharpens the sense of loss that came with the news of his death last year. To his memory Mr. Henry James pays a happy tribute in the preface to the latest volume (the fifteenth) of the New York edition of Mr. James's fictions. The stories in this volume recall one of the most entertaining episodes in Mr. Harland's life-his association with that curious and short-lived periodical, The Yellow Book. It was in this quarterly that The Death of the Lion and The Coxon Fund and The Next Time first appeared, and Mr. James re calls the circumstances of his contribution with evident fondness. What omen could be happier, for instance, than that this infant recueil, joyously christened even before reaching the cradle, should take the name of The Yellow Book?—which so certainly would command for it the liveliest attention. . . . The project, modestly and a little vaguely but all communicatively set forth, amused me, charmed me, on the spotor at least the touchingly convinced and inflamed projector did. It was the happy fortune of the late Henry Harland to charge everything he touched, whether in life or in literature, with that influence-an effect by which he was always himself the first to profit. If he came to me, about The Yellow Book, amused, he pursued the enterprise under the same hilarious star; its difficulties no less than its felicities excited, in the event, his mirth; and he was never more amused (nor, I may certainly add, more amusing) than when, after no very prolonged career, it encountered suddenly and all distressfully its term. THE CENTURY MAGAZINE HESPERIAN PRUNES* By RICHARD WATSON GILDER WHO goeth thus beneath the Afric moon Clad in loose loops, suggesting Afrodite, Wo to the Poet who, the World o'er tried, A bard, perhaps, might ask a Muse from Hades: Muse, I am going back to Union Square To write my thoughts upon the office waferAn Inspiration in a swivel chair Feels a bit cramped-but infinitely safer. But where our Theodorus leads the van There must Diana cease her wayward laughterNarcissus, duck thy nut, and woodland Pan, Crawl in thy hole and pull the hole in after ! *This poem, written for the Century Nagarimo, describes the notions of an Unarmed Poet who, wandering through the Jungle at midnight, comes suddenly face to face with an ex-President who, quite naturally, mustakes him for a LK4) 15 Of Harland's associate in that joyous THE SATURDAY EVENING POST literary enterprise Mr. James's recollec- THEODORE, TRACER OF tion is no less lively, and his view of Aubrey Beardsley as an "illustrator" of anything save his own fancies has a gently ironic touch that the artist's friends will be the first to appreciate. This young man, slender, pale, delicate, unmistakably intelligent, somehow invested the whole proposition with a detached, a slightly ironic and melancholy grace. I had met him before, on a single occasion, and had seen an example or two of his so curious and so disconcerting talent-my appreciation of which seems to me, however, as I look back, to have stopped quite short. The young recueil was to have pictures, yes, and they were to be as often as possible from Beardsley's hand; but they were to wear this unprecedented distinction, and were to scatter it all about them, that they should have nothing to do with the text-which put the whole matter on an ideal basis. To those who remember the short string of numbers of The Yellow Book the spasmodic independence of these contributions LOST ANIMALS Written in the Jungle for THE SATURDAY EVENING POST By its Special Correspondent ROBERT W. CHAMBERS will still be present. They were, as illustrations, related surely to nothing else in the same pages-save once or twice, as I imperfectly recall, to some literary effort of Beardsley's own that matched them in perversity. Reverting to Henry Harland, whose posthumous novel The Royal End is reviewed elsewhere in this issue. Of late there seems to have been a revival of interest in his work in connection with The Yellow Book, which caused so much discussion fourteen or fifteen years ago. But the most picturesque period of his life was unquestionably between 1883 and 1886, when he was in the office of the Surrogate of New York. He had a book in mind, but his hours at the office fully occupied the day. Through one winter, therefore, he treated himself with Balzacian severity, going to bed immediately after dinner, rising at two o'clock in the morning, and fortified with black coffee, and with a wet towel bound round his head, writing until it was time for breakfast. The result of this labour was As It Was Written, which was published in 1885 under the pseudonym of Sidney Luska. |