The Evening post. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1888-1889, 1889-01-02
EAnS AND THEIR HISTORY.
What Thoy Are, and How They Came to
be In Fashion


be In Fashion
From Epocd
am somewhat curious to see how Mr.
Leland, in his Dictionary of Slang. will
define the word FAD" We have all
heard great deal about 'fads' In dress,
in society, in politics and so on Even
now the political fad" is daily Haunted
in our faces in the form Of the red ban.
dana" Have there been literary "fads?"
Yes, scores of them. Let us briefly run
over few. Less than u dozen years ago
literary circles were deeply agitated over
the scientific "fad" As Mr.. Stedman
said, even school girls wandered down
tho lanes with Darwin, Spencer and
Huxley under their arms. The theory
Species" Incredibly" "tittest," ETC.,
were in everybody's mouth.
a magic formula beginning with "a
change from an incoherent homogeneity
to coherent heterogeneity" was repeated
over and over, Thus everybody thought
that everything was going TO be eX-
planned right away. We had tho evolu-
ton Of ethics, and the ethics of evolution;
the evolution of religion, and the re-
ligion of evolution. But soon reaction
set in. Those persons whose most
cherished notions had been Tudely over
thrown raised hue and cry. The ethics
of evolution was declared to be Glow" or
grossly mechanical" The religion of
evolution was held to be agnostic or
atheistic. And now people have settled
down to Mr.. Frederic Harrison's idea
that il Is only "thC ghost OF religion"
About the same time literary people be-
came deeply interested in the Browning
"fad."
Quickly societies for the study of that
highly ambiguous poet sprang up all over
the Union. One would have thought
that Browning wrote his poems in the
same way that Ignatius Donnelly saws
Shakespeare wrote his dramas--in cipher
Some hidden or mysterious meaning was
supposed to Turk in Browning's poetry
If you could not read the lines you must
read between the lines. l recall ono
pleasant evening at the Browning Society,
when long and serious discussion arose
over some lines beginning
And first played the tune all our sheep knew.
This literary fad ran its course. A
few Browning societies still study no
other poet save Browning, while others
have been rude enough TO drop the I'M
ineligible genius. Then we were Wis
tied by the so-ealled aesthetic fad" y
tall, lank, Cassius- looking Individual
came from over the sea and talked to us
about yiolets, peoples and sunflowers.
All that was the time when Postle-
thwaite held iron sway in the literary
world. Then it was that both prose and
poetry was full of rose.water. Think of
it, "Ballades writ in blue china and
proverbs baked in porcelain. Still the
| literary aesthetic was not satisfied. He
was full of wailings about the good old
days of chivalry, of Queen Anne, of
| Pompadour and the rest.
His talk about. tgdiWm rite became a
WEAKNESS to the spirit l do not believe
that he was quite sincere in his fad -
| For, now. in Andrew Lang's "Ballade of
the Middle Age" we have the refrain
that
Life's more amusing than we thought,
The philosophic ''fad" was more oil
less local. 1t finally centred around Con
cord. The first and secondrate philoso-
pliers who had 'fad'-cult, believe
is the proper word-vigorously worked il
ious to found what he called School -
favored MS with her presence and hei
"osophy." This only helped to add fuel
to the consuming flame.
Theosophic bread was broken before
the multitude, and they were told to
partake. Studies in occultism became
for time the leading fad" 1t was
the "esoteric" this and the esoteric that.
The mystery of reincarnation' was told
anew, and the numerous communica-
tons with the astral" bodies of spectres
were written out for the elite.
Again, we have only recently recov-
cred from what writer in the EpOch
felicitously termed the Russian itch. "
Any person with an unpronounceable
ending in "eitch," or itch" had only
to write book, and at once his produc-
ton was rapturously applauded, This
leads me to mention what might be
called the dialect "fad." Along with the
talk about New South has come another
fad" Editors and readers are willing
to buy any writing that is in a strange
dialect. 1t is now supposed that story
can be told better in the negro, the
Creole, or the Tennessee mountain lingo
than in the Queens English. But on
these recent "fads"-enough.