The PHILISTINE, May 1899

Heart 2 Heart Talks with Grown-Ups by the Pastor of his Flock
An eight-year-old girl in East Aurora was required by her teacher to write a composition and the next day handed in the following brief but startling romance:

Once there was a poor young man who was in love with a Rich Girl, whose mother had a large Candy Store. The poor young man wanted to marry the candy lady’s daughter, but he was too poor to buy the Furniture. One day a Bad Man offered him twenty-five dollars to become a drunkard. The poor young man was dreadfully tempted, because he wanted to be rich enuf to marry the candy lady’s daughter. But when he got to the saloon door with the Bad Man he said: ‘I will not break my pledge even to be rich. Get thee behind me Satan.’ So he went home and on the way he found a pocket-book with one hundred million dollars in it. So he went and told the candy store lady’s daughter and they were married. They had a lovely wedding, and the next day they had twins. Thus you see that Virtue is its own reward.

The PHILISTINE
May 1899, 10 cents

"It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to listen to the song of fools" Ecclesiastes, 7:5

Philistinism via wikipedia

Philistinism is a derogatory term used to describe a particular attitude or set of values. A person called a Philistine (in the relevant sense), is said to despise or undervalue art, beauty, intellectual content, and/or spiritual values. Philistines are also said to be materialistic, to favor conventional social values unthinkingly, and to favour forms of art that have a cheap and easy appeal (e.g. kitsch).

Philistinism affords a contrast to Bohemianism, as the character of a smugly conventional bourgeois social group perceived to lack all the
desirably soulful 'bohemian' characteristics, especially an artistic temperament and a broad cultural horizon open to the avant-garde. To the chosen few, the 'Philistines' embodied a smug, anti-intellectual threatening majority, in the 'culture wars' of the 19th century.

Goethe had several comments on the type. "The Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own", and "What is a philistine? A hollow gut, full of fear and hope that God will have mercy!"