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Trelawny, as well as Hogg, bore witness to the fact that the poet forgot his physical claims in his devotion to books, in his zeal, his enthusiasm.

"I called on him one morning at ten," says Trelawny. "He was in his study with a folio open, resting on the broad mantelpiece. He had promised to go with me, but now he begged to be let off. I then rode to Leghorn, and returned in the evening to dine with the Shelleys. I went into the poet's room and found him in exactly the same position in which I had left him in the morning, but looking pale and exhausted.

"Well,' I said, 'have you found it?' "Shutting the book, he replied with a deep sigh, 'No, I have lost it, I have lost a day.' "Cheer up, my lad, and come to dinner,' said I.

"Putting his long fingers through his masses of hair, he answered faintly, 'You go; I have dined, late eating does n't do for me.'

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my dinner. It's very foolish. I thought that I had eaten it.'"

It is, therefore, not surprising that with such habitual carelessness, taken in connection with his peculiar temperament and frail constitution, the poet should have been afflicted during those last days at Casa Magni with especially frightful visions when asleep, and strange fancies of impending doom, even in his waking hours.

It is said that Tennyson once tried to follow in the footsteps of Shelley, but his enthusiasm for the potato gospel quickly passed away. For ten weeks, he said, he tried Edward Fitzgerald's "table of Pythagoras, but felt so chilled. on the half-spiritual height to which he had been exalted that he was glad to get down and taste flesh again."

ROCHESTER, N. Y.

Kenyon West.

A PLEA FOR THE NEGLECTED RHETORICAL POOR.

Great men and great issues always receive their share of attention, and do not need to have their rights upheld by others; while small matters may have to go begging for want of a friend to point out their neglected condition. This is true not only in social and moral life, but also in grammatical and rhetorical regions. Nouns and verbs, plots and characterization, are always sure of polite consideration; but small parts of speech, and the small assistants of speech, are not so likely to be respected. Hence I would utter a plea for the more commonly neglected rhetorical poor.

The first class of these is that of conjunctions. Writers do not realize what a work these small creatures could do if they were only encouraged. Emerson usually forgot their existence, and the holes in his essays which ought to have been

filled by them must always be encountered. More commonly the wrong ones are called upon, and have to fill posts the duties of which they cannot perform. How often a dark paragraph would be illuminated if the "buts," and "ands," and "fors" might exchange places! When the careful reader comes to a "but," he takes a mental jump to the other side of the road which he has been travelling, and if, when he has reached it, he finds that he is on the opposite side from the train of thought, he is likely not only to be disgusted, but frequently to miss the train altogether.

Of a still lower social order, and far more flagrantly neglected, is the race of punctuation marks. Here the poor printers have to make sure that there are no blank spaces, but frequently the selection of officiating marks is left.

to them, and when it is not, the result may be no better. No one who reads many letters or manuscripts fails to observe that the average penman has one or (when unusually extravagant) two mysterious hieroglyphics at his command, which are brought out whenever a punctuation mark is called for, and warranted to defy investigation as to which particular point. they represent. It is the intellectual connection of these neglected creatures which makes them of importance; and it is hard to see how a writer can have proper commas and semi-colons in his brains, if they do not demand to be represented on paper. Just as a good reader will take a mental jump at sight of a "but," so he will assume the proper attitude when commanded by a punctuation mark. A comma tells him to keep moving, but if he finds no adjoining phrase whither he can move, the sensation is the same as when one tries in the dark to step up to an extra stair which is not there. Nearly allied to these families of the neglected poor are the Paragraphs, and (in technical works) the paragraph numbers and headings.

One cannot help thinking that these matters also are left largely to the compositor or proofreader, when he considers the dismembered ideas, mutilated arguments, and cruelly separated families of sentences which lie pitifully scattered on the pages of literature. These things are not unimportant; these neglected poor, like all neglected poor, throw curses after those who pass them by. Every one knows what an effect Dickens could produce by the sudden use of a capital letter, and how De Maupassant's paragraphing sometimes tells more than his words. Every student, at least, knows how he is forced to go through textbooks and make for himself abstracts of their contents, because the authors seem blissfully ignorant of the fact that their ideas have lawful and orderly connection with one another.

The moral whereof is this: All ye who write, think on the poor, whom ye have always with you in dictionary and grammar, ready to give help in return for consideration, and to bring rhetorical blessings to their friends.

