It has long been recognized that the sway of fashion
is as absolute in things spiritual as in things temporal, in the intellectual sphere as in the material. Creeds and dogmas, poets and pastimes go in and out of public favour as easily and as arbitrarily as women's hats increase or diminish their perimeter—or their skirts mount to knee or drop to ankle. But to-day a new tyranny of the mind is with us—the acrostic. The talk of "the man at his club" is, we read, no longer of the rubber or the revoke, but of the " upright " and the "light." We do not know if the new despot—he is really a very old one revived—be beneficent. Certainly he sends his servants scurrying hither and thither in the search of knowledge ; or at any rate in search of that form of knowledge that can be found in a book of refer- ence. We do not know if many of our readers are addicted to this arduous form of mental exercise. If any of them could explain to us and to each other this new social phenomenon we should be both interested and grateful.
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