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THE WRITER:

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS.

VOL. VII.

BOSTON, AUGUST, 1894.

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Just as religious enthusiasts spring to their feet and relate their experiences for the general good, so allow me to give briefly some information about the art of play-writing.

Of untold assistance to the playwright is a detailed knowledge of the plot, which should be thoroughly outlined before he composes one word of the play.

In most cases the dialogue will be suggested by the incidents of the plot as they unfold themselves.

Omit all attempts at fancy writing, and present each idea with the greatest clearness as well as force.

When at work, always try to retain complete control of your best judgment, lest it err through yielding to the excitement of the stirring incidents with which you are dealing.

If a point be reached where there is much indecision as to the next step, do not resort to some lazy expedient to get you out of the

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trouble, but think until the difficulty has been surmounted.

Do not feel certain that, because your play reads smoothly, it will, consequently, be successful as a dramatic work, for most of the best plays read poorly, owing to frequent interruptions caused by the interspersion of business and stage directions, which help to interpret the lines when the play is presented.

A play should be all action. Movement is not necessarily action, for much action may be suggested by a properly inflected sentence; while a scene full of action may be created by a person looking in through a stage window, for instance, and uttering exclamations descriptive of what is occurring in the room, but out of sight of the audience.

Try to acquire a definite idea of the proper proportions of the gay and the solemn, just as an artist does of light and shade, not permitting too great a predominance of either, yet disposing each so as to produce the best effects.

Avoid having similar scenes, dialogues, or groups of characters follow each other too closely, as an audience quickly becomes wearied by sameness.

It is well to remember that an element of suspense is most desirable, and if you withhold until the last moment the explanation of some important point, the audience will be less likely to disturb the final tableau by reaching after coats and hats.

Bear in mind that there is an absolute necessity for supplying the strongest possible motives for all important actions and of revealing them at the proper moment.

Think of the main climax of your play as the peak of a mountain. All that precedes it must

Copyright, 1894, by WILLIAM H. HILLS. All rights reserved.

lead the audience, by pleasing stages, directly up to it. All that follows must conduct them once more by gradual descent to the level ground on the opposite side.

In conclusion, permit me to liken a good play to a beautiful mosaic, combining many thousands of little details, within the limits of a

prescribed frame. Unexpected, though pleasing, combinations are observable upon each fresh inspection, while at the same time all its minute parts are so deftly and artistically arranged that distance serves only to enhance its perfection. Edward Kirkland Cowing.

NEW YORK, N. Y.

WHAT IS "MENTAL DYSPEPSIA"?

In the rush and competition of modern life, when the country is flooded with literature, good, bad, and indifferent; when free libraries are found in every town and city, and paper books may be purchased for the price of a ferryticket, there has arisen a peculiar malady, which is popularly known as "mental dyspepsia." The causes are over-application, in the widest sense, and desultory or ill-chosen reading; the effects are brain-tire and confusion; and the cure is reduction, or regulation in mental diet.

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It

George Eliot strikes the key-note of the hour when she observes in 'Middlemarch," seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and could never enjoy them, because they are too tired."

While brain exercise conduces to longevity and happiness, the quantity and quality should be taken into consideration; for, as has been well said, "It is not what we eat, but what we digest, that makes us strong; not what we read, but what we remember, that makes us wise."

For every hour spent with a book many scholars recommend another hour of thought; as by gradual and persistent training the mind may become a storehouse of facts and fancies, from which supplies may be drawn in leisure moments, crowding out the common-place and trivial.

"Memory," said the schoolboy, "is what you forget with." It is impossible to remember everything, and much may be profitably forgot

ten; while the wheat should be separated from the chaff by judicious skipping.

Valuable aids to recollection are found in strict attention to the text and review, however slight, of the subject under consideration. By way of illustration of this point, let any one skim lightly through a number of topics something like the following: "Are Our College Graduates Fitted for the Battle of Life?" "The Language of Monkeys," "What is Buddhism?" "How to Renovate Old Mahogany," "A Charming Costume for a Débutante," "Some Remarks on the Occultation of Orion," "An Old-fashioned Recipe for Molasses Pie," and "The Seal-fisheries of Alaska." Nine times out of ten he will say that there is "no news," or, "I have read until I am dizzy, but I cannot remember a single thing."

It is undesirable to "run through" an encyclopædia or reference-book, merely for the sake of killing time; to begin a book in the middle, or to "read one backward," chapter by chapter, as some people have actually been known to do. An ignoramus once remarked that "the dictionary was an exceedingly interesting work; but the ideas were rather disconnected." The taking of notes or memoranda is often carried to excess; but, in its place, the habit is of important service.

Every one, poor or rich, has some time to read. Not a few of the world's greatest scholars studied in stolen moments, over the anvil, the counter, or the shoemaker's bench. In the

course of a few years a woman once learned seven languages while waiting, daily, for her kettle to boil.

