beginners in writing was never so high before as it is at the present time. Nearly everybody writes fairly well, nowadays, and while the number of those who have transcendent literary genius may be as small as it ever was, one important reason why beginners in writing do not meet with better success financially is, that they have so many fairly well qualified competitors. No young writer, however, who writes because he feels that he has something to say, should be discouraged either by the number of his competitors or by the doubt of financial profit. As for writers who write because they want to say something, the sooner they quit the better for all concerned; but the writers who really have a mission ought not to be discouraged by anybody's gloomy advice. Every famous writer was a beginner once, and if he had not begun, he would not be famous now. Sometimes a beginner makes fairly good wages at the very start. Mrs. Humphry Ward, for instance, has published only three books, but she is said to have made $80,000 from "David Grieve," $80,000 from Marcella," and $40,000 from

"Robert Elsmere." THE WRITER will not vouch for the accuracy of these statistics, but there is no question that Mrs. Ward's work, although she is a beginner, has been financially very profitable to her.

Of course, the average young writer cannot reasonably hope for any such good fortune, but if he writes because he has something to say, and not because he wants to say something, he has a good chance of fair remuneration for his work. It is foolish, as the Congregationalist says, for a young writer to hope to support himself wholly by literary work, but literary work often brings a very pleasant addition to an income derived regularly from some other source. The school teacher, for instance, who makes from $50 to $100 a year by writing for various periodicals finds the money a useful addition to her income, although she may now and then give the editor of the Congregationalist a pathetic and disagreeable experience, perhaps, by sending him a story which he does n't like. The work is pleasant to her, too, and, gaining facility with practice, she may, if she has talent,

very likely increase her income from writing until she is enabled to give up school teaching. entirely in time. Let every beginner, then, who has a story to tell, of whatever kind, tell his story as well as he knows how, and try its fortune with the editorial guild. If he expects fame and fortune at the start, disappointment will probably be his fate; but if he is reasonable in his expectations, he has on the whole as good a chance, perhaps, as the editor of the Congregationalist himself had, in the vanished long ago, when he began.

Some time ago attention was called to the value of THE WRITER to authors as a means of keeping informed about the important news Since then a letter of the literary market. has been received from Albert E. Lawrence, in which he says:

I have found THE WRITER Very helpful, and one feature I wish to speak of particularly-that of noticing prize offers. Through it I learned of the New York Observer prize offers last winter, and the story which I submitted was given half of the second prize money. I hope you will continue this feature

A GUIDE TO THE MS. MARKET. A book that will become extremely useful to the young climber on the literary ladder may be made at home. The knowledge contained therein may be the result of experience, or it may be obtained from less expensive sources.

The book should be, originally, a blank-book, with pages of generous width. It should be divided into departments for Literary, Religious, Floral, Domestic, Agricultural, and other publications; and to each publication should be allotted four or five lines.

Upon the first line in each case should be written the name and address of the publication; on the second, a memorandum of the style and length of article preferred by it; on the third, information about the prices paid - whether

payment by word, line, column, or article, and ⚫ when payment is made; whether on acceptance, on publication, monthly, quarterly, or halfyearly; on the fourth, notes about the general treatment given to contributors, etc.; the fifth line is left blank for the addition of items of which one may come into possession from time to time.

The publications should be listed in their several departments according to their merits and literary standing.

In preparing an article for the publications in any department, the beginner should seek to write for the best one in the list, conforming to its requirements, and reaching its standard, if possible. Then, if, after a careful study of the completed article, comparing it with those in the publication for which it was prepared, the writer decides that it is worthy to be sent to that one, let it be sent there. If it is returned, it may be offered to the next, and it is quite certain unless the author is a conceited donkey, and has written utter trash- to find a market before it reaches the bottom of the list. With such a book, and by following the above method, a writer may be saved many stamps and much disappointment in the course of a year. Beth Day.

SOUTH KAUKAUNA, Wis.

QUERIES.

[Questions relating to literary work or literary topics will be answered in this department. Questions must be brief, and of general interest. Questions on general topics should be directed elsewhere.]

(1.) If a manuscript should be declined by Harper & Brothers, for instance, and it should then be sent to Charles Scribner's Sons, is there a possibility that the manuscript would be referred by them to the same Readers who had previously examined it? In other words, do different publishers sometimes employ the same manuscript Readers, or does each publisher have his own separate corps?

(2.) What do advertisement writers generally charge for short "paragraphical" advertisements, sometimes written in prose and sometimes in poetry? C. J.

[(1.) There is a possibility that two successive publishers might refer a manuscript to the

Bemis, son of the renowned author of "Nothing," who died in 1928, was a misogynist.

so as to make it plain whether it was Bemis or his father who died in 1928? A. O'K. [There is nothing ambiguous about the following sentence:

Bemis, who was the son of the renowned author of "Nothing," and who died in 1928, was a misogynist.

