It seems odd that almost only in the sphere of literature-which Carlyle defined as the "Thought of Thinking Souls should the capacity for doing something involve the obligation to do it. Many persons are conscious of powers which they do not in the least think it incumbent upon them to illustrate. A man who can dance well, for example, does not seek opportunities for displaying his accomplishment; neither does a person with a gift for languages think it necessary to engage in lexicography, nor a good horseman to exhibit his skill in equestrianism. Instances might be multiplied indefinitely-up to the point where literature is reached. There, a different feeling is universal. As soon as the question is whether or no to write if you can write, everyone's attention appears conscientiously concentrated upon the enormity of burying one's talent in a napkin. "You could do this or that and do it so well," say one's friends, "why do you not show people that you can ? You know perfectly well that what you were telling me the other day would make an excellent short story, that the thought, the epigram, the situation you only yesterday communicated to us might easily be' worked up' into something worth printing'-why do you not do it?" The obligation is taken for granted. Undoubtedly a large number of potential authors are only restrained from committing authorship by the thought that what they could so easily write would wound some sensibilities connected with the material they would otherwise be delighted to manipulate; and we owe the blessing that we have no more books than we have to the sense of delicacy and selfcontrol on the part of persons who if grosser

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minded would unquestionably add to the present stock.

And yet it can hardly be disputed that there is almost no other department of intellectual effort to which purely voluntary contributions are less necessary or valuable. Instead of regretting that someone whom we know to be possessed of an unusual literary gift does not exercise it, it seems to me that we should call the watch together and be thankful that we are rid of what at best in nine cases out of ten could only illustrate our friend's capacity, without doing very much good to the accumulated "Thought of Thinking Souls." have been a great many books written upon a great many subjects since the Preacher complained that there was no end of the making of them, and the multiplication of them considered as an end in itself-that is, the production of more books as books-is surely an absurdity.

The true makers of literature have never felt this obligation of making books because they could. They have never had this ideal. "We are not martyrs nor apostles, my dear Barnet," says Thackeray, "but poor tradesmen working for bread." That is the true feeling, I think. One trade may be better than another, but at least let it be a trade. Let the amateur, however splendidly gifted, keep out of it and not fancy it in any need of his participation. Let not a man who can do a particularly good piece of literary work fancy there is any need at all for him to do it. It will certainly enough be done without the need of effort on his part to conquer his indolence. He may be "mute" and "inglorious," but literature has received more harm than good, incontestably, from

persons who mistrusted themselves Miltons in embryo. Moreover, it is to be pointed out that the inducement of potential writers to formulate in writing the thoughts stirring within them and demanding utterance is their own advantage and not that of literature. The illustration of their capacity is not commended to them on the ground of the resultant good to any but themselves. And this circumstance makes it pertinent to cite in their interest the recent remark of a sensible French writer: C'est sur les esprits faibles et les caractères paresseux que la manie d'écrire sevit particulièrement." "It is feeble minds and indolent characters that the mania of writing particularly attacks."

I SEE that Mr. Zangwill regrets that Tennyson "should have throughout his life pandered to the popular conception of a poet," and says "there was something of a robuster quality in Browning, who managed to be a seer and a mystic in despite of afternoon teas." There is certainly justice in the second part of this remark, and the "robuster quality" in Browning is not limited to his conduct of life; but as to the regret about Tennyson Mr. Zangwill will probably be put on his defence.

A year or two ago a writer in the Point of View took the ground (under the title "A Poet and not Ashamed ") that precisely what Mr. Zangwill means to condemn was one of Tennyson's strengths; and to my mind he made an excellent case. Tennyson, "having demonstrated that he was a poet took his work seriously, and himself seriously as the man to whom it was appointed to do the work. . . . That a poet should be picturesque and poetical seemed no more a thing to smile at than kingliness in a king. He did not pose, but simply behaved as he felt."

