ed, hewn, and
packed. While forty or fifty able-bodied musicians are discoursing
Beethoven's rambling "Eroica," it were possible to dispatch and to
dress a carload of as fine beeves as ever hailed from Texas; and the
performance of the "Sakuntala" overture might be regarded as a virtual
loss of as much time as would be required for the beheading, skinning,
and dismembering of two hundred head of sheep.

These comparisons have probably never occurred to Mr. Thomas or to Mr.
Gericke; but they are urged by the patrons of music in Chicago, and
therefore they must needs be recognized by the caterers to popular
tastes. Chicago society has been founded upon industry, and the
culture which she now boasts is conserved only by the strictest
attention to business. Nothing is more criminal hereabouts than a
waste of time; and it is no wonder, then, that the creme de la creme of
our elite lift up their hands, and groan, when they discover that it
takes as long to play a classic symphony as it does to slaughter a
carload of Missouri razor-backs, or an invoice of prairie-racers from
Kansas.

LEARNING AND LITERATURE

R. J. N. Whiting writes us from New Litchfield, Ill., asking if we can
tell him the name of the author of the poem, of which the following is
the first stanza:--

The weary heart is a pilgrim
Seeking the Mecca of rest;
Its burden is one of sorrows;
And it wails a song as it drags along,--
'Tis the song of a hopeless quest.

Mr. Whiting says that this poem has been attributed to James Channahon,
a gentleman who flourished about the year 1652; "but," he adds, "its
authorship has not as yet been established with any degree of
certainty." Mr. Whiting has noticed that the "Daily News" is a
"criterion on matters of literary interest," and he craves the boon of
our valuable opinion, touching this important question.

Now, although it is true that we occasionally deal with obsolete
topics, it is far from our desire to make a practice of so doing. It
is natural that, once in a while, when an editor gets hold of a
catalogue of unusual merit, and happens to have a line of
encyclopaedias at hand--it is natural, we say, that, under such
circumstances, an editor should take pleasure in letting his
subscribers know how learnedly he can write about books and things.
But an editor must be careful not to write above the comprehension of
the majority of his readers. If we made a practice of writing as
l