SKIT

A TRAGEDY IN STILL LIFE.

KIT SKAT: Dead! Dead for a ducatdead! See what a rent the envious Biff Behold yon sawdust streaming

Bang made. from his side.

out mine eyes.

Ah! I could weep the paint from

I am a widder.

BIFF BANG: The deed is done. Thank Heaven, also, it is signed and recorded. Me trusty darning-needle hath done its work. (Emerging from behind the fan.) Skitty SkattySKIT SKAT: You?

BIFF BANG: Oui! Yes! Yah!

SKIT SKAT: (Aside.) How touching! (To

B. B.) Is this your work?

BIFF BANG: Si, Signorita!

SKIT SKAT: Why was it done?

BIFF BANG: To save you the necessity of

a divorce, my darlingski. Take up the darning

needle again or take up me.

SKIT SKAT: Come to me arrums.

BIFF BANG: Zounds! My machinery hath run down. I cannot move. Perdition take the Frenchman that made me.

SKIT SKAT: So has mine. I cannot move

an inch.

BIFF BANG:

SKIT SKAT: Forever.

Farewell

Tom Hall.

UNACCOUNTABLE.

"BILLY, KIN YER TELL ME WHY IT IS WHEN THE RICH FOLKS KIN AFFORD

TO BUY ALL THE CLOTHIN' THEY WANT FOR THEIRSELVES THAT THEY PREFER TO GO NAKED?"

FLORENCE: I'm papa's little girl.

STRANGER: And why aren't you mamma's little girl?

FLORENCE: 'Cause the decree gave me to papa.

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O it is excellent

To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrranous To use it like a giant.

A

ND that is one reason why Uncle Samuel should very much prefer not come to blows with Chili if he can reasonably help it. Another reason is that the Chilians are a bumptious, upstart lot, who would rather fight than eat, and seldom know when they have been adequately thrashed. Some of them, moreover, are armed with the new kind of rifle which will drive a single bullet through three soldiers in succession, and perforate an ordinary breast work as easily as a knitting-needle goes into a straw-stack. In the survey of South America, Chili was badly gerrymandered and stretches along the coast after the pattern of a shoestring over a district sixty miles wide and some 2,000 miles

not increased by any over-confidence in the Administration's trustworthiness in giving us the facts. The Administration is looking for re-election, and it is obliged to back up its appointee, Minister Egan. Under these circumstances it is not strange that some people think that possibly our sailors misconducted themselves.

HAT is why LIFE would rejoice to wel

THAT

come Patrick Egan back to his dear country's arms, and to see Dr. Chauncey Depew speeding the shortest way to take his place. There seems no reason to doubt that Mr. Egan was carefully naturalized before he went to Chili. But as a pacificator he does not seem to be a momentous success. Now, Dr. Depew has a wonderfully oleaginous effect upon troubled waters. After he had dined with the boss Chilians a few times and told them stories, and talked about a through line from Santiago to Chicago and New York, the Chilians would lose interest in war, and the swelling would go out of their heads, and they would apologize and settle, and we might go another quarter century without firing an angry gun.

If Dr. Depew couldn't go, there's Mr. Joseph Choate. Of course it would cost something to send him, but just think what it costs to fire off some of our new big guns. Even Mr. Choate talks cheaper than heavy artillery.

LIFE prefers that there should be no war, and, having that preference, it finds satisfaction in the thought that the House of Representatives is Democratic. There will have to be good cause for fighting before a Democratic House lets a Republican administration get into a fight.

reached by missiles from the sea, the lazy Chilian's luxurious notion is to have Uncle Sam's warships sail up and down the shore and do his fall ploughing for him with round and conical shot. It would be laborious and costly ploughing for Uncle Sam, and LIFE trusts he may not have to undertake it.