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I thought then, and still think on reading them over, that this whole matter of the self-consciousness of men of genius and its exhibition was very well dealt with in these sentences. (They have been included since in Mr. Edward S. Martin's "Windfalls of Observation," like many other good sayings first contributed by him anonymously to these columns.) Has a man proved beyond question that what we call "genius" is his?

Does he believe in his work with absolute seriousness? Is he acting as he feels? If these three questions can be answered in the affirmative, and our genius wants to do nothing to the obvious hurt of society at large, let us stop cavilling; and in whose case are they more likely to be truly so answered than in Tennyson's? Yet it is curious to see how many men his manner of taking himself had power to irritate, and how many insist on calling it by a wrong

name.

The irritating quality is not insincerity, but absence of a sense of humor-than which nothing is harder for a true modern to forgive. No one disputes that the highest of them all have nearly always had that sense in plenty from Shakespeare and Rabelais and Cervantes to Thackeray and Mr. Zangwill's own citation, Browning; but "regret " as you will, gentlemen, you cannot always have a sense of humor furnished with your geniuses; and sine qua non as we have come to think it at a time when the world seems too complicated and too generally cynical to face without it, it is no doubt just as well that some of them should not have it, after all. It is just possible that an occasional man who couples with great powers a seriousness of ideal that touches the solemn, and who has a way of seeing the fitness of things his way and not ours, may be a useful corrective even now. "Prig," a well-known English man of letters is said to have declared, “is a name Philistines call each other." If we are getting a little too much into the habit of applying the name or the idea to every man who takes himself and his functions seriously, let us keep it among the Philistines of that ilk-there are plenty of them—and there stop. If we can get our geniuses with a sense of humor, too, no doubt they will not wear unconventional costumes, or indulge in what we consider poses; but if we cannot have them so let us be thankful for one occasionally with these drawbacks.

IN the landscape of the current October two comparatively new features are prominent. Neither are brand new. One has been growing more and more familiar for a whole decade until now it is everywhere.

That is the all-conquering bicycle, which goes persistently on its gainful course, holding its adherents, and daily gaining new victims.

The bicycle's advance has been so gradual, so noiseless, and so easy that it is doubtful if American society appreciates what it is about or what are its possibilities. Starting as a toy, and continuing on a democratic basis as a means of transportation for the comparatively poor, it has worked its way steadily on and up. Sportsmen have scoffed at it; horsemen have flouted it; high dignitaries of the church have denounced it to their women adherents; solid citizens have held it to be a nuisance on the highway; timid people have deprecated its presence on the sidewalk, but it has rolled along practically unhindered, increasing in numbers, growing in popularity, until now it threatens to dispute with the horse for the patronage of fashion. It is time to take the bicycle seriously, as a thing, like the cotton-gin, the steam-engine, the telegraph, and the sewing-machine, that is to have an effect upon society.

As an annihilator of space it is the able coadjutor of the railroad. It deals with details, covering the distances which are too far to walk, and the ground which the steamengine sweeps one past before he knows it. The ground one goes over on a bicycle he does know, hence it promises to bring back to human acquaintance the numberless nooks and corners of the civilized earth that the locomotive rushes by, and which have sunk out of ken since steam travel became universal. It is still a toy in some hands, but it is also a great vehicle, giving every performer (where the roads are good) an available door-yard at least ten miles square, and making fresh air and exercise more easily obtainable. At the same time it amuses the rider, and everybody knows how important it is that with one's air and exercise a share of amusement should be thrown in.

