The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-04-06
THE FARMER: APRIL 6, 1912

goOdIy Michael, who was born forty seven years ago to-day in the Coun- ty Cork of the island of blessed mem- Ory.
 You have never heard of Michael? And you dare confess it? Then you are convicted out of your own mouth of being a low-brow. You do not belong to the elect, the inner circle, of literachoOr, else you would know Michael. For he is the only genuine literatus in captivity in America. Fra Elbert Hubbard poses as such, but he long ago sold his birthmark for a mess of potash, and all true disciples of the Order of Literati have excom- municated him and cast him forth in- to the outer darkness of commercial ism.
 Besides being a literatus, MT. Mon- ahan is an anachronism. That sounds like a hard name to call an Irishman, but it only means that he was born out of his time. He belongs to the age when literature was hand-writ- ten by f1esh-and-blood humans, and not turned out by the yard or the with all the latest time and-labor-sav- ing devices. The gifted author of Palms of Payyrus' belongs to past age, when the men of the writing craft assembled in dingy taverns for joyous jousts with the "humanizing bottle,'' as MT. Le Galliene calls It, and entertained each other with merry quips and jests. In these degenerate days, when the so-called Bohemians of the world Of letters meet in a red ink joint, they are as staid and solemn as boiled owls. For are not original uuips and jests worth one dollar per each and up, and would it not be fool ish to waste them? Answer: (a) Yes, and Cb) Yes.
 What is the difference between a lit eratus, such as MT. Monahan. and an ordinary writer who scribbles for a. living? There you have the answer. MT. Monahan writes for the joy of it, quite incidentally manages to exist. On the other hand, I, for instance, would not push type-bar (see adver- Using columns for name of machlne) to paper except for the incentive af- forded by my fifty thousand cents a year.
 MT. Monanhan is not, as you may have surmised, a bookisn snob. He is, beyond all doubt, the most human unaffected, lovable character in Amer ica. His greatest claim to distinc- ton, perhaps, lies in the fact that he is not a snob. The literature of to-day is, with a few honorable ex- captions, written by SnODs-plaSe, SUI perior poseurs.
 In personal appearance MT. Mona han is a roly-poly Irishman with all an Irishman's gift of gab. He can, and does, talk entertainingly about everything under the sun. He began his literary career as a reporter in Al bany, N. Y He became news ed1- tor of the Albany Argus and editor of the Albany Press, and more than made good in both jobs About twenty years ago he went West, and worked for time on the Denver newspapers, but returned East to become secre- tary to the mayor of Albany. Since 1903, when he became a real literatus, he has lived in New York, Es.st Or ange and other villages on the Erie railroad. Besides Adventures in Life and Letters Palms of Papyrus," and other collections of prose and verse, he has translated numerous French works into the most delightful of English. He has the distinction of having been the pioneer in intro ducing Maupassant to the American reading public, and for that alone there is due him huge debt of grat- itude