fixity of type, even though they present no evidence of systematic improved breeding.

Crossbred This term applies to the progeny of purebred parents of different breeds, but of the same species.

Grade A grade is the offspring resulting from mating a purebred with a scrub, or from mating animals not purebred, but having close purebred ancestors. The offspring of a purebred and a grade is also a grade, but through progressive improvement becomes a high grade.

The use of verbs manufactured out of nouns is satirized in the story of the city boy who wrote to his brother on the farm : "Thursday we autoed out to the Country Club, where we golfed until dark. Then we trolleyed back to town and danced till dawn. Then we motored to the beach and Fridayed there." The brother on the farm wrote

back: "Yesterday we buggied to town and baseballed all the afternoon. Then we went to Ned's and pokered till morning. Today we muled out to the cornfield and gee-hawed till sundown. Then we suppered and then we piped for a while. After that we staircased up to our room and bedsteaded until the clock fived."

In Swedish the article is affixed to the noun, so that "Dagbladet," for instance, means "the Journal" "Dagblad," Journal, and "et," the. To speak of "the Svenska Dagbladet," therefore, is like saying, "the the Journal," or "the la grippe." The proper way is to say "the Svenska Dagblad." Also, in the Scandinavian languages "ö" means island, so that speaking of "the island of Florö' is like saying "The island of Flor Island." Edward B. Hughes.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

It makes the brain whirl to read the constant succession of mimeographed letters accompanying printed "Agreements" and "Contracts," with lovely additional clauses mimeographed so that to the inexpert they look just like typewriting, filled with promises and half-promises and ingenious suggestions that look like promises although they are not, all calculated (carefully calculated, in fact) to make the unsophisticated author who receives them think that the literary millennium has come that are flooding the mails addressed to writers who answer newspaper and magazine advertisements offering to pay cash for manuscripts, or to publish song poems with great profit to the song poets. The ingenuity of the authors of this fascinating printed and mimeographed matter is boundless. Without making definite promises that they cannot fulfil without profit to themselves (whatever the loss to the author or the song writer may be), they make ingenious suggestions of possible profit

and the rendering of impossible services which may easily be accepted as promises by innocent persons, who are thus induced to part with money that will never come back to them again.

These schemers have associates in different cities through the country, all playing into one another's hands, and woe to the writer who gets tangled in their web! They offer in their advertisements to pay cash for manuscripts, but they have no idea of buying any manuscripts with their Own money. The writer who sends a manuscript receives a printed "Contract" or "Agreement," under the terms of which he is to send some amount of money say, $9.75 or $15 to pay the cost of offering his manuscript to editors and publishers, and by a special clause added to the "Contract," mimeographed to look like typewriting, at least one sale of his manuscript is guaranteed. The statement is made that it is impossible to say beforehand how much any manuscript will bring, but the

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Or, it may be, he will receive a circular letter, printed to make it look as if it were typewritten, saying that he is especially favored since his manuscript has been approved and will be accepted as fifty dollars cash in payment for a $100 share of publishing company stock, if he will only send fifty dollars in cash in addition. The manuscript which is thus valued at fifty dollars if fifty dollars in cash is sent along with it is often the one which his advertising friends have guaranteed to place if he would send them fifteen dollars, and which in that case they would have "sold" for perhaps $2.50, but they are not particular. If this special manuscript has been mislaid, or sold, or is otherwise unavailable, they express their willingness to allow him fifty dollars for any other manuscript that the author may send that seems to him equally good, provided he sends also fifty dollars cash. The music publishing concern may ask a song poem writer to pay forty or fifty dollars for two hundred copies of the first edition of his song, with the agreement that the profits from all copies sold shall be divided between him and the "Music Company" on a fiftyfifty basis. It will be safe for the song poem writer to assume that the Music Company will not lose money on this proposition. Being inexperienced and taking natural pride in his work, he may not give much weight to the safeguarding clause which the company includes in the "Contract," to the effect that there is nothing in the "Agreement" to imply that the song will be a financial success and bring fame and fortune to the author, although the company hopes that it will be a success, "both financially and artistically."

are

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There may be a question whether those who send out this delusive matter are legally liable, since those who are familiar with editing and publishing can see that they are only offering a bad bargain, but their offers addressed to unsophisticated persons, who are misled by their ingenious suggestions of promises that they do not really make. They are trading on the vanity and inexperience of writers, and are getting money for which they make no adequate return. For at least ten years now they have been operating in this way through the mails, in the first place asking only some small sum $1.25, maybe for "revision" of a manuscript offered in response to their advertisements offering to buy manuscripts for cash, and developing their enterprises until now they are asking innocent authors to send $7.50 or fifteen dollars to pay the cost of offering a manuscript to editors and publishers; or forty dollars for 195 copies of the first edition of a song; or fifty dollars in payment for a share of stock; or $200, or $300, or more, for two hundred copies of a 5,000-word manuscript published "in book form." All writers may not know that an ordinary book contains at least 75,000 words. One of these advertisers has the brazen impudence to send out an alleged fac-simile of the certificate sent out by the Committee on Public Information to about all the newspapers and magazines in the country expressing appreciation of help given during the war, as if it were a special certificate to the publication named carrying the endorsement of the Government !

