The Magazine of American History, which was founded by the late Mrs. Lamb and which was prosperous until her death, is to be revived by the Patriot Publishing Company, publication being resumed with the September number.

The American Agriculturist is going to be changed into a series of five weeklies for five different parts of the country, and five subeditions for different parts of those divisions. The Orange Judd company has bought the New England Homestead from the Phelps company, and will use that for its New England edition. It has also bought the Orange Judd Farmer, of Chicago. The new weeklies will all be of magazine form, each with thirtytwo pages and a cover. The Phelps company will continue to publish Farm and Home and the city edition of the Springfield Homestead.

The twelve papers published by E. C. Allen & Co., the large Augusta (Me.) publishing concern which recently suspended business, will be consolidated into the following five periodicals formerly issued by Allen & Co.: Sunshine, Golden Moments, the Practical Housekeeper, the National Farmer, and the Daughters of America. They will be printed, mailed, and sent out from the publishing establishment of W. H. Gannett, under the name of S. W. Lane & Co. The first issue will be that of September.

Mrs. James T. Fields has in Scribner's Magazine for September a chapter of entertaining literary reminiscences, suggested by books in the library of Mr. Fields, the publisher. This paper refers to Milton, Johnson, Thackeray, Lamb, and Barry Cornwall, and is fully illustrated with portraits, fac-similes, etc.

"Thanatopsis" has been called the greatest poem ever written by a boy of sixteen, and it is interesting also as the first American poem which has received and retained recognition from the critics. The influences that shaped the poem in Bryant's mind are described in Harper's Magazine for September by Rev. John W. Chadwick, and the story is illustrated with two engravings of the bust of Bryant in the possession of Parke Godwin, and by a view of the house in which "Thanatopsis" was written.

The Magazine of Art for September has a wood-engraved portrait of Alphonse Daudet, after the painting by M. Carrière, and a sketch by M. H. Spielmann of Phil May, the humorist illustrator, with a portrait and six illustrations of his work by Mr. May himself.

Portraits of Louise Chandler Moulton in early life, at forty-one, at forty-five, and at fiftynine are given in McClure's Magazine for August. Mrs. Moulton was born at Pomfret, Conn., April 5, 1835. She was married in 1855 to William A. Moulton, a Boston publisher, and Boston has ever since then been her home.

Mr. Beresford-Hope has sold the London Saturday Review, which has been for almost forty-six years in the Hope family. Walter Pollock retires from the editorship. The purchaser is L. H. Edmunds, a barrister, who will edit the review himself, and who will not change its policy.

Robert Louis Stevenson tells in McClure's Magazine for September how he came to write "Treasure Island," and under what conditions and how the work was done. Pictures of the houses and scenes he inhabited while writing it, and some interesting portraits accompany the article. In the same number of the magazine is a series of portraits of Victorien Sardou.

The marriage of J. M. Barrie to Miss Mary Ansell, the actress, took place at Kirremuir toward the end of July so quietly that outsiders knew nothing about it until long after the wedding day.

Dr. Holmes observed his eighty-fifth birthday August 28.

The Magazine of Poetry (Buffalo) for August has portraits and sketches of Edward Sanford Martin, Rossiter Johnson, William Lyle, and other less-known writers.

The Lippincotts announce a volume called "My First Book," and including the experiences of Walter Besant, James Payn, and twenty other well-known novelists. It will be edited by Jerome K. Jerome, and profusely illustrated.

Macmillan & Co. announce that E. J. Simcox, the author of "Primitive Civilization,” is a woman, the initial E. on the title page standing for Edith.

Public Opinion has sent out an attractive plate containing the portraits of more than fifty of its principal contributors-nearly all of them being men now prominent in American letters.

B. L. Farjeon, the English novelist, will shortly publish in London some of the literary work of his thirteen-year-old daughter Nellie.

Mr. Quiller-Couch, like Mr. Howells, believes more in hard work than in the impulses of genius. "When I am writing a story," he says, "I never do more than 1,000 words a day, and sometimes it may not be more than 150 words. I always devote the mornings to work, whether the result is 1,000 words or only a couple of sentences. I do not believe in waiting for inspiration; the effort must be made."

The Century Company will publish in October, as a companion volume to their Century Dictionary, "The Century Cyclopædia of Names," a pronouncing and etymological dictionary of names in geography, biography, mythology, history, ethnology, art, archæology, fiction, etc., making a single volume of 1,100 pages, uniform in size and typography with the Century Dictionary. This will be the first book of its kind in existence.

