The list of contributors who have added brilliancy to the miscellaneous portion of the magazine will be retained. Short stories, essays, and poems will be contributed to early numbers by Amélie Rives, Thomas Nelson Page, Edgar Fawcett, Joaquin Miller, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, H. H. Boyesen, Edith M. Thomas, etc.
The autobiographical experiences of noted men and women, which have attracted attention in the past, will be continued by contributions from H. H. Boyesen, Fanny Davenport, Belva Lockwood, Lotta, Frances E. Wadleigh, Clara Barton, etc. In addition, the people whose callings or circumstances are odd or interesting in themselves will be admitted to the confessional. Thus, "An Adventuress," "An Unsuccessful Author," "A Woman-Suffrage Agitator," "A Government Clerk," "A Literary Butcher," and many others, will detail their experiences.
Horsford's Acid Phosphate in Nervous Exhaustion.—Dr. George McKnight, Hannibal, New York, says, "I have used it in cases of nervous exhaustion, with quite satisfactory results."
In view of the approaching reproduction of "Faust" in this country by Henry Irving and the Lyceum Company, Messrs. J. B. Lippincott Company have just ready a handsome octavo book on "Faust, the Legend and the Poem," by Wm. S. Walsh, illustrated with six etchings by Herman Faber. Mr. Walsh traces the story back through the puppet-plays, Marlowe's "Faustus," and the mediæval chap-books, to the legend of Simon Magus, although he is inclined to believe that Faust was a real character, a contemporary of Melanchthon's, in whom the older legend, with other legends concerning other enchanters and magicians, was absorbed and concentrated. He attempts also to show that the poem is in its essence an autobiography; that, although it follows very closely the outlines of the mediæval puppet-play, it has informed them with an allegorical meaning which corresponds with the facts of his own mental and moral life. The compact with Mephistopheles, the Witches' kitchen, the seduction of Margaret, the Witches' Sabbath on the Brocken, the festival in the Emperor's court, the pursuit and final capture of Helena, the draining of the sea by Faust, are all shown to be poetical pictures of the phases of feeling through which the myriad-minded poet passed.
Horsford's Acid Phosphate in Indigestion.—Drs. Marshall and Longacre, Olney, Illinois, say, "We have used it in cases of indigestion, with good results."
Hugh Black, of Ontario, claims, in the North American Review for October, that the famous doggerel epitaph over Shakespeare's grave, "Good Friend for Jesu's Sake Forbear," etc., is to be read by means of Bacon's biliteral cipher, and when so read reveals the secret meaning, namely,—
Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays.
It would be interesting to know whether any student of cryptograms could not succeed in reading Ignatius Donnelly's name into the same lines. Mr. Black's article is ingenious and interesting, but is as curiously illogical and wrong-headed as the Millerite interpretations of Revelation which from time to time have warned the world of its approaching end.