But the most startling tendency of the bicycle is its effect upon women. As sure as taxes, or the destruction of the peach crop, or anything that is inevitable, it is about to emancipate that suffering creation from the dominion of skirts. No woman of sense will ever discard skirts altogether. They are far too seemly and becoming for that. But woman has marked the bicycle

for her own, and no woman can ride on a bicycle without discovering that skirts have their place and their uses, and that there are times and situations where they are in the way. The habit of sea-bathing has done much to break down the tyranny of women's clothes. Bicycles will do the rest. Already the divided skirt is used by women on horseback without exciting the beholder's dismay, but that is not a fashion that gives assurance of extensive growth. But that the woman who rides bicycles will wear knickerbockers is a bit of concluded destiny; that once having found them acceptable for one form of exercise she may find them convenient for divers others is very possible, and yet not appalling, since knickerbockers do not look ill. That she will dance in them, or dine in them, is not likely enough to give anyone valid grounds for anxiety, but once she has learned how, she will wear them without compunction on fit occasions where skirts too much restrain, as when she plays golf.

For the other new feature of the October landscape is golf. Golf has been threatening to cross the seas these last five years. It came unobtrusively, and this year has fairly taken root and spread itself. All the country clubs have it. Veteran tennis-players have cast aside their bats and taken up with "drivers" and "putting-irons," and, more extraordinary still, horsemen of mature convictions are found tramping around golflinks day after day and spending the solid evening hours bragging of the strokes they made, and raising futile lamentations over scores spoiled by wanton misses. One does not fully realize the fascination of golf until he has heard it talked by confirmed horsemen in times when they might be talking horse. It commends itself as a serious sport, fit to engage the well-preserved but not too boisterous energies of the middle-aged, suitable for stout men to apply to the correction of obese tendencies, and yet not too violent for the spare frames of the thin. It is neither dangerous nor costly, and yet the philosophical mind finds satisfaction in it, while the sportsman admits that it possesses the indispensable qualities of a true game. There can be little doubt that it will possess all America as tennis has. It has the best literature of any known game, which is due possibly to its Scotch

origin, and the instruments with which it is cultivated are of so fascinating an aspect that the palm instinctively itches to clutch them and see how they work. Once seen, golf cannot be forgotten; once experienced, it will not be neglected. It has fairly got us now, and it may be trusted to keep us.

WHEN the Scientist remarked at the club table the other evening, with a merry smile, that "the only way to be sure you know your intended wife is to marry her greatgrandmother" we recognized in his epigram the sparkle of crystallized study in the field--closed to most of us-of philosophic theory and observation. Had he cared to do so, he could have cited pages of Spencer and Taine, and of profounder thinkers, to show that your wife's temper and looks and availability or otherwise for domestic partnership are due much more to her ancestry than to any causes that you can yourself perceive or analyze. If you had asked him how, as a matter of practical prudence, you are to ascertain the remote and obscure elements that determine a matter of such peculiar interest, he would probably have repeated to you in some other form the suggestion as to the clearly impossible great-grandmother.

It is obvious that these "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls," if they do not "shake our disposition," do occupy many of us to an extent that would have amazed and shocked our predecessors of two or three generations gone. Heredity and the freaks of heredity defray the expense of

chance conversation in circles where the grave study of the elusive and complex facts from which the principle is induced is neither habitual nor quite practicable. Even M. Taine might have been a little startled had there fallen under his eye the gibe I saw ascribed recently to a French woman of literary note, at the expense of a fluent rival: Affaire d'atavisme, ma chère; son grand-père était barbier. The generalizations, vaguely enough comprehended, of the evolutionists, must be having an influence that cannot easily be estimated.

For one thing it is pretty clear that they are not strengthening the sense of personal responsibility, but are producing in many minds a dreamy fatalism-optimistic or the reverse as temperament and digestion may determine-which can hardly fail to affect conduct. If this be not an unmixed good

what a delightful surprise if it were!it can be accepted with resignation by those who believe that the mischief of it will be tried out in the slow furnace of experience. If the principles which we amuse ourselves with turning and twisting under the electric lights at the club table shall prove to be all that their discoverers think-as far-reaching and imperious as they imagine-duty and virtue and my accountability for myself will not be abolished. I shall find in practice, however much my aïeux may have influenced my tendencies or inclinations, that I shall largely suffer the consequences of my own acts. If I learn that tough lesson soon enough, the long backward receding line will not wholly prevent me from deciding what those acts shall be.