Life — June 6, 1907 — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

we think of it, in Lawson’s latest being quoted no higher than some book which has nothing to recommend it beyond its artistic qualities. Or should we go fur- ther, in the name of candor, and stamp it a nefarious attempt to mulct and exploit the more or less innocent consumer ? Platt OM PLATT has been termed the Tom-Cat of New York; he has for years been a purr-full person, with power and pull; he has lapped at the public plat- ter for a prolonged period; he is an- tique, sophisticated, cynical and far from sensitive, and he cares more for the seats of the mighty in the Senate than for the conceits of the masterful in the White House. Silence, sancity and spoils have been the Senator’s stock in trade; shrewdness, slickness and separation his working tools; and though sancity tangled up with spoils is no longer popular, and spoils plus silence have still a vogue, not all the silence and Sunday-school sanctity of the age can save Platt or popularize public plunder. Still he sits tight and keeps mum. The demands of a sibilant, vigilant and yellow press that he resign he hears with placid indifference; Platt’s at- titude persists in the face of press and plat- itude; he has sat in the Amen Corner so long that he believes the end of all prayer by press or person points to plunder. Platt is a philosopher and politician. He knows no one is so vociferously vir- tuous as a reformer after a job; the empty belly is the mother of reform. He meas- ures the violence of the cyclone by the appetite of the candidate; when the wind dies down the cat emergesfrom the cellar, still in possession of the Senatorial canary. It some real man had the toga of the Sena- tor from Tioga, and the Rough Rider had his reticence, all would be forgiven. Platt’s motto is “J’y suis, j’y reste,” his coat-of-arms a coin couchant on an itching palm. “TE Art, Business and Mr. J. P. Morgan A MODEST newspaper paragraph, nimbly enough hurdled by active minds in search of more exciting stimu- lus, recently informed the world that Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan will shortly present a new art gallery to the Wadsworth Athe- neum, in Hartford. Primarily, of course, the interest in this item is confined to Hartford and to a small section even of that population. What is an art gallery more or less, thinks the bustling reader, in a world of so many strenuous interests ? Mr. Morgan seems to answer this ques- tion in his own personality. He has an interest in art and is, nevertheless, quite capable of attending to business. Few will accuse him of affecting the one and nobody is likely to reproach him with neglecting the other. Se he goes through life typifying the human possibility of driving art and business tandem and get- ting considerable pleasure out of the com- bination. Mr. Morgan probably knows as well as another that the presence of water doesn’t necessarily make a horse thirsty. ‘There are still plenty of Americans who couldn’t be dragged into an art gallery unless Mr. Anthony Comstock had just been seen coming indignantly out of it. But it is equally true that more and more Americans are getting the art-gallery habit and in this fact lies, however dis- tantly, the hope of a more contemplative civilization, possibly including a broader understanding of art, even among Con- gressmen. A new art gallery, in Hartford or elsewhere, forwards by so much a slow growth that is in reality neither more nor less important than the affairs of finance. Not long ago Mr. Morgan gave Har- vard the larger part of her new group of medical school buildings, which further illustrates the same point—namely, that life contains a fine lot of interests, and no philosopher has yet convincingly told us which of them is the most important. It’s a long Hall Caine that has no turning. We never miss the water until the H. G. Wells runs dry. What’s one man’s meat is another man’s Upton Sinclair. 767 Depew GBAUNcEY DEPEW is a Senator from New York; he was selected, when the People weren’t looking, to repre- sent certain railroad interests and princi- pals. At one time he was regarded as the ablest distributor of postprandial hot air and persiflage east of Penn Yan, but since the incarnation of Sim Ford, the bashful Demosthenes of the Hasheries, the publi- cation of Joe Miller’s life and works, and the literary exhuma- - tions of the tombs of the Pharaohs, this extinguished jester ranks more as a peripatetic museum than asa raconteur. ‘The geyser has ceased to spout ; the tidbits of the jester have be- come indigestible; the cap and bells have gone to the junk heap. Among rugged freemen sin and sinecure are synonymous terms when discovered; discovery is quiet, when the thing is gilt- edged. When Chauncey was called on he was found out. Chauncey talks no more; his audi- ences are gone; his friends are friends in need—of other friends; the volcano is extinct, with dust and ashes in the mouth of the craythur. But he still has his job in the Senate. Popularity passes; place is profitable. Better the substance than the shadow. Every dog has his day; it is about sun- down for Chauncey ; there is charity in the twilight and peace in the night. The Mellen Choly days have come, The saddest of the N. Y., N. H. and H. R.R. A man’s a man for all Platt. Rogers is that Rogers does. comicbooks.com