Not long ago a very parallel thing was to be observed in the field of story-writing.  A clever, though morbid and melodramatic writer published a novel, whose heroine, having once been an inmate of a house of ill-fame, escaped, and, finding shelter and Christian training in the home of a benevolent woman, became a model of womanly delicacy, and led a life of exquisite and artistic refinement.  As to the animus and intent of this story there could be no doubt; both were good, but in atmosphere and execution it was essentially unreal, overwrought, and melodramatic.  For three or four months after its publication there was a perfect outburst and overflow in newspapers and magazines of the lower order of stories, all more or less bad, some simply outrageous, and all treating, or rather pretending to treat, the same problem which had furnished theme for that novel.

Probably a close observation and collecting of the dreary statistics would bring to light a curious proof of the extent and certainty of this sort of contagion.

Reflecting on it, having it thrust in one’s face at every book-counter, railway-stand, Sunday-school library, and parlor centre-table, it is hard not to wish for some supernatural authority to come sweeping through the wards, and prescribe sharp cold-water treatment all around to half drown all such writers and quite drown all their books!

Jog Trot.

There is etymological uncertainty about the phrase.  But there is no doubt about its meaning; no doubt that it represents a good, comfortable gait, at which nobody goes nowadays.

A hundred years ago it was the fashion:  in the days when railroads were not, nor telegraphs; when citizens journeyed in stages, putting up prayers in church if their journey were to be so long as from Massachusetts into Connecticut; when evil news travelled slowly by letter, and good news was carried about by men on horses; when maidens spun and wove for long, quiet, silent years at their wedding trousseaux, and mothers spun and wove all which sons and husbands wore; when newspapers were small and infrequent, dingy-typed and wholesomely stupid, so that no man could or would learn from them more about other men’s opinions, affairs, or occupations than it concerned his practical convenience to know; when even wars were waged at slow pace,—­armies sailing great distances by chance winds, or plodding on foot for thousands of miles, and fighting doggedly hand to hand at sight; when fortunes also were slowly made by simple, honest growths,—­no men excepting freebooters and pirates becoming rich in a day.

It would seem treason or idiocy to sigh for these old days,—­treason to ideas of progress, stupid idiocy unaware that it is well off.  Is not to-day brilliant, marvellous, beautiful?  Has not living become subject to a magician’s “presto”?  Are we not decked in the whole of color, feasted on all that shape and sound and flavor can give?  Are we not wiser each moment