Life is too short, and good books are too many, to give a place to trash, which weakens the mind, and renders it incapable of appreciating the highest. While the "novel habit" is undesirable, the thoughtful reading of masterpieces of fiction tends to broaden the mental horizon, to cultivate the art of conversation, and to increase one's knowledge of human nature. Howells has described a certain class of weak novels as "having a moral, minced small, thinned with milk and water, and flavored with sentimentality or religiosity."

Any sort of a story is often thought fit to put into a trunk on a vacation-trip; but there are plenty of books of good pure fun, such as "Rudder Grange" and the "Squirrel Inn," by Stockton, or My Summer in a Garden," by Charles Dudley Warner, which divert without deteriorating.

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Occasionally, a book may be read several times with profit; or a deep book and a lighter one may be perused alternately.

It has been said that every one who works with his brain should cultivate a plot of ground

with his own hands. The book-worm is often apt to neglect his fellow-men, forgetting that friction with the cultivated produces a polish created in no other way. An interchange of thoughts and ideas would affect his intellectual faculties as favorably as would an exchange of shells and minerals increase the value of a cabinet collection.

The mind, left completely to its own society, tends to revolve in an ever-narrowing circle, and feeds upon itself.

Sometimes the over-worked student finds relaxation in hobbies, in pictures, or music, or in poems like Tennyson's lovely "Idylls" or Owen Meredith's "Lucile." But the greatest cure for the brain-weary is to turn from the printed page to the wonderful book of Nature. Let them climb the eternal hills, and fill their lungs with God's free oxygen; listen to the song of the meadow-lark and inhale the perfume of the field-flower; unravel the mysteries of the forests and the secrets of the sea; and, with a mind expanded and a spirit elevated, they need not cry with Solomon: “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." OAKLAND, Calif.

Bertha F. Herrick.

KATE CHOPIN.

Mrs. Kate Chopin, the author of "Bayou Folk," was born in St. Louis in the early 'fifties and, as can be readily calculated, is not the "young person" that many of her reviewers are bent on thinking her to be. This wrong impression of theirs regarding her, while it is in some respects flattering, is one which Mrs. Chopin seems anxious to correct. Her father was Thomas O'Flaherty, a native of Galloway, Ireland, and for many years a prominent merchant in St. Louis. Her mother was the daughter of Wilson Faris, a Kentuckian, and Athénaïse Charleville, a descendant of a Hugue

not family which had settled in “Old Kaskaskia" in the early part of the eighteenth century. The predominance of Celtic and the presence of so much French blood in Mrs. Chopin's ancestry may account for the delicate and sensuous touch and the love of art for art's sake which characterize all her work, and which are qualities foreign to most Teutonic productions.

Her first childish impressions were gathered just before and during the war and in the latter days of slavery. Her father's house was full of negro servants, and the soft creole French and

patois and the quaint darkey dialect were more familiar to the growing child than any other form of speech. She also knew the faithful love of her negro "mammy," and saw the devotion of which the well-treated slaves were capable during the hard times of the war, when the men of the family were either dead or fighting in the ranks of the "lost cause."

Mrs. Chopin's girlish friends remember well her gifts as a teller of marvellous stories, most of them the impromptu flashings of childish imagination; and her favorite resort was a stepladder in the attic, where, wrapped in a big shawl in the winter, or in airy dishabille in the dog days, she would pore over the stacks of poetry and fiction which were stored there the shelves of the library being reserved for solid and pretentious cyclopædias and Roman Catholic religious works. She was not distinguished as a scholar during her rather irregular attendance at the convent school, as she preferred to read Walter Scott and Edmund Spenser to doing any sums or parsing stupid sentences, and only during the last two years of her school life did she ever do any serious work. Her schoolmates say that her essays and poetic exercises were thought to be quite remarkable, not only by the scholars, but even by the sisters; and, perhaps, had Mrs. Chopin's environment been different, her genius might have developed twenty years sooner than it did.

But many things occurred to turn her from literary ambition. At seventeen she left school and plunged into the whirl of fashionable life, for two years being one of the acknowledged belles of St. Louis, a favorite not only for her beauty, but also for her amiability of character and her cleverness. She was already fast acquiring that knowledge of human nature which her stories show, though she was then turning it to other than artistic triumphs. She married Mr. Oscar Chopin, a wealthy cotton factor of New Orleans, a distant connection of hers, the Charlevilles having hosts of "cousins" in the Pelican state.

After spending some time in Europe with her husband, she passed the next ten years of her life in New Orleans, engrossed in the manifold duties which overpower a society woman and the conscientious mother of a

large and growing family; for six children were born during that period. Toward the close of the decade, her husband gave up his business and removed to Natchitoches Parish, among the bayous of the Red River, to manage several plantations belonging to himself and his relatives. However, his life as a planter was short. He died in 1882, in the midst of the cotton harvest.