PHILADELPHIA, Penn. R. Macdonald Alden.

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In one of those pleasant New England stories by Miss Sedgwick, whose village sketches delighted readers of a past generation, the crisis for which lovers of the romantic are looking is assisted by the comments and criticisms of a little girl. Alice is what it is now fashionable to call in French, un enfant terrible, - better known in New England vernacular as a hateful child." The author says: "F. was evidently becoming annoyed with the little girl's sallies, -I dare not say impertinences, and who dares to check a child in these days of childocracy?"

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Presumably a word of the author's own coining, and open to criticism as not formed according to the acknowledged rules of word building, perhaps never used again, "childocracy" is yet

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Occasionally those "human buds of promise are mentioned in letters or epitaph in loving words, but it was reserved for Christianity to give them a place and a character.

In modern days, till recently, the "grownups" had literature generally to themselves; but now children, from the baby, ignorant of letters, to those standing

"Where the brook and river meet,"

all have their own books, their history, their poetry, their magazines, their novels. The stiff little mortals of the juvenile books of an earlier generation have gone, passed on to the "Land of the Hereafter," following their grown-up friends in hoop-skirts and wigs, and in the nursery literature of to-day we have many of the genuine children of modern time, the slangy, the fun-loving, the careless, and the thoughtful; and although the former type, "too good for this world," does now and then appear, it is not, of necessity, destined to an early grave. But the precocious child of to-day's stories usually appears in the guise of a preternaturally sharp business character, all whose ventures prosper, and who, by the mysterious exercise of some talent hitherto unsuspected by unobservant relatives, lifts mortgages from the homestead, and surprises care-worn relatives and perplexed guardians with bank books and government bonds.

Many children's books are written too obviously with a purpose. A writer on education recommends that a desire for the comfort and welfare of the children of a family should underlie all the arrangements made by the adults. Only those guests should be invited whose manners would furnish worthy example, whose conversation would be instructive. No books unsuitable to the young should be brought into the house, whatever may be the temptation to the elders, yet, though this thought should be the moving spring of action, the children themselves should never be allowed to suspect that they were of so much importance. The first object of thought, the mainspring by which all the domestic machinery is moved, is to be perfectly ignorant of the moving influence! Apparently the writer is not familiar with little men and women," at least it is evi

dent that, though she may not over-rate their importance, she at least undervalues their intelligence.

But, however it may be in life, whether they are, or are not, the first object of thought, it is often in books not written for them, but where they take a subordinate place, that the most interesting children are found. To mention a few among many: who more interesting among Sir Charles Danvers' friends than little Molly, who sympathized so tenderly with the disappointed uncle's aching heart? - she had felt just so herself "it was the little green pears." Who would willingly part with Mary Fenwick's little friends? How the light of the story goes out with Gill's short life!

What delightful children appear in Howells' stories. In his "Indian Summer" is either Imogen or her rival as charming as Effie? I suspect many a reader is better pleased with the autumnal romance as securing to Effie the father she would so gladly have chosen, than as giving back the old lover to her mother.

But no hand is more skilful in depicting children than that of Hawthorne. Witness the tender touches of little Annie's ramble, of the gentle boy, the living flowers of Tanglewood, listening to those old tales that have charmed the Earth since the days of her own babyhood. The children of his books are genuine flesh and blood, full of childhood's pranks and capers, yet not devoid of that insight which belongs of right to those who had not

"Forgot the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came." What an idea he suggests of the grim lives of the adults when he shows us the little Bostonians disporting themselves in the street, "playing at scourging Quakers, scalping Indians, or in freaks of imitative witchcraft." Enthusiastic admirers of the olden time have questioned the probability of such amusements, but we are told in the sober pages of history that when the heresies of Mistress Hutchinson had shaken all the colony, the children entered with a zeal worthy of their elders into the contest, and squabbled with their comrades over the questions of works and faith. Small wonder if in play they imitated the most impressive scenes of the time.

Poor Miss Pyncheon's voracious customer, Ned Higgins, who made his own small person a menagerie of gingerbread animals, is a child of prose, a sharp urchin of the street. But none excels the portraiture of little Pearl, sweet as the rose, changeable as the wind, now loving and consoling, now probing with her

baby-touch the darkest and deepest mysteries of her mother's heart, charming, but weird and uncanny, as befitted one who "owed her existence to a broken law."

Pamela McArthur Cole.

