my surprise the check was only $6, but I was glad to appear in so good a magazine upon any terms. I did feel badly, though, when the article appeared cut to about 600 words, the rest having gone into the editor's waste-basket; but, true to my nature, I put carefully away my original draft of the one thousand words that had not been used, and years afterward found that those one thousand words exactly fitted into a leading article for a department I was then conducting in Everywoman's World a left-over, but just what was needed to combine with the fresh material.

made the advertisements on the vehicles its principal feature and sold it to a well known advertising journal.

Over and over again I have resurrected manuscripts that have proved worthless as fiction or as literary articles and found in them material that could be reconstructed so as to interest the editor of some business periodical. The pay for such an article might be only a few dollars, but it would at least reimburse me for stamps used in seeking a more ambitious market, and leave a little margin of consolation for previous disappointments.

Perhaps some day I shall go through my files and throw away some of their contents, but I doubt it. They are stale, I admit, but they were never unwholesome, and bit by bit I'll take them out, combine them with this or that fresh material, add tastier seasoning, give them new names, and some of those warmed-over literary dishes may be consumed with relish by the very same editors who loftily rejected them when fresh. DETROIT, Mich. Frances E. Gale.

In our newspaper printshop Monday is our Jonah day. Following the relaxation of Sunday the merchants have not planned any advertising campaigns for the week, and when the ad. man goes around they generally

say :

"Lemme 'lone till I have time to think. Come 'round in the morning."

In consequence the Monday's issue is a lean paper, so far as advertising goes, and I notice it's pretty much the same regarding news. Some of our folks have advocated cutting out the Blue Monday issue altogether, and using that day for getting steam up for the succeeding issues of the week.

The writer has his Blue Monday, the same as the ad. man and the merchant, only it is likely to be Blue Monday with him every

day in the week. I once read a legend about a desperate writer who made a bargain with the devil to think up for him a high-class plot for a story every day. The deal was terminated when the writer took a notion to use his partner as the main character in a book he was getting out. The devil objected

said he had too much notoriety already. On Blue Monday it seems there's nothing doing. The town is asleep, the people are dull, even the air has quit stirring. In the circumstances what is there for a writer to do? He has n't the money to travel to where big things are breaking loose. If he had the cash to travel he'd find somebody there ahead of him, and the story already written.

The Big Story is within you. It's not a thousand miles away. It's within your own

reading, your own knowledge, right at hand awaiting you. Country, forest, stream, town, and city the scene makes no difference. The Mill on the Floss had no mountain background, no towering skyscraper building, no marshaling of armed hosts. The scene was a quiet countryside, an old watermill, simple rustic characters; but what a drama it was ! Balzac loved to pitch his writing tent among quiet country people. Dickens's Tale of Two Cities" was not a masterpiece of dramatic action because the Terror o'ershadowed it, but because of the people he created.

When the writer sits down determined to work Blue Monday or any other day, the unseen fairies fetch material to him after a certain amount of travail; but he must have faith, must believe it will come, and believing he works with sincerity and efficiency.

Of course, good writing is simply good thinking. When we say of a person, 'He writes well," it means he thinks well. Good writing is not easy. No one conceives a masterpiece in a few moments' study. Around the root idea the forces from somewhere cluster, slowly, almost painfully. The master must pay the price. How to think? That is the question. Correct thinking comes not only from profound study and experienced observation, but from a mind and body pure and sound. You can detect the false note in the unclean like a discord on the harp.

In the future literature will come back to its own, because of satiety at the trivial. You know and I know that the rules of success today do not encourage men and women to give the best that is in them. The editors are wise. They know their people and they buy what the people like to read. A man came to me the other day with a magazine containing a story which he enthusiastically declared was the smartest thing he had ever read. The climax was citing a passage of Scripture that did not exist. Years before Mark Twain had used the same method, and doubtless the editor who bought the later story knew it, but he also judged that but few would recall that Mark Twain was the first with the idea, or if they did it would n't hurt much. He bought the story simply as a cold business proposition, and it found the favor he knew it would, despite of Mark Twain being the pioneer.