It was then that Mrs. Chopin, having rejected all offers of assistance from kindly relatives, undertook the management of her plantations and developed much ability as a business woman. She had to carry on correspondence with the cotton factors in New Orleans, make written contracts, necessitating many personal interviews with the poorer creoles, the Acadians, and the "free mulattoes," who raised the crop "on shares," see that the plantation store was well stocked, and sometimes even, in emergencies, keep shop herself. It was hard work, but in doing it she had the opportunity of closely observing all those oddities of Southern character which give so much life and variety to her pages.

In the midst of all her labors she still found time to keep up her reading, which she had never abandoned, but the subjects which now attracted her were almost entirely scientific, the departments of Biology and Anthropology having a special interest for her. The works of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer were her daily companions; for the study of the human species, both general and particular, has always been her constant delight.

After a few years, when Mrs. Chopin had not only straightened out her affairs, but had put her plantations in a flourishing condition, she returned to her old home, and has ever since made St. Louis her residence.

Having led such a busy life on the plantation, she had learned how to economize her time, and all her social and household duties here, together with her reading, were not sufficient to occupy her mind. Then, urged by the advice of an intimate friend, who had been struck with the literary quality of some of her letters, she began to write, very diffidently at first and only for her friend's perusal, essays, poems, and stories. Finally, she dared to send

her productions to the magazines.

With the exception of one beautiful little poem, they were promptly returned. Mrs. Chopin contends that they were properly treated, having been, as she says, "crude and unformed.” She did not, as an unappreciated genius, abuse the editors, but began to study to better her style. In order to aid her selfcriticism she sold and even gave away her productions to local periodicals, and holds that she learned much from seeing her work in "cold type." She wrote a long novel, "At Fault," which was printed in St. Louis in 1890. In this somewhat imperfect work may be seen the germs of all she has done since. The story has some faults of construction, but the character drawing is excellent, and in the case of the young creole, Grégoire Santien," faultless. During the following year she wrote a great number of short stories and sketches, which she sent about to different magazines, and the most of them were not returned as before. The Youth's Companion, Harper's Young People, and Wide Awake took all her children's stories, and the Century Magazine accepted "A No Account Creole," the longest tale in Bayou Folk." This story appeared last January, after having been kept for about three years, and was the means of making Mrs. Chopin's name better known to the general public. In the mean time, other periodicals had accepted and published her work, which now numbers some sixty stories, and Houghton & Mifflin accepted the collection of twentythree tales known as "Bayou Folk."

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Mrs. Chopin has also written a second novel, which a few favored friends have been permitted to read, and which, in the estimation of some, is her very strongest work. It is to be hoped that it will soon see the light.

She is particularly favored in not being obliged to depend upon her writing for her livelihood. There is, consequently, no trace of hack writing in any of her work. When the theme of a story occurs to her she writes it out immediately, often at one sitting, then, after a little, copies it out carefully, seldom making corrections. She never retouches after that. Personally, Mrs. Chopin is a most interesting and attractive woman. She has a charming

face, with regular features and very expressive brown eyes, which show to great advantage beneath the beautiful hair, prematurely gray, which she arranges in a very becoming fashion. Her manner is exceedingly quiet, and one realizes only afterward how many good and witty things she has said in the course of the conversation.

While not pretending to be a student, she still keeps well informed of the leading movements of the age, and in literature she decidedly leans to the French school. She reads with pleasure Molière, Alphonse Daudet, and especially De Maupassant. Zola, in her opinion, while colossal in his bigness, takes life too clumsily and seriously, which is the fault she also finds with Ibsen. Americans, in their artistic insight and treatment, are, she thinks, well up with the French; and, with the advantage which they enjoy of a wider and more variegated field for observation, would, perhaps, surpass them, were it not that the limitations imposed upon their art by their environment hamper a full and spontaneous expression. Mrs. Chopin has little to say of the English workers. She treats rather condescendingly a certain class of contemporary English women writers, whose novels are now the vogue. She calls them a lot of clever women gone wrong, and thinks that a welldirected course of scientific study might help to make clearer their vision; might, anyhow, bring them a little closer to Nature, with whom at present they seem to have not even a bowing acquaintance. She has great respect for Mrs. Humphry Ward's achievements; but Mrs. Ward is, au fond, a reformer, and such tendency in a novelist she considers a crime against good taste-only the genius of a Dickens or a Thackeray can excuse it.

From time to time Mrs. Chopin returns to Natchitoches to look after her business affairs, and also to refresh her recollections of that land of creoles and 'Cadians. The people of Natchitoches always receive her enthusiastically, since they thoroughly endorse her artistic presentation of their locality and its population; for Mrs. Chopin is not, like most prophets, without honor in her own country.

ST. LOUIS, Mo.

William Schuyler.

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