THE WRITER is published the first day of every month. 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. THE WRITER will be sent only to those who have paid for it in advance. Accounts cannot be opened for subscriptions, and names will not be entered on the list unless the subscription order is accompanied by a remittance. When subscriptions expire the names of subscribers will be taken off the list unless an order for renewal, accompanied by remittance, is received. Due notice will be given to every subscriber of the expiration of his subscription. No sample copies of THE WRITER will be sent free. The American News Company, of New York, and the New England News Company, of Boston, and their branches, are wholesale agents for THE WRITER. It may be ordered from any newsdealer, or direct, by mail, from the publisher. * Everything that may be printed in the magazine will be written expressly for it. **Not one line of paid advertisement will be printed in THE WRITER outside of the advertising pages. Advertising rates will be sent on request. Contributions not used will be returned, if a stamped and addressed envelope is enclosed. THE WRITER PUBLISHING CO., 282 Washington street (Rooms 9 and 10), BOSTON, MASS. P. O. Box 1905. tious critics have been heard to say, are too conventional, too formal, written and displayed with anything but good judgment, ineffective, and generally bad. Whether all this be true or not, it is not necessary to consider here. One publishing firm. however, has recently taken a long step away from the conventional and commonplace, as the following paid "readingnotice," recently published in the New York Evening Post,- with the names of books, publishers, and authors, here supplied by dashes, all printed out in full, will show:ANSWERS TO FASHION CORRESPONDENTS. MAUD-There is no objection to Brussels net, if you prefer it, but plain black grenadine goes well with the bright maroon and silver of "___________ as that amusing novel lies on your lap ready for the evening reading. STANCE-A white and black gown white silk with raised pin-dots of black-is charming for summer silks and for crépons. This is finely effective in contrast with the slate-colored cloth binding of " -'s delightful new novel, just published by & Co. CON TOTTIE - Fortunately, your brown brilliantine is in good style again, along with mohair and alpaca. Make it with a short pleated basque, opening on a blue or black vest, cut on the bias. It will match capitally with the sage-green binding of -'s " ," as you stand with the book by the mantelpiece at afternoon tea. I'll go off and get one, too, at -'s. FLORENCE-The circular skirts of last year are still worn and some new ones are made. Reeds are not worn in the bottom of skirts. But on your lap you will find strikingly effective the delicate cloth tint of " -," This advertisement sandwiched in between a eulogy of somebody's liver pills and a few remarks about somebody else's asbestos boiler and pipe coverings is unconventional enough, as everybody must admit. If the publishers continue advertising in the same way, the fact will make it evident, perhaps, that this sort of advertising pays. THE EDITORIAL “I." W. H. H. Why will so many writers persist in using the ungrammatical singular "we"? The fashion is an antiquated one, which has come down to us from our forefathers, and which is wholly "out of date" to-day. The "I" is used by all the best writers of the present time. The chief objection to be urged against the use of "we" is that it often renders a writer's meaning ambiguous or obscure. A sentence of Charles Dudley Warner's in the current number of Harper's Monthly illustrates what I mean. It reads: "This is what we mean by saying that we are trying to make our educational pyramid stand on its apex." Similarly, an author, writing of her experiences at the World's fair last summer, said: "We had a good time." The reader was left to conjecture whether the "we" referred to herself or to the whole party which she accompanied. Numerous other instances might be cited, but these two suffice to illustrate my point. The effect of the "we" is not so much to make the sentence ambiguous, as to make it obscure. Obscurity, however, is a fault almost as objectionable as ambiguity. The "we" is allowable sometimes in the editorial columns of newspapers, because the opinions which emanate therefrom are not essentially singular. They may be shaded, or entirely governed, by the political or business policy of the paper. The best newspapers, however, avoid the use of we nowadays. 