To show that the man who died was Bemis' father, the sentence might be written:

Bemis - the son of the renowned author of " died in 1928- was a misogynist.

Nothing," who

Kellogg in the July WRITER. An excellent illustration of the rule is afforded by the following sentence, which I came across in a story yesterday: "He was a noble fellow wonderfully versatile, brave, and generous to a fault." If you omit the comma after brave, you say that the hero in question was brave to a fault, which is not what the author meant. Again, take this sentence: "For dinner he had lobster and vinegar, and cherries, and terrapin, and bread and milk." All the commas used are absolutely essential, to give an accurate idea of the tempting repast. It will be observed that the use of "and" does not make the commas unnecessary, a sufficient answer to the assertion sometimes made that the comma after the second adjective in a group of three of which the last two are connected by "and" is unnecessary because the "and" takes the place of it. In cases where no ambiguity would arise, however, as Wilson, in his "Treatise on Punctuation," says: "When three or more words of the same part of speech, and in the same construction, are severally connected by means of 'and,' 'or,' or 'nor,' the comma may be omitted after each of the particulars. Some writers separate all such serial words by commas; but a mode of punctuation so stiff as this seldom aids in developing the sense, and, in sentences requiring other commas, is undoubtedly offensive to the eye, if it does not obscure the meaning itself.”

W. H. H.

"Besides this, none of the routes come into the heart of the city, and so they do not afford," etc. -" Newspaper English Edited," in August Writer.

"None come " is pretty poor editing. Come off your hypercritical perch, and learn to write grammar before jumping on a merely careless writer, like the one who wrote the second paragraph, in the Chicago despatch.

David A. Curtis.

[Bigelow, in his "Mistakes in Writing English," says: 666 None,' although literally meaning 'no one,' may be used with a plural verb, having the significance of a noun of multitude." Illustrations are: Milton's "In at this gate none pass the vigilance here placed "; Proverbs ii: 19: "None that go unto her return again"; Byron's "None are so desolate, but something dear," etc.; Blair's "None of their productions

are extant"; and Young's "None think the great unhappy but the great." Long, in his แ Slips of Tongue and Pen," says: "'None' and any,' though originally singular, may now be used as plurals." So far as Mr. Curtis' second criticism is concerned, most of the faults in newspaper English are due to carelessness. Probably the writer of the Boston Herald editorial about the elevated railway routes would have corrected his bad English, if he had carefully revised his manuscript.]

W. H. H.

108

THE NOVEL - WHAT IT IS. By F. Marion Crawford. pp. Cloth, 75 cents. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1893. When novelists write about their art, they do not usually give their readers much information about their methods, but they now and then give hints which are useful as suggestions to those who are studying the art of story-writing. Mr. Crawford's essay on the novel is no exception to this rule. Perhaps, therefore, the best review of it will be a selection of sentences from it, more or less connected, giving Mr. Crawford's ideas about the technique of his art. "A novel," he says, "is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed 'luxuries' an intellectual artistic luxury. Probably no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse and interest the reader. The purpose-novel constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract tacitly existing between writer and reader. A man buys what purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a story of adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebody's views on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws. In ordinary cases the purpose-novel is a simple fraud, besides being a failure in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand. professed novelist is perhaps not a competent judge of novels from the point of view which interests the reader, and which is, of course, the reader's own. We know the technique of the trick better than the effect it pro

A

duces. We do not all know one another's tricks, but we have a fair idea of the general principle on which they are done. A novel is, after all, a play. It is a bad sign of the times, that persons who would not tolerate a coarse play read novels little, if at all, short of indecent. It is not always easy to see why we novelists occasionally introduce a thought, a page, or a chapter in a novel otherwise fit for a child's ears, which may have the effect, so to say, of turning weak tea into bad whiskey. Yet most of us have done it, contemplate doing it, or at least go so far as to wish that we might allow ourselves the liberty. It looks as if it might be easier to write interesting books with the help of the knowledge of evil, as well as with the help of the knowledge of good; and after a certain number of years of hard work a novelist instinctively leans toward any method of lightening his labors which presents itself to his tired imagination. For the romance of romancing soon disappears. After the production of one, two, three, or half-a-dozen novels, if the writer is really what we call 'a professional,' and must go on writing as a business, he discovers how serious is the occupation in which he is engaged. Half-a-dozen books, or less, will make a reputation; ten will sustain one; twenty are in ordinary cases a career. Does any one, not an author, who reads these lines guess at the labor, the imagination, the set purpose, the courage, which are necessary to produce a score of novels of an average good quality? And if not, how can he understand the intense longing for a removal of restraint, for a little more liberty, that tempts the over-wrought intelligence into error? The taste for realism is broad; but why must a novel writer be either a realist or a romanticist? Why should a good novel not combine romance and reality in just proportions? novel The perfect must deal chiefly with love; for in that passion all men and women are most generally interested. It must be clean and sweet; it must have the magic to fascinate and the power to hold its reader from first to last. Its realism must be real, of three dimensions, not flat and photographic; its romance must be of the human heart and truly human; that is, of the earth as we all have found it; its realism must be transcendent, not measured to man's mind, but proportioned to man's soul. Its religion must be of such grand and universal span as to hold all worthy religions in itself. Conceive, if possible, such a story, told in language that can be now simple, now keen, now passionate, and now sublime- or rather, pray, do not conceive it, for the modern novelist's occupation would suddenly be gone, and that one book would stand alone of its kind, making all others worse than useless ridiculous, if not sacrilegious, by com