EAST BRIDGEwater, Mass.

ARE EDITORS TO BLAME?

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"Well, why should he?" a more experienced contributor might ask. Of course, it is generally understood that he can use unsolicited manuscripts if they are good, and is willing to have them sent to him for examination; but did he ever ask you to send him anything, or promise to read everything that he might receive? Some periodicals, the Forum, for example, are made up almost altogether of contributions ordered from specialists by the editor on subjects selected by him, and seldom print unsolicited contributions of any kind. Why should the editor of the Forum, then, be expected to read a given manuscript sent to him without solicitation, when a mere glance at the title of it shows him that he does not want it, or, in case the title is attractive, if perusal of the first page gives evidence that the treatment of the subject is inadequate?"

The salaries of manuscript readers are an important item in the expenses of every large publishing-house or periodical. The Century, for example, receives nearly 10,000 manuscripts every year, and the cost, as well as the labor of caring for them, is inevitably large. The limita tions of the magazine are such that only a very few of these manuscripts can be used in any <case. Is it reasonable, then, to say that the

editor of the Century or his assistants should read religiously through every one of these 10,000 manuscripts to make absolutely sure that no obscure gem is overlooked or that no injustice to the author may be done? Is it not manifest that the editor is called upon only to give such examination to unsolicited manuscripts as may be consistent with his own interests, and that if he should try to do more than that, out of regard for the feelings of his contributors, his own interests would seriously suffer?

It is a mistaken idea that an editor has any responsibility toward the unsolicited contributor, beyond that of caring for his manuscript while it is in his possession and of returning it, in case the necessary stamps are sent with it, as soon as he has decided that it is unsuitable for his purpose.

Some editors may encourage young genius, and most editors do give to their contributors much gratuitous assistance and advice, but no writer has a right to expect any editor to do anything of the kind. As for patiently reading all the manuscripts that are submitted to him, if any editor should do it, he would have no time left in which to do his proper work.

In a word, when an editor is overstocked, or sees at a glance that an article submitted is not likely to be what he wants, it is simply unreasonable for the author of it to expect that he should read it through.

BROOKLYN, N. Y.

Edward L. White.

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every

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The Writer is published the first day of It will be sent, post-paid, ONE YEAR for ONE Dollar. **All drafts and money orders should be made payable to The Writer Publishing Co. Stamps, or local checks, should not be sent in payment for subscriptions.

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THE WRITER PUBLISHING CO.,
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(P. O. Box 1905. VOL. VII.

MARCH, 1894.

No. 3. Short, practical articles on any topic connected with literary work are always wanted for THE WRITER. Literary people are invited especially to send in suggestions for the "Helpful Hints" department, and items of information about any literary work on which they may be engaged. The chief object of THE WRITER is to be a magazine of mutual help for authors, and its pages are always open for anything practical which may tend in this direction. Bits of personal experience, suggestions regarding methods, and ideas for making literary work easier or more profitable are especially desired. Articles must be short, because the magazine is small.

A sheet of paper seventy-two inches wide and nearly eight miles long was manufactured re

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The immediate effect of the "hard times" on the business of authorship is seen in the unwillingness of editors to buy more manuscripts than are actually necessary, and, in many cases, in a tendency to reduce rates of payment for the manuscripts that are bought. Another effect, which is not so manifest to writers now, will be brought to their attention later on, and with much more pleasant results. The "hard times,” in a word, are compelling periodical publishersnow to economize in many cases by using the accumulation of manuscripts that they have on hand, and are driving some of the weaker publications to the wall. Although authors may suffer now, however, later on they will profit from the present stringency. The stock of accumulated manuscripts cannot last for any great length of time, and when it is gone editors will buy more liberally than before, both for immediate and for future needs. Moreover, the suspension of the weaker publications will strengthen those that are left, and will generallyclear the atmosphere. In the mean time authors are to be congratulated that their business is not more unpleasantly affected by dull times in business circles, and especially that, while the smaller periodicals are economizing, there are so many publications of the first class that are apparently buying as many manuscripts and paying as high prices for them as usual, to all appearances not being troubled. in any way by the general business depression that exists.

As for the book trade, it is practically useless just now to offer an ordinary book manuscript. to publishers. Hardly any new books are being issued at the present time, and those that are coming out are chiefly books that were con-tracted for before the hard times came on. The present state of affairs in the book trade can

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