IT STRIVES TO PLEASE. A GENTLEMAN residing at Terrell, writes me that he likes the ICONOCLAST, and that the various members of his family always peruse it with pleasure and occasionally with profit. He bids it God-speed in its war upon all things "that loveth or maketh a lie," but adds that some of his neighbors, who are also its well-wishers, protest that it contains too much "d-d vulgarity." Like the Queen of Lilliput, upon whose blazing castle Gulliver played nature's hose, they approve the end but condemn the means. My correspondent admits that neither he nor his good wife find anything offensive in my manipulation of our mother tongue; but suggests that if I would extend the sphere of usefulness of my religious monthly, I should avoid a strict construction of the French proverb, honi soit qui mal y pense, which is equivalent to saying that everything smells bad to a man with the catarrh-that I should make some concession to those masculine Miss Nancys whom vigorous English afflicts with a case of the fantods. The motto of the ICONOCLAST is "We Strive to Please." It will at once be purged of all "d—d vulgarity," and made as sweet and wholesome as a ewe lamb skipping o'er fields of asphodel, or a he-virgin waiting with palpitating pericardium beneath the mistletoe bough to be caught and kissed by the New Woman. For the further protection of Sir Galahads, each copy will be carefully fumigated ere it is committed with silent prayer to the strange vicissitudes of Uncle Sam's postal service. If it has offended in the past, it will prove a veritable fleur-de-lis in the future. Henceforth it will call a spade an excavator, a buck nigger an Ethiopian gentleman, a pimp a procureur, and a damphool a euphuist. Having taken the purists of Terrell under its protection, it will spare their modest blushes and see that others do the same. The Apostle will take a day off and remove all the thorns from the path of life and spread a velvet carpet beneath their tender feet. He will rewrite the Bible and Byron, Homer and Shakespeare, Tom Moore's dizzy Anacreontics and Amélia Rives' Quick and the Dead. He will whitewash Trilby and sprinkle a little carbolic acid on Camille. The Decameron shall be burned by the hangman and the dust of Dumas fils scattered on the winds of Heaven. The soft pedal will be applied to Solomon's Assignation Song, and the thrilling story of Lot and his daughters placed in the index expurgatorius. No longer shall Jupiter, hypnotized by borrowed charms, dally with his Juno amid perfumed clouds in amaranthine bowers, nor Mars be caught, flagrante delicto, with Vulcan's wife. Tithonus shall remove his hoary head from Aurora's sunny brisket and Don Juan be cut short in his wild career. The Queens of Heaven, and Love and Wisdom shall be clad in fig-leaf aprons, or at least in ball-room gowns when they stand forth on many-fountained Ida and proffer their bribes to the judge of beauty, and Juliet pull down the blinds before admitting the ill-starred Romeo to her boudoir. Tolstoi and Dean Swift shall be crucified for their "d-d vulgarity," and even the mighty Milton placed under the ban. Now that I am embarked on this reform crusade I will never turn back, for the sweet sake of the Terrell Josephs I will purify English literature or I will wreck the language. When the task is completed there may be nothing left of the great Republic of Letters but Sam Jones' sermons and the "lost manhood" literature of the religious papers; but, bless God, the bearded babes of Terrell will be safe from contamination. They must, they shall be spared, even though I have to eliminate the word "jackass" from Webster's Unabridged. *** THE GREENWALL GRAFT. TEXAS is being systematically humbugged and hoodooed, razzled and robbed this season in matters dramatic. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that an attempt is being made by certain amusement managers to give it to the State where the bottle got the cork, for the best laid plans of mice and mountebanks gang aft aglee. It is some comfort to reflect that in a majority of cases the attempt of the aforesaid managers to foist fourth-rate attractions upon the people at first-class prices, has proven a boomerang that flattened the purses of the conspirators like a brindle pup trod upon by the pitiless trolley-car. Since the season opened Texas has given many a dramatic fake a sneaping frost, beneath which it drooped and died, and she is liable to send more of them to the financial boneyard ere the roses bloom again. The management of the Greenwall circuit in particular-embracing all the prominent cities in the State except San Antonio-appears to cling tenaciously to the ancient adage that "anything is good enough for Texas." It has stuffed the season with frazzled dramas and broken-down barnstormers. All that is good is trite and all that is new is rot. The management appears to have ransacked the dime museums of the East and variety dives of the West for cheap combinations to foist upon the Texas people at fancy prices. Companies that could scarce secure an engagement in the two-bit theaters of the North, blossom forth into "extraordinary attractions beneath the virile sun of Texas and the gutta-percha imagination of the Greenwalls. And they are 66 "extraordinary "--so much so that it is really remarkable that no one has yet had 'em pulled for obtaining money under false pretenses. For the privilege of enjoying these histrionic wonders we are required to pay a dollar, and when an attraction is presented that is suspected of being above the beer-joint average, prices are arbitrarily advanced 50 per cent. Disgusted by an overdose of chambermaids and scullions, hack-drivers and head-waiters ranting and grimacing in the footlights' glare, the people pay the extra mulct with a sigh of relief that at last they have reached an oasis in the desert, only to be confronted by a one man show "—some small celebrity supported by a "tacky" aggregation of theatrical odds and ends, half of whom couldn't play "tag" without a prompter. There has been no dramatic attraction in Texas this season that was worth more than a dollar to see; and a vast majority of them would be dear at a dime. Just why the Texas people should be required to pay a dollar for entertainments that are played in other states for fifty cents, and $1.50 for those that are glad to get six-bits at the door elsewhere, is a conundrum to which only the Greenwall management holds the key. Texas is entitled to the best and to be placed on a parity with her Northern neighbors in the matter of price. The only way to obtain these selfevident rights is to keep kicking and kicking hard until they come. That is what the ICONOCLAST is here for. *** PADEREWSKI'S PULL. THE American women appear to have gone completely crazy over Paderewski the pianist. When he plays they throng the concert hall, go into hysterics and bombard him with bouquets, and when he indulges in a constitutional he has to take his dog along to keep the girls away. His every mail is laden with fragrant " billy-doos," and there is imminent danger of his being drowned in a saccharine sea. What a glorious death to die! I would rather be Paderewski than be president! I am jealous of the carroty-haired hesiren, and so is every other man in America between the ages of eighteen and eighty-seven. I would like to fill his old music-box with sand and sawdust-to gather together all the bouquets laid at his hoofs and hurl 'em through his diaphragm with a Krupp cannon. If I could catch him in some secluded corner, unattended by a body-guard of worshipful nymphs and naiads, I'd shave his head-transform his exuberant Italian sunset into a billiard ball. I can't help feeling that way. It is not an outcropping of original sin, but the result of a conviction that this peripathetic ivory pounder is getting more than his share of those good things of life that are more precious than fine gold. Of course, those of us who have been left out in the cold to chew the rag while Paderewski is filling himself to the brim with ambrosia, can account for his success with the fair sex only on the hypothesis that the latter are, for the most part, irresponsible lunatics. That is the only balm for our fractured hearts, the only panacea for our pain, and even it does not quite heal the hurt. Our one comfort is to congregate in the dreary club-room and tell each other that we wouldn't have a lot of hair-brained women trapesing at our heels, and making us the laughing stock of mankind. Of course, we know that Paderewski is not pretty; that in personal pulchritude he isn't a marker to Uncle Joey Miller of the Austin Statesman, or Reb Robinson of the Tyler Telegram-that he'd stand no show in a beauty contest with Major Sam Warner of the Cotton Belt or Col. Mique Connelly of Memphis. Yet the ladies do not follow these Apollos about with worshipful |