parison. . . . The novel is distinctly a modern invention, satisfying a modern want. It is, or ought to be, a pocket-stage. Scenery, light, shade, the actors themselves, are made of words, and nothing but words, more or less cleverly put together. Every writer who has succeeded has his own means of creating the illusion which is eminently necessary to success. Some of us are found out and some of us are not; but we all do the same thing in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously. The tricks of the art are without number, simple or elaborate, easily learned or hard to imitate, and many of us consider that we have a monopoly of certain tricks we call our own, and are unreasonably angry when a competitor makes use of them. Dialect seems to me to rank with puns, and with puns of a particular local character. Generally speaking, I venture to say that anything which fixes the date of a novel not intended to be historical is a mistake, from a literary point of view. It is not wise to describe the cut of the hero's coat, nor the draping of the heroine's gown, the shape of her hat, nor the color of his tie. Ten years hence somebody may buy the book and turn up his nose at those times.' The historical novel occupies a position apart and separate from others, but it does not follow that it should not conform exactly to the conditions required of an ordinary work of fiction, though it must undoubtedly possess other qualities peculiar to itself. Provided that no attempt is made to palm off the historical novel as a schoolbook, there can be no real objection to it on other grounds. On the whole, the historical novel is always likely to prove more dangerous to the writer than to the reader, since, when it fails to be a great book, it will in all likelihood be an absurd one. For historical facts are limitations, and he who subjects himself to them must be willing to undertake all the responsibility they imply. As for romance and realism, the realist proposes to show men what they are, the romantist tries to show men what they should be. For my part, I believe that more good can be done by showing men what they may be, ought to be, or can be, than by describing their greatest weaknesses with the highest art. The education of a novelist is the experience of men and women which he has got at first hand in the course of his own life, for he is of that class to whom humanity offers a higher interest than inanimate nature. The novel writer must know what the living world is, what the men in it do, and what the women think, why women shed tears, and children laugh, and young men make love, and old men repeat themselves. While he is writing his book, his human beings must be with him, before him, moving before the eye of his mind and talking into the ear of his heart. He must have lived himself; he must have loved, fought,

suffered, and struggled in the human battle. I would almost say that to describe another's death he must himself have died. All this accounts, perhaps, for the fact that readers are many and writers few. The writer must have seen and known many phases of existence, and this is what the education of the novelist means: to know and understand, so far as he is able, men and women who have been placed in unusual circumstances. Sentiment heightens the value of works of fiction, as sentimentality lowers it. Sentimentality is to sentiment as sensuality to passion. The deep waters of life the real novel must fathom, sounding the tidestream of passion, and bringing up such treasures as lie far below and out of sight-out of reach of the individual in most cases - until the art of the story-teller makes them feel that they are, or might be, his. Cæsar commanded his legionaries to strike at the face. Humanity, the novelist's master, bids him strike only at the heart."

A life-like photogravure picture of Mrs. Ward and a fac-simile of her signature, "Mary A. Ward," make a frontispiece for the two volumes of her latest novel. The story itself is confessedly a purpose novel, and so falls in the class which Mr. Crawford has condemned so strongly, but even Mr. Crawford must admit that Marcella" is a strong, consistent, artistic piece of work, and that the interest of the story is not overburdened by the development of the author's theory of life. The book deals with life problems, but it is not insufferably didactic, and its teaching is indirect rather than obtrusive. The character drawing is admirable, the personality of Marcella Boyce especially being as clear and vivid as that of any living personage. There is no question that "Marcella" is the best piece of work that Mrs. Ward has done.

W. H. H.

FRA PAOLO SARPI. By Rev. Alexander Robertson. 196 pp. Cloth, $1.50. New York: Thomas Whittaker. 1894.

The body of Fra Paolo Sarpi, whom Mr. Robertson styles "the greatest of the Venetians," has at last found an honored restingplace in the church of the quiet Campo Santo, on the island of San Michele, after being for more than two hundred years transferred from place to place, "built up into walls and altars, concealed in private houses, and surreptitiously introduced in boxes, contents unknown,' into seminaries and libraries, to hide it from the wolf-like hunt of its enemies." To be the ob