Trotwood begs to thank personally the hundreds of friends who write him weekly kind things about the Monthly—not only for encouraging letters, but the more substantial evidence of their appreciation2. No one but he who is making a life fight for what is best in literature knows how much come-again such letters put into the man who lives in his den1 at home thinking out what he hopes will please and instruct. So do not imagine you will weary him by writing. He needs them all.
Trotwood’s is indebted to Miss Julia A. Royster, of Raleigh, N. C., for the realistic picture of mammy in this issue. The picture of Jake, in the January number, was also Miss Royster’s, and we have obtained many more typical Southern pictures by this artist—the truest and most sympathetic we have yet seen. Miss Royster will supply these and other Southern pictures, most artistically3 executed, to those who care for them.
I wish to compliment Mr. Brownlow on his able article on “Monetary Relief,” writes Mr. Denison, of Fargo, N. D. “The plan is a perfect panacea4 if we could get a guarantee that bank presidents would keep their fingers out of speculation5.” Mr. Brownlow’s plan seems to meet the approval of all thinking men. By limiting the amount which each bank may be permitted to use, restricting the large banks to half a million, and permitting all the small ones to issue to the extent of their capital stock, Mr. Brownlow’s plan most effectually keeps it out of the hands of speculators. We believe when Mr. Brownlow’s plan is thoroughly6 known it will be the one adopted.
“I think you have struck the right ‘lead’ in your Monthly,” writes Prof. Sterling7 C. Bremer, of the Link School, Thomasville, Tenn. “Unless a Southern magazine is distinctively8 Southern, it has no right to exist in the South. If it is going to give us a lot of syndicate, ready-made goods, it had better go to New York, where the facilities for that kind of publication are the best. So continue to give us a Trotwood’s Monthly, and not a feeble imitation of some Northern magazine, and I think you will be supported.”
Trotwood appreciates the criticism above, from a scholar in one of the best schools in the South. The more so because we do not claim any particular credit for making Trotwood’s different. We are picturing naturally the life around us—its songs, traditions and ideals. We could make our Monthly twice as large by using syndicate matter. But it will add nothing to the thought of the Monthly nor to its quality.
Here are some good ones from a little book called “Philosophy of the Street,” by E. R. Petherick, of Merrill, Wisconsin. There are hundreds more in the book as good, and that is saying much:
Two people may differ and both be wrong.
Ridicule9 is a cross-eyed cousin of wit.
Many of us devote too much energy to increasing our wants.
It is always easy to get a front place by facing the other way.
The man who has no secrets from his wife is a widower10.
Cunning is the selfish side of wisdom.
It is a good idea to remember that the present is constantly becoming the past.
There is about as much sense in judging a man by his talk as there would be in buying a dog by his bark.
Few people know how to be good to themselves.
After a man has received two favors in succession, he begins to consider them part of his constitutional right.
“It may interest you to know,” writes Prof. Henry C. Cox, of The Froebel Public School, Chicago, “that on Christmas Eve sixteen hundred and sixty-seven children of this school sang one of your Christmas poems set to music.”
It not only interests us, but it makes us exceedingly vain. To live in the hearts of children! Who would swap11 them for the sages12? And that reminds us of several bright things of children—neighbors of Trotwood—so bright that we thought once of sending them to the Ladies’ Home Journal, an awfully13 nice female paper published in Philadelphia, but we have decided14 they are good enough for Trotwood’s:
Little Octavine had lived upstairs at grandmother’s all her short life of four summers, and objected often to walking up the steps. Recently her parents moved to Nashville. Everybody knows what a beautiful union Station Nashville has, but what an abominably15 long flight of steps leads from the tracks up to the street. Little Octavine slowly and painfully climbed them, and when she reached the top sighed and said, woefully: “Mamma, if you had told me Nashville was upstairs I never would have moved here.”
Little Ethel, aged16 two, who can barely talk, saw for the first time the Jersey17 cow chewing her cud the other day. Ethel watched her long and eagerly, but the more she yearned18 the more indifferent the cow chewed on. Finally she began to cry: “Mamma, make her let me—chew it—awhile!”
Henry’s mother had been operated on for appendicitis19. He didn’t know exactly, but supposed there was an awful rent somewhere. One day he came in in time to see the nurse giving his mother a glass of water. “Don’t do that,” he shouted; “don’t do that! Don’t you know it will just run out of her?”
In reading some of the business letters on file in Trotwood’s the other day I came across a letter and its answer that made me catch my breath. When I reached the P. S. I had the same laugh that you will have—and as a laugh is always worth money, I am passing it on to Trotwood’s readers. The letter is from our friend, F. D. Hoogstraat, Ravenna, Mich., who, after saying many kind things about us and enclosing check for five subscribers to Trotwood’s, ends with the following friendly bit of fun: “I was out your way forty-odd years ago, and I killed as many of you as you did of me, and I feel now that every thing is square and even between us.”
I turned over the carbon copy containing the business manager’s reply, and this is what I read toward the latter part of the letter: “We will be glad to have you come this way again, and we’ll promise to give you a ‘warm reception,’ but not the kind we gave you before. The same Johnnies who tried to kill you forty years ago with bullets will try it again with kindness and moonshine whisky. They will charge you with a handshake instead of a bayonet and will put you in the best bed instead of a prison. The people of the South look forward and not backward, and have long ago forgotten and forgiven.
“Yours truly,
E. E. SWEETLAND,
“Bus. Man. Trotwood’s Monthly.
“P. S.—The niggers you were fighting us for about forty years ago are still here. You may have them now without a fight.”
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1
den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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2
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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3
artistically
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| adv.艺术性地 | |
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panacea
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| n.万灵药；治百病的灵药 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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6
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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7
sterling
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| adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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10
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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11
swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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12
sages
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| n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料） | |
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13
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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14
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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15
abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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16
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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17
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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18
yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19
appendicitis
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| n.阑尾炎，盲肠炎 | |
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