A book that sold upward of a million had for a hero a man who thrust from him a bad woman who loved him, and whom he might have saved without any complication with his real sweetheart. Not a person I know who read that book took the trouble to analyze that "hero" and discover what a cad he was. They simply said the book was "great!"

Some day the American public will take time to sit down and think. It will ask if what has been denominated "popular" has helped it along the way to right thinking. Then will come a demand for the work of the old high priests long since gone and wellnigh forgotten. The quack writer with his cap and bells, his tall fine-looking hero who can lick everybody in sight and outshoot Sergeant York, the beautiful heroine who outshines Mary Pickford, with all the clap-trap paraphernalia of the melodrama, will be brought to the bar of judgment. The clog dance and the beautiful heroine who just happens in at the bloody combat in the last chapter and throws her arms around the victor will have run their course.

The editors know good literature all right, and when the public gets ready for it they will see to it that the supply is at hand. It may be the great tragedy overseas will bring about the renaissance soon, because men who have fought across the rough edges of "No Man's Land" will not be interested in "heroes" who wear purple socks and hang around parlors during business hours. Nor will the fellow always posing with a "gun" in his hand excite them. One of the best things I have read in recent years came from a soldier, a Major who was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel after the Argonne. His simple sketch was entitled "The Night Before the Battle." He wrote of the soldiers and the scenes about the camp, just as they were, interpreting the heart of the fighting man with a reverent touch. It was real literature, though the officer had never done anything in that line before. The welcome accorded by many editors in the United States showed a wholesome appreciation that augurs well for the new dispensation, a dispensation when wordcraft will step aside and mind and heart become the guiding star.

THE WRITER is published the first of every month. It will be sent, postpaid, for $1.50 a year. The price of Canadian and foreign subscriptions is $1.62, including postage.

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not come to the attention of writers generally. There have just been two examples of this. G. P. Putnam's Sons offered a prize of $250 for the best list of fifty short stories published (in either books or magazines) between January 1, 1900, and June 30, 1919, in the United States, excluding translations, two-part stories, and stories by Kipling and O. Henry, but the offer was made in August and with the provision that lists must be mailed not later than August 30. Similarly, the Books and the Book World section of the New York Sun offered $300 in prizes for the four best letters one from any one in a publishing house on any phase of bookpublishing; one by any author on any phase of book-writing; one by any bookseller on any phase of book-selling; and one by anybody on any book or books published in 1919. Many of the readers of THE WRITER Would have been interested in this offer, but the announcement was not made until the end of August, and it stipulated that the letter must be received by the editor of Books and the Book World by October I. The Forum also recently announced a prize offer for manuscripts with so short a time allowed that it was not possible to bring it to the attention of writers generally, including the readers of THE WRITER. If editors or publishers wish to make a general appeal, they should allow ample time for their prize contests.

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In an age where price elevation is a current topic and where the H. C. of L. momentarily becomes higher, I wonder if any one has considered these things in connection with the magazine writers those, I should say, who depend entirely upon their pens and their friends the editors for a livelihood? It is a well known fact that the writer is in a curious predicament. He (or she) finds all living expenditures advance, but can find no way of meeting this advance save by doubling the fiction output. Labor, abstractly speaking, has protected its own by threats and strikes. The magazine writer has no means similar to this he may employ. Business houses have increased the salaries of their employees, but, with few exceptions, magazines have not raised their word rate. How, then, may the author meet and keep up with the daily increase in prices? He is only human, he is limited to just so many ideas and to so much

Editor of Atlantic Monthly Dear Sir I send to you under separate cover my poem entitled "The Rejected Voice."

If you care to read and review this book, and keep it, I should be pleased.

"The Rejected Voice" is the most profound and poignant hymn that has emanated from the heart of man since the birth of "The Book of Job." For sheer artistry, also, it shines unequaled, yet there lives not anywhere today a leader of literature noble enough to make known unto the world its worth.