The following card is published in the London papers: "A prize of £20 will be given for the best original essay on the advantages to be derived from the establishment of a sound democratic republic in the United Kingdom. For conditions send stamped envelope to the Eleusis Club, London."

The whole field of English poetry, from 1837 to the present time, will be included in E. C. Stedman's "Victorian Anthology," which Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. will publish soon.

Ouida has been having a hard time of it since her late financial troubles and the forced sale of her belongings. At last she is once more at rest, having found a new home for herself in the Villa Masoni, at St. Alissio, near Lucca.

The manuscript Ruskin turns out is as dirty and scratched up as the manuscript of Scott was clean and neat. There is hardly a paragraph in Ruskin's copy that is not scratched and interlined, while a scratched out or rewritten word in Scott's copy was the exception.

George Moore is going to cut down his novel, "A Mere Accident," into a short story. Rarely is a book so radically changed after having been published. The author is not dissatisfied with "A Mere Accident" as it is, but wishes to include it in a volume of short stories.

Rolf Boldrewood, the Australian novelist, is in real life a police magistrate, and his everyday name is T. A. Browne. He is sixty-eight years old, and says he was thirty-seven years of age before he first thought of the possibility of success in literature.

The statement of the affairs of Robert Buchanan, author and dramatist, has just been issued. The debtor has filed accounts showing unsecured liabilities of about $75,500, and no available assets. He states that his income, derived from royalties and general literary work, has during the last three years averaged about $7,500 a year. He attributes his insolvency to losses and liabilities incurred in connection with theatrical speculations; to heavy interest on borrowed money; to loss by nonproduction of a play ("Dick Sheridan ") in America, and by adverse criticisms on his dramatic work; and to losses by betting.

The unnamed author of the humorous "Women's Conquest of New York " is Thomas A. Janvier. Mr. Janvier recently sailed for Europe, to be gone several months.

Paul du Chaillu is writing the history of the Viking voyages from 800 to the time of William the Conqueror.

Francis H. Underwood died at Leith, Scotland, August 7, aged sixty-nine.

Dr. James Strong died at Round Lake, N. Y., August 7, aged nearly seventy-two. Eugene Lawrence died in New York August 17, aged nearly seventy-one.

Ex-Governor Charles Robinson, of Kansas, died at Lawrence, Kan., August 17, aged seventy-seven.

Mrs. Celia Thaxter died August 26 at the Isles of Shoals, aged fifty-nine.

W. D. Howells was recalled from his vacation in Europe by the illness of his father, Hon. W. C. Howells, who died at Jefferson, O., August 28, aged eighty-eight.

A New York engineer of my acquaintance has made a simple solution of the difficulty generally encountered in collecting and classifying clippings conveniently, so they may be readily got at for reference.

He has a specially designed cabinet, which consists of one large drawer extending over two-thirds of the width of the cabinet, and labelled, "Miscellaneous Scraps"; another drawer of the same depth and width underneath the first, for a "Stock Drawer "; and two shelves for a series of scrap books. A number of smaller drawers of uniform size occupy the other one-third of the cabinet at one end.

No. 10.

many of these drawers as there are subjects to be covered.

A drawer at a time is then taken in hand, and the clippings therein are trimmed to a minimum size, and pasted upon sheets of paper, perforated on one edge, and of uniform size.

The clippings, of course, are pasted only upon one side of the sheet, with the date and name of the publication from which they are taken attached. When there is a sufficient number of these sheets, they are assembled in proper order, in the form of a scrap book, with covers (being held together with metal fastenings or thread), and these are put upon the shelves of the cabinet, ready for convenient reference. By this system it will be noticed that at no time are the clippings in any form in which they cannot be readily found, neither is there any time when the books may not be re-arranged. For this reason, it is found better not to page the books.

The size of the sheets used in making up the books is optional with the user. Manila paper, such as is found in the best scrap books, is to be preferred.

Each sheet should be cut with a separating strip or stub, one inch wide, pasted on one edge of it, the stub being perforated with four holes placed at equal distances. This keeps the books from widening at the opening side.

The covers are made of cardboard, and may have a neatly printed or stamped title. Being stiff, they are made with a flexible joint one inch from the binding edge.

