the great new south—does it not make one proud to read the record on a preceding page.
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 appreciation. 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 den 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 artistically 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 panacea if we could get a guarantee that bank presidents would keep their fingers out of speculation.” 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 thoroughly known it will be the one adopted.
“i think you have struck the right ‘lead’ in your monthly,” writes prof. sterling c. bremer, of the link school, thomasville, tenn. “unless a southern magazine is distinctively 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.
ridicule 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 widower.
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 swap them for the sages? 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 awfully nice female paper published in philadelphia, but we have decided 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 abominably 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, aged two, who can barely talk, saw for the first time the jersey cow chewing her cud the other day. ethel watched her long and eagerly, but the more she yearned 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 appendicitis. 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.”