It is a question how long the postoffice department will allow this unsavory business to be carried on through the mails, as it has been for the last ten years at least. Certainly it should be stopped. Until it is, writers who receive any such literature as that referred to will help the cause of righteousness if they will send it, in the envelopes in which it comes to them, with a letter of complaint addressed : 'Chief Inspector, Postoffice Department, Washington, D. C." Any who have been victimized should send complaints, giving the particulars, to the same address. Arthur Fosdick.

BOSTON, Mass.

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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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The publication office of THE WRITER is Room 63, 244 Washington street, but all communications should be addressed :

Dear Sir Believing THE WRITER to be pub lished in the interest and welfare of writers throughout the country, I am writing you this letter to voice a complaint against the wrong that is being done writers by some of the large publishing concerns.

September 20 I mailed a manuscript to the Street & Smith Corporation, for Ainslee's Magazine. Receiving no reply, I wrote them a letter four weeks afterward, October 15, inquiring the reason. Immediately I received a letter telling me my manuscript was safe, and was being considered. This letter was signed by W. Adolphe Roberts, editor of Ainslee's, and was of such a hopeful nature that I felt confident of a sale. In the meantime, I had allowed a neighboring editor to read the carbon copy of the manuscript. He was much pleased with it and wanted to purchase it, naming a maximum rate for it. Confident that I would receive a check in a day or two from Street & Smith, I refused him, and he left in a huff.

Imagine my edification this morning [ October 27] to be presented with the manuscript by the postman, after a six-weeks' absence. Not a word of explanation or apology was enclosed, save the conventional printed slip, which with that irony of mockery bore the inscription on the back, "All manuscripts except those meriting a spe cial consideration will be read and returned within two weeks." I am in the seventh heaven of delight to know that my manuscript must have received that "special consideration "; it surely must have been some consideration to warrant it being detained three times longer than usual. Still I have nothing but the dirty, wrinkled, finger-spotted manuscript and the enmity of a prominent editor in these parts to repay me for that "special consideration" and the six-weeks' wait.

I enclose the editor's slip with the guaranty to return a decision within two weeks. Why, then, take six weeks for the same decision? Many writers, I believe, are suffering thusly, and I believe this should be brought to their attention and a combined effort made to check this evil practice, for at this rate it would take years before a manuscript could possibly make the rounds of New York alone.

Very sincerely yours,

The rejection slip of the Street & Smith Corporation, which was enclosed with this letter, has these paragraphs printed on the back :

The Street & Smith magazines offer a splendid field for all writers of fiction. No story is too

long none too short. Plots should be strong and the action quick. Simplicity of construction and clearness of style are also important. Dialect stories, character studies, and stories with tragic endings are not desired. Stories with an American setting are preferable. Manuscripts should be addressed to the particu lar Street & Smith magazine for which the author thinks them best suited. They will be read by the editor of that magazine, and if found unavailable will then be considered for the other Street & Smith publications. All manuscripts, except those meriting a special consideration, will be read and returned within two weeks. Those accepted will be paid for promptly.

To the complaining correspondent the editor of THE WRITER sent the following reply :

to

Dear Sir: You are right in believing that THE WRITER is published in the interest of writers, and the magazine is always ready to condemn and try to stop any wrong treatment of them, but, after carefully reading your letter of October 27, it seems to me that, with one possible exception, you have no cause for complaint. It was all right for you to inquire October 15 about the manuscript that you submitted Ainslee's Magazine September 20, although the editor of a large magazine is reasonably prompt if he reports judgment on a manuscript within a month. Your inquiry brought an immediate reply that your manuscript was safe and under consideration, which, in the case of Ainslee's, meant that it had passed the first Reader, and had a chance of being accepted, but by no means guaranteed its acceptance. In other words, it was still sub judice, and you had no reason to feel confident that you would receive a check for it. If you did not wish to wait longer for judgment, you had a right to recall your manuscript, and it would no doubt have been returned to you at once. If the editor had returned the manuscript to you on receipt of your inquiry, without further consideration, you would probably have felt aggrieved. He did the only reasonable thing kept the manuscript until a final decision could be reached and returned it to you when the decision was unfavorable, after keeping it only five weeks, not at all an unreasonable length of time. You must remember that every large magazine receives thousands of manuscripts every year, and that it necessarily takes considerable time to judge them properly, with the exception of those that are clearly unavailable.