The large drawers should be about three inches deep. The inside dimensions of the smaller drawers should be sufficient to allow the finished books to be dropped in, if desired. The manila paper used for making the individual sheets and separating strips or stubs,

along with the scissors, mucilage, fastenings, etc., should be kept ready for use in the "Stock Drawer."

There seems to be little necessity for an index of any sort with this system of filing clippings; but should an index be found desirable, an individual index may be made for each scrap book and bound in with the other sheets. As changes occur in the make-up of the book from culling, the index could be taken out and a newly arranged one, revised up to date, inserted.

One of the difficulties which arise to harass those who have a love for clipping and collecting scraps occurs when an immense amount of

clippings have been collected and one feels a desire to cull. The system I have described permits culling better, it would seem, than any other. A dozen sheets may be torn out of a book and the hole can be simply closed up, and the absence of the pages removed is never noticed.

A good feature of the cabinet described is a rolling front, like that of a roll-top desk, which is not in the way when the cabinet is open, and which keeps out the dust when it is closed. It also serves to make it possible to lock up the whole affair with one key. PLAINFIELD, N. J.

W. Hull Western.

"shy" when coming through a field of rye, or wheat, or oats, or any other grain; but there is cause when the bare-footed lassie, with carefully adjusted dress and skirts, "meets a laddie ” while she is tip-toeing her way on the stepping stones across the swiftly flowing Rye of Bonnie Scotland.

In the beautiful edition of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man," issued by a prominent Philadelphia publishing house, the artist has illustrated each character according to his conception, but not always consistently with the

text.

"Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, bearded like a pard."

I fear that the artist has not been sufficiently observing of pards, or he would not have given his hero full whiskers or a beard.

It has always been a matter of surprise to me that great artists in painting angels have always represented them as women; and that in painting devils they have always represented them

as men.

It may be human nature for women to be angelic, but that does not argue that men are naturally devilish.

Again. Why should an artist give wings to an angel? Surely wings are not essential for

What amount of the white and red corpuscles of a novelist's life's blood is used for the vivifying of the children of his brain may be surmised in part by reckoning the heritage of longevity bestowed upon the dramatis personæ of the comedies and tragedies of his fiction.

What portion of his nerve force he consumes in energizing his marionnettes; what quantity of fibrine and other organic compounds he depletes himself of, for vitalizing them, is most surely indicated by whatever of living warmth and coloring he succeeds in infusing into them, as personalities born of himself, and endowed by him with the qualities and attributes of a multiform humanity.

That there is a certain expenditure of vital power in the production of the humblest Uriah Heep, nourished into being among the brain cells of the novelist, is a fact too well established to be gainsaid.

As in the economy of a physical genesis, so in that of the mental; it is the fallacious hope of the human mother to renew her life in her child's. Maternity brings its own gracious recompense, yet is the essence of its experimental joy closely allied to the perfume of the lily, which, brought to blossoming maturity, exhales the sweetest elements of its perfection in the initial effervescence of disintegration and decay. In the registry of births there is made but a single record of a "brain-child" evolved without loss of vital power on the part of the author of that child's being. Minerva's emergence, full dowered as a goddess, from the god like forehead of Jupiter is, however, in this

nineteenth century, relegated to its proper place among the myth chronicles of an age when nymphs and dryads tripped through the mazes of their "full-dress germans" to the piping of Pandean pipes in the forests of Arcadia.

"Little Nell," that imperishable spirit of purity, was not the wearer of the helmet and shield of the goddess of wisdom, but none the less surely does her birth record entitle her to a place among the immortals in the realm of fiction. We who have had our hearts stirred by the touch of her fingers do not forget that her small life was an emanation from the brain and marrow of him who, with a prophet's vision of the pathetic tragedy to be unfolded in the brief span linking her birth with her death, became, the while, a solitary mourner in the crowded streets of London, saying, again and again, to his troubled soul: "Since she must die, would God she had never been born."

In the glooms of Rochester, the morbid rebellion of his spirit in the stern acceptance of fate's allotment to himself, there is the shadowpresentment of the brooding woes haunting the life of Charlotte Brontë. In her "Jane Eyre" we recognize, too, certain graces of character as a heritage from herself. There is the impassioned temperament blended with strength of will and steadiness of nerve; the impulsive emotions, safe anchored to a cool prudence, like the floating buoy chained to its bed-rock, under the tossing waves of a danger shoal.

In physical reproduction even, the influence of heredity is usually too elusive for analysis, and not infrequently defies detection; but as