THERE is nothing to be got

from thrashing Chili, except sore heads. If we hit her too hard we will be ashamed, afterwards, because she is so small. We will be ashamed, also, if we don't hit her hard enough. There is nothing to be made out of her that we want-no glory, no money, no territory. All we could get would be experience, and it is better to get that at second hand. The general sense of comfort in the Chilian matter is

periences, not of opinions. Dr. Abbott might go further and add that it is a condition, not a theory, that awaits us.

*

MOUNTAIN humor is sometimes rather

rccky, especially Rocky Mountain humor, not only in being different from plain humor, but in other respects as well. Here is the Denver Times indulging in the following terrible attempt: "Electric cars in Philadelphia seem strangely inconsistent. The first families' cannot afford to patronize anything that sounds so fast as electric cars.' By the way, are there any 'second families' in Philadelphia society?

It is a current belief in Philadelphia that all of her "second families" became extinct by emigrating in a body to Denver and other points in Colorado. -Philadelphia Press.

Tut, tut, Philadelphia! Don't get cross Just think how much more fun the humorists have made of Chicago and Boston.

BOOKISTIMES

SOME RESULTS OF BEING HONEST.

WITHOUT collecting statistics on the question it would seem to the

casual observer of current literature that one result of the new Copyright Law has been to encourage the republication, in this country, of only the better class of English books. If the American publisher has to pay for a thing he wants it as good as possible for the money; and, other things being equal, he will probably prefer an American book, as likely to please the tastes of the largest number of American readers. The clause in the law which compels the resetting of the book in this country, seems also to tend toward putting American and English writers on equal footing in the competition. For if English sheets or plates could be imported, duty free, the English writer would find himself on American book-stalls at a cheaper cost per copy than his American brother, and his book would be chosen by an American publisher rather than an equally good American book, because of the greater profit,

On the other hand this equality of competition has put the American writer under the necessity of doing his very best-for in a contest with the best class of English books he has nothing in his favor except his Americanism. Before the new law, the honest American publisher (who always paid a royalty to the English author), might see greater ultimate profit in a mediocre native book, than in a very good English one that was sure to be pirated. Now he can make the same profit per copy on each and is equally protected.

In a word, the new law seems to have cut off the republication of a lot of English trash, and encouraged the republication of the best British books in finer editions than before. This puts the American writer exactly where he ought to have been long ago-in equal competition with the best English writers.

* FEBRUARY 3D, 813 B. C.

ENEAS OFFERED HIMSELF TO DIDO.

Chip

אן

fiction the Law seems to have resulted in more well-printed books, in substantial cloth binding. A notable evidence of it is the "series of copyright novels by well-known authors, at the uniform price of one dollar per volume," which is in course of publication by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. Kipling, Shorthouse, Rolf Boldrewood, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Clark Russell, are put before the American public in typography and paper which would not have been advisable a year ago. Whether it is better for the American reader to be compelled to pay more for his novels is a question (like the higher price of those other stimulants-tea and coffee, wine and tobacco) to be settled by. the social scientist and political economist.

So far, however, it seems certain that the new law has been of benefit to the American and English publishers and writers, and possibly to the American printer.

FEBRUARY 6TH, 1862.

GENERAL GRANT TAKES FORT HENRY.

*The editor wishes to state that, although no documentary evidence fixes the date of this interesting event with any degree of certainty, he feels justified in selecting February third, as Eneas's well known tact and delicacy would naturally prompt him to select this month; and his knowledge that three was a lucky number, would also be a strong temptation for him.

W.

CLARK RUSSELL'S story "A Strange Elopement" (Macmillan), does not bear out some of the assertions made abovefor it is not a good English novel, but a mediocre one. Before the Copyright Law it would have been satisfied to appear in paper at 25 cents; now it is in cloth for a dollar.

But it ought to have been a good story, for Mr. Russell is a writer of admirable sea tales, and this one gets into good company on his name. There is a lot of conventional characters-the peppery English general on his way to India, his lovely but heart-broken daughter, and a lover who is brave and handsome but without the common sense of a school-boy. Consequently he is just the fellow to plan a romantic elopement, of a wholly impracticable kind-and that is the reason of the story. Droch.