The Lawyer's Easy Cliair. THE PHILISTINE. — This name, long since adopted in common use to denote a matter-of-fact, unculti vated, commonplace person, — the French bourgeois type, — has recently been defiantly assumed by one Elbert Hubbard of the hamlet of East Aurora, N.Y., as the title of a little monthly "periodical of pro test." Mr. Hubbard says he began this publication as a joke, but so many people took it seriously that lie has kept it up until it is now in its fourth year, flourishing and increasing in prosperity. Mr. Hub bard is an extraordinary person, quite out of the common groove. He is a philosopher, a seer, a wit, a gentle cynic, a lover of nature, a sly and slangy humorist, and has all the spirit of poetry even if he does not indulge in meter. Nowhere else in this country can one get so much religion and humor, charity and slang, tenderness and audacity, for a dime as in any number of this little periodical. There are only two writers who can make the Chairman laugh aloud when lie is alone, and they are Dickens and Hubbard. In fact there is much in common between them, the latter, however, having none of the great master's dramatic power. Mr. Hubbard is quite widely known as the author of a very popular series of books called " Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Men and Good." memorials chiefly of his English travels, which exhibit all the qualities mentioned above. In addition to these re markable pen-gifts, he is one of the best speakers in this country, having a perfectly novel and character istic style, and the extremely rare power of saying a thing exactlv as he wishes and designs in order to produce a given effect. His capacity as an orator is bringing him into constant request on the lecture platform, and to hear him discourse of Shakespeare, Mrs. Browning or Elizabeth Fry, for example, is a delightful privilege. Mr. Hubbard is also a biblical and religious scholar of exceptional merit, although quite unorthodox. His studies of Ecclesiastes (" The Journal of Koheleth"), Solomon's Song, and Job, are among the most appreciative tender and poetical ever written, albeit now and then somewhat startling in their boldness and independence of man-formulated creeds. This author is fortunate not only in his natural and mental gifts, but also in his worldly en vironment. He is able to gratify his pet hobby of artistic printing. In a back shop at the hamlet aforesaid (some eighteen miles from Buffalo) lie lias set up a printing press, from which he issues the most beautiful books now or ever printed in America. (The Chairman speaks advisedly, for he himself is an old printer.) His religious studies above mentioned, and Vernon Lee's "Art and Life," have never been surpassed, and his own "Turner and Ruskin" has never been equaled in the typographic achievement of this country. His models in this art are the old Vene
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tian printers, and in the decoration and illumination of these volumes he receives the assistance of his talented and artistic wife. All this work is done by hand. He produces only three or lour books a year, and the time is not far distant when a complete set of them, espe cially of the limited number specially illuminated, will bring ten times the publication price. What a happy fellow one must be to be able to write good books and to print them!
MARITAL LAW. — His one of the modern ameliora tions of the common law of England that a husband cannot legally compel his wife to live with him. This was settled, to the intense disgust of numerous Eng lish husbands, in the famous case of Mr. Jackson of Clitheroe. Whether this is so in the South African Republic of the Boers, we do not know, but it seems that, at all events, husbands may there be compelled by legal process to live with their wives. As proof of this curious state of things a correspondent sends us an advertisement cut from a newspaper of that favored country, which we reproduce literally as follows : — PRO DEO. j IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE l SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC. BEFORE His HONOR THE CHIEF JUSTICE, In re. C. J. RENNER, Plaintiff, •'frsns H. J. RENNER, Dtfendani. Pretoria, this loth day of February, A. D., 1888. After having hoard Mr. Adv. Ford, of counsel for the plaintiff, having read the summons and heard the different witnesses, It is ordered That an order be, and it is hereby granted, summoning the defendant, Henry Julius Renner, to cohabit with the said plaintiff before the I2th of June, iSSS. By order of the Court,
(Signed) P. J. KOTZE, Registrar. Free translation,
CHAS. E. MEINTYER, Sworn translator.
It is among the mysteries why the plaintiff should have been particularly desirous that the defendant should cohabit with her before June 12. Did she not desire his society after that date? What happened or could conceivably happen in case Mr. Renner did not obey? Could the court enforce its order by a decree of specific performance? Did the sheriff put Mrs. Renner in possession? And so forth. One can imagine the practicability of an order for support, but up to date we have been unable to conjecture how any