"He picked up her hand, which she had carelessly left lying on the sofa near his," writes Robert W. Chambers in a story, and Bert Leston Taylor justly comments: "Careless is the word."

Mr. Munsey, advertising one of his newspaper story features, says: "It shows the wreck of a family, a girl widowed at fifteen

A fascinating study!" and John D. Wells makes the just comment, "It must be !"

A pamphlet published by J. Broadfield Warren, 602 West 146th street, New York City, prints in parallel columns seventy-three octavo pages of matter to show that much of the material of the book, "The Redemption of the Disabled," by Garrard Harris, was taken, without direct credit, from the book, "The Evolution of a National System of Vocational Re-education for Disabled Soldiers and Sailors," by Douglas C. McMurtrie, published by the Federal Board for Voca

[ Under this heading questions of literary interest will be answered, so far as possible. Questions not of special interest to writers should be directed elsewhere.]

It has always been impressed upon me that one of the rules of good English, and one of the essentials of good composition, was to avoid beginning a sentence with a Conjunction, "especially 'and' or 'but.'

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The perusal of modern editorials leads me to infer that this rule is obsolete. Leaving out of the question its continual infringement in magazine articies and stories, (in a story in Collier's, for instance, "and gins three sentences on one page), I wish to call attention to the editorial pages of some of the leading New York dailies. The Sun is supposed to be a model of perfect English, yet it repeatedly uses one of the conjunctions, "and' or "but," to begin an editorial sentence. The Tribune seems to be the greatest offender in his respect, if it is an offence. On one day it had five editorial sentences beginning with "and," and three with "but," and the day before it had no fewer than twelve editorial sentences beginning with "and" or "but." The average I have found to be about six a day.

Have the rules of grammar and composition changed, or are our editorial writers no longer to be looked up to as models of good English? A. Caulkins.

NEW YORK, N. Y.

[The use of "and" or "but" at the beginning of sentences should be discouraged, and

is avoided, as a rule, by good writers, but there are cases in which the use of these conjunctions in this way may be allowed. In most cases where the words appear in print wrongly used the remedy would be to run the two sentences together, separated by a semicolon. Sometimes, however, there is a distinct break in the line of thought, as, for instance, when a paragraph ends with a statement to which the writer wishes to express opposition. In that case there seems to be no good reason why the following paragraph should not begin with "but," to make the opposition clear. To be sure, the sentence in such a case as "But the American makes no such statement of the facts" might be written "The American, however, makes no such statement of the facts"; but there is a question whether the sentence beginning with "but" is not more forcible. There is less excuse generally for the use of "and" at the beginning of a sentence. Sometimes as, for instance, in a series of paragraphs commenting on a series of quotations the use of "and" at the beginning of paragraphs may be allowable, or even advisable, but in most cases the use of a semi-colon, or sometimes of a comma, before "and," with the two sentences joined into one, is to be preferred. W. H. H.]

[(1) There are no magazines that are more likely than others to accept stories from new authors. A new author has as good a chance as an old one to get a story printed in any magazine, if the story is acceptable to the editor. In fact, of two stories equally good the editor may prefer the new author's story, because he can get it cheaper. All magazines are printing stories from new authors all the time. Acceptability is the main thing.

(2) There is no price "usually paid by the various magazines for stories of average merit." Prices paid vary from little or nothing to large amounts, depending on the policy of the periodical, the value set by the

California has a State Foet Laureate, made such by legislative action recorded in Chapter 61, California Statutes of 1919, p. 1537, as follows:

Whereas, Ina Coolbrith, of San Francisco, California, has brought prominently to the attention of the world the glories and beauties of California's fruits and flowers, its climate, its scenery, its wealth and possibilities, through her many brilliant poems, and has contributed to the high standing of our literature, thereby winning the admiration and gratitude of all loyal Californians, and is truly deserving of our most favorable recognition and mention; therefore, be it

Resolved, by the senate, the assembly concurring, that Ina Coolbrith be hereby recognized and given the honorary title of The Loved Laurel-Crowned Poet of California.