The editor of Ainslee's in the printed matter on the back of his rejection slip does not guarantee a decision in two weeks, excepting in the case of manuscripts that first examination shows he cannot use. If, because he notified you that your manuscript was still under consideration,

you refused an offer for it from another editor, the editor of Ainslee's certainly is not to blame. For that matter, I cannot understand why the editor you speak of should have gone off in a huff, or why you have incurred his enmity.

If your manuscript was returned to you in bad condition, you have a just complaint against the editors who handled it, but otherwise, with the best disposition in the world toward you, I cannot see that you have any reason to find fault. As a rule, the writer who gets a decision from the editor of a large magazine in less than four or five weeks is fortunate. If he is notified in effect that his manuscript has passed the first Reader, he should not assume that the manuscript is sure of being accepted, but only that there is a chance of its being taken. The editor's notification means only that he is better off than those whose manuscripts have been returned at once.

"Think of a newspaper paying from $350 to $2,500 for just one short story!" says an advertisement. "Next in order is a prize contest," says Don Marquis in the New York 'for readers who can guess Evening Sun, which is the $350 story and which is the other kind."

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W. H. H.

LITERARY SHOP TALK.

[This department is open to readers of THE WRITER for the relation of interesting experiences in writing or in dealing with editors, and for the free discussion of any topic connected with literary work. Contributors are requested to be brief.]

It is n't easy to get a reputation as an author. Years ago a lady who had found it impossible to get any of her work accepted asked me to give her any small manuscripts I had tried around and did not want. She wished, she said, to send them out under her name, so that she could have the pleasure of seeing her name in print. As I had some hundreds lying idle, I consented, but her ingenious endeavor failed. Not one of these effusions was ever accepted. CHICAGO, Ill.

La Touche Hancock.

Beth Bradford Gilchrist, author of the story, "Eyes That See," in the October Harper's, is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, and her "Life of Mary Lyon," published by Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., in 1910, is the latest biography of its famous founder. Miss Gilchrist has long been known as a writer of young people's books, and she has written stories, both long and short, for St. Nicholas and the Youth's Companion. Her latest serial in St. Nicholas, "The Camerons of Highboro," was published in book form in September by the Century Company. With the exception of an excursion or two some years ago into the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, Miss Gilchrist says that the production of stories for grown-ups never really interested her, but now, with the group of short stories, "The Crossways," "His Fiancée," and "The Gulf," published in Harper's this last summer, her interest is turning to adult fiction.

Ethel M. Pomeroy, who had a poem, "Night," in Breezy Stories for November, has been for several years the literary editor of a fiction magazine, so that she finds little opportunity for original creative work, but she says she has had a splendid opportunity to gain valuable knowledge and experience, and she is sure that she should never be discouraged or offended by a rejection slip, for she knows how eager editors are to discover acceptable material and new writers. Miss Pomeroy's work has appeared in the Youth's Companion, the publications of the C. H. Young Publishing Company, and in other weekly and monthly periodicals. A playlet of hers has been produced with favor by women's clubs and other amateur organiza

tions, and some of her short poems have found favor as lyrics with song writers.

James Henry Thompson, who wrote the stories, "Mother Necessity," in the October Black Cat and "Fidelity," in the November number of Breezy Stories, has been a newspaper worker for twenty years, serving in all editorial capacities. For many years his literary work has extended over a broad field of subjects, but his first short story, "Nicholas Drakos Goes Home," was published in the Black Cat last year, winning first prize in the magazine's contest, and later being awarded a place in Edward J. O'Brien's list of notable stories of the year. Mr. Thompson has recently given up the greater portion of his newspaper work to devote his time to fiction, and another story, "The Fourth Notch," will soon be published in the Argosy. Many of his angling essays have appeared in the American Angler. His published books are Traümerei," now out of print, and "The Real Diary of a Boy of 1863." Mr. Thompson is an ardent collector of Americana, and possesses one of the largest collections of American humor in existence.

Edna Valentine Trapnell, author of the story, "Sir Galahad and the Alley Cat," which Live Stories printed in its November issue, says that she gathered the material for the story in a New York hospital and that the characters are real, but she adds that they will probably sue her for libel if they ever read the story, which is made "out of whole cloth." Mrs. Trapnell is a New Yorker, of Quaker, Puritan, and French ancestry, was educated in a Friends' school, and married a Virginian. With the exception of two years in the West Virginia coal fields, she has always lived in New York or on Long Island. Some years ago she had stories published in one of the Munsey publications and in the Ten Story Book, but since then, until about a year ago, she has had no time for writing. "Sir Galahad" is her third story to be published recently in Live Stories and another one will come out in the next issue. The People's Home Journal also has accepted stories. Her verse has