Life — March 5, 1908 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

Send for free illus- trated Booklet ‘*A’’ on fitting, wearing and caring for your corsels ‘The corset makes the| figure—not the gown. , A Redfern ? Model, prop- erly fitted “ to your form, regardless ot / type or size, /2 will give the % long, lithe J lines— the ‘at-back, bip- less form— / sought by smart dress- e3. | Rubber But- ,_ tonHose Sup. * porters—all metal parts guaranteed not torust. Specially fitted at all high-class shops. Priced from $15.00 down to $3.00, ac- cording to materials. The Warner Meothers Company, New York, (Chkago, Oakland ST- FRANCIS JAMES WOODS Manager Facing a tropical park. which, in the civic center of San Francisco.has the unusual aspect of an old-world square or Spanish Plaza, this hostelry -marks the farthest advance of science in hotel service. Rates (European Plan)- Rooms - .$ 209 upward * with bath 239 upward Parlor, bedroom &bat from$l0°? upward SAN FRANCISCO. din invariably drown its voice. The issues of true intellect are more modest— shrinking at times behind the veil of anonymity; at other times disguising a fecund strength under the too ‘apparent cloak of pen names. Once identify the style with the man, and his work is signed with the opening paragraph. Hence it is no impertinence to disregard the trans- lucent veil behind which Mr. James Giotto Hunceker plies his opalescent pen as art critic, and to flavor our protest with his per- sonality. We limit our indiscretion to this disclosure, and refrain from specifying the editorial page which he adorns, beyond noting that it is, among all our metro- politan journals, the most hospitable to genius, yet so committed to the American policy of anonymity that we must perforce make our genuflections before a com- posite shrine. (An exception to this policy, noted in the signatures to doggerel and letters to the editor, is an assignment of fame with which it would be folly to quarrel. How otherwise would some of w—? + * * WERE just going to say when we were interrupted that, over the breakfast coffee, we tumed from the news columns of a recent Blue Monday— whercin, true to journalistic traditions, the Japs had taken Tokio—to the serene interior pages reserved for the perfected flights of fancy and imagination, and soon lost ourselves and our train in Mr. Huneker’s essay on mediocrity. ‘“Ex- aggeration is our national vice,” remarks Mr. Huneker. “We have the greatest country, the wisest Constitution, the most beautiful women, the best men. And not a word for the mediocrity that luckily is the backbone of our country, the staple of its artistic and literary production.” Yet all of us, he pursues, are endeavoring, each in his own fashion, to escape the im- putation of mediocrity; and in vain—for “numbers are mediocrity.” ‘How comes it, then, this mad desire to be exceptional ? Whence this optimism that shudders be- fore genuine art and espouses the mediocre because it is pleasanter for fat nerves? Let us whisper the truth. It is because we are, happily for us, mediocre; because genius is not a normal condition of humanity, and real talent is much less rare than our national vanity will permit us to acknowledge.” * * EGREES of comparison are danger- ‘ous. Shunning, as always, the positive, Mr. Huncker himself runs afoul of the superlative. Denying our claim to being the best even in the matter of the persons and things enumerated (a supremacy not denied us in the envious flings of foreigners), he implies that we are the most mediocre—hence the most normal, a Every Correspondence Purpose * For all forms of correspondence there is the right kind of Whiting Bs Fy 2 and in such variety of textures as to please every taste. WHITING Papers have always been the choice of those who realize the importance of rightness in paper. 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Shanta Ave. Lad the m on ear been critic with b overpr us that book, » Cameg Mea Huneke of Bad (“aurea derived ular epi and bef lishing HEe lary a signal an espec somewh music, ¥ Adantic- at least comfort understo bumbler word coit tothe bar ispaid by ance for 2ew-born ken stuns ‘OR th “rail i the ste: along ag of uncons ictivial a beknew, t! oy has | “colloquuic Worcester the Sta ty the Ce nin, at fr bte—owin brains—th Nopted it Rterary sn for admiss ®as bom Mterature is the latch at ashe was,” test novel Print. HE doo: hospita tbe “chesty comicbooks.com