The Republican journal., 1909-04-15

ored at little dock" Later, he says:
eve were running at full speed and the
current was swift. Our log showed that
we were making twenty miles an hour. :"
If this wholly delightful writer could
patent and produce log which would
show the correct speed in swift current
he would be in position to give his time
and talent hereafter to 'art for arts
sake" since his material welfare would
be amply provided for by his unique in
vention.
That the wits of genius are given to
wool-gathering, quite as much those of the
less fortunate, no one can doubt. Villa ST.
bert Gather, in recent long and some
what futile story in McClures, writes:
1.-The coast of Sardinia had lain to our
port for hours and would lie there for
some hours to come 1t was the
naked south coast of the island -"
And this, mind you, was on a steamship
westward bound from Naples.
Here is another instance: 'tIn his
diminutive pilot-house Mac Clanahan
! jerked the cord over his head, gong
changed family behind him, the stout
little Amy Lisle stopped her putting and
drifted smoothly into the Slip
Whistle cords are overhead; bell pulls
connecting with the engine-room are be-
hind the steeringwheel.
! Another writer recently began sea
story by having steamship, outward
bound from New York for Liverpool,
''round Montauk Point
In story having to do with the NOR
tai illness of plutocrat, one Of our most
learned writer's said: ''In moment he
had placed the jar of oxygen in the but
ler's hand;' creating the impression that
oxygen is something handled as conven-
iently as, for instance, chloroform,
when, as matter of fact, it enters into
physicians armamentarium in very
strong and heavy metal cylinders.
Mr.. Chambers in one of his lately pub
lished civil-war fancies tells of a soldier
''reeking of iodoform." In the 1883 edi-
ton of the U. S. Dispensatory occurs
/ this statement: ''On the continent of
Europe, it Godoform) has recently been
much used for an antiseptic surgical
dressing thus casting very grave
doubt Of any victim of the civil-war hav-
ing reeked of iodoform. Indeed, the
fearful mortality following wounds was
due to the fact that antiseptic surgery
was an undiscovered art
The doctor in charge of depart
ment in household magazine of large
circulation is responsible for prescrip-
tons, in one instance calling for ten
drops of salicylic acid, solid body; in
another, one dram of corrosive sublimate
in eight ounces of water, to be used for
face bleach. No reference whatever
was made to the deadly character of the
drug; and, but for the fact that it must
necessarily run the gauntlet of the drug
store employees, its publication is nothing
short of criminal
But while we are frequently misled in
the course of our reading, it is small
matter compared with what we are cal
led upon to accept in the matter of illus
trations. So marvelously perfect are the
modern methods of reproducing photo
graphs of actual scenes that we are
measurably consoled in our lack of wings.
But that is not art and thereby are
We often sorely tried by illustrations
which do not illustrate.
One wonders if Mrs Worse is utterly
Indifferent to the manner in which the
artist ignored her passage in "The
Breaking in Of a Yachtsman's Wife"
which reads thus:
She was Burgess model, twenty
eight feet over all, twenty-foot water
line - The illustration is of
an amorphous tub with a sawed-of stern
and the rudder hung outside.
Few boat-lovers will ever be able to
understand why our illustrators will per-
sist in drawing pictures of the stern of
boats and yachts, from view-p point on
the midship line abaft the mast, into
which intrudes the boom and sail at such
an angle that the imagination cannot ex-
tend it to mast located in any normal
position.
Awkward, in 1.-THE Sea Wolf, shows a
drawing of a sealer's boat, in which the
mast of the sprit-sail is fully as large as
the thigh of the man sitting beside it.
That colossal spar dominates the drawing;
just as the gun OH the arm Of the noun
taneer in one of Handbags pictures,
just published, cries aloud because of a
full six-inch drop in the stock.
One gentleman VINO has acquired
membership in the oligarchy by the
double claim Of author and artist, for
feits his right to our confidence through
one drawing which was held to be so fine
by the hierarch of things artistic that it
achieved the distinction of being select
ed for the frontispiece in an issue of the
Century.
This drawing of ar old whaler, head-on
in strong breeze, is so filled with the
results of inaccurate observation that