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"In fact," interpolated Penelope somewhat ruefully, "he's so far from being Philistine that he has a dreadful faculty for making me feel deplorably commonplace." Kitty gurgled. "What rubbish! I'm sure nothing in the world would make Peter more unhappy than to think he affected anyone like that. He's the least assuming and most tender-hearted soul I know.
Indeed, we should not be surprised to find that even the clever writer who describes the English Philistine in all his enormity of awkward manner and absence of grace, were himself as shy as a bat. When two shy men meet, they seem like a couple of icicles. They sidle away and turn their backs on each other in a room, or when travelling creep into the opposite corners of a railway-carriage.
The Prince's most noteworthy statement was made in the Reichstag in 1903, when, in answer to Leader-of-the-Opposition Bebel, the Prince said, "One thing at least, the Emperor is no Philistine," and proceeded to explain, rather negatively and disappointingly, that the Emperor possesses what the Greeks call megalopsychia a great soul.
"How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me; "not very long, I rather guess, young man." "No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face." "Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day."
Well, what then? Marry her?" Marriage! To Yourii the very word sounded appallingly commonplace. How could anyone of his complex temperament endure the idea of a philistine menage? It was impossible. "And yet I love her," he thought. "Why should I put her from me, and go? Why should I destroy my own happiness? It's monstrous! It's absurd!"
Strauss the Genius goes gadding about the streets in the garb of lightly equipped goddesses as a classic, while Strauss the Philistine, to use an original expression of this genius's, must, at all costs, be "declared to be on the decline," or "irrevocably dismissed." But, alas! in spite of all declarations of decline and dismissal, the Philistine still returns, and all too frequently.
Had there appeared in the camps a Philistine of notoriety, then that Philistine must play his or her part again through the medium of Dolly's own inimitable powers of description or representation; had any little scene occurred possessing a spice of flavoring, or illustrating any Philistine peculiarity, then Dolly was quite equal to the task of putting it upon the family stage, and re-enacting it with iniquitous seasonings and additions of her own.
It was by virtue of this piece of legislative wisdom, which is without a model and without a copy in the law of any other civilised country, that Oscar Wilde was arrested and thrown into prison. His arrest was the signal for an orgy of Philistine rancour such as even London had never known before.
Lord Evandale had just rode off, when several of the insurgents, who were in the front of the pursuit, came up, denouncing vengeance on Henry Morton and Cuddie for having aided the escape of a Philistine, as they called the young nobleman. "What wad ye hae had us to do?" cried Cuddie. "Had we aught to stop a man wi' that had twa pistols and a sword?
These editorials make now to us who were on the inside amusing reading. They were full of Philistine talk and amazement, and generally conceded that Noyes was an innocent dupe, and all more or less doubted if his principal, the mysterious Mr. F. A. Warren, would ever come back to say so.
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