66 [The editor of THE WRITER recommends the following books, as many as possible of which should be in every writer's library : WRITING FOR THE PRESS. A Manual for Editors, Reporters, THE TRADE OF AUTHORSHIP. By Wolstan Dixey. 128 pp. THE ART OF AUTHORSHIP. Compiled by George Bainton. PERIODICALS THAT PAY CONTRIBUTORS. By Eleanor Kirk. 57 pp. Cloth, $1.00. THE RHYMESTER; OR, THE RULES OF Rhyme. A guide to English versification, with a dictionary of rhymes. By Tom Hood; edited, with additions, by Arthur Penn. 208 pp. Cloth, $1.00. WALKER'S RHYMING DICTIONARY. 720 pp. Cloth, $1.50. THE SCIENCE OF ENGLISH VERSE. By Sidney Lanier. 315 pp. Cloth, $2.00. A HANDBOOK OF POETICS. By Professor F. B. Gummere. 250 pp. Cloth, $1.10. ROGET'S THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES. 745 pp. Cloth, $2.00. ENGLISH SYNONYMS EXPLAINED IN ALPHABETICAL Order. THE PRINCIPLES OF RHETORIC AND THEIR APPLICATION. THE PRACTICAL ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC. By John F. A HANDBOOK OF RHETORICAL ANALYSIS. By John F. A TREATISE ON ENGLISH PUNCTUATION. By John Wilson. pp. Cloth, $1.25. PUNCTUATION AND OTHER TYPOGRAHPICAL MATTERS. By M. T. Bigelow. pp. Cloth, 50 cents. PENS AND TYPES. By Benjamin Drew. 214 pp. Cloth, $1.00. THE ART OF FICTION. Walter Besant and Henry James. (Two essays in one volume.) 85 pp. Cloth, 75 cents. THE ART OF PLAYWRITING. A practical treatise on the elements of dramatic construction. By Alfred Hennequin. 187 pp. Cloth, $1.25. THE TECHNIQUE of the DraMA. By W. T. Price. 287 pp. Cloth, $1.50. MISTAKES IN WRITING ENGLISH, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM. By M. T. Bigelow. Second edition. 110 pp. Cloth, 50 cents. HANDBOOK OF BLUNDERS. Designed to prevent 1,000 common blunders in writing and speaking. By H. H. Ballard. pp. Cloth, 50 cents. SLIPS OF TONGUE AND PEN. By J. H. Long. ΙΟΙ pp. ERRORS IN THE USE OF ENGLISH. By Professor William B. By Alfred Ayres. pp. Cloth, $1.00. PRACTICAL TYPEWRITING, By Bates Torrey. 156 pp. Cloth, $1.00. THE PRINTER'S ART. By Alexander A. Stewart. 113 PP. Paper, $1.00. Any of these books will be sent by The Writer Publishing Co., postpaid, to any address, on receipt of price. W. H. H. ] THE USE AND MISUSE OF WORDS. [Brief, pointed, practical paragraphs discussing the use and misuse of words and phrases will be printed in this department. All readers of THE WRITER are invited to contribute to it. Contributions are limited to 400 words; the briefer they are, the better.] "Obliged to Have Asked" and "Nom de Plume."- The Boston Herald says that if something or other had happened, Marion Crawford "would not have felt obliged to have asked a Smith College girl for permission to use her nom de plume for the title of his latest novel." Mr. Crawford did not feel obliged "to have asked for permission. And the Smith DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources. Including phrases, mottoes, maxims, proverbs, definitions, aphorisms, and sayings of wise men, in their bearing on life, literature, speculation, science, art, religion, and morals, especially in the modern aspects of them. Selected and compiled by Rev. James Wood. 668 pp. Cloth, $2.50. New York: Frederick Warne & Co. 1893. FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS. A collection of passages, phrases, and proverbs, traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature. By John Bartlett. Ninth edition. 1,158 pp. Cloth, $3.00. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1893. The use of a dictionary of quotations is twofold, first, to furnish apt illustrations by providing a maxim or an epigram reinforcing an idea, and, second, to give with exactness and reference to its source a maxim or an epigram the recollection of which is incomplete. The merits of such a book, therefore, are completeness in including a great number of maxims on a great variety of subjects, exactness in giving the quotations, and thoroughness in tracing each, so far as may be possible, back to its source. For most people, the second of the two uses of the book is most important. There are not many persons who sit down with malice aforethought to read a dictionary of quotations for the purpose of finding phrases to embellish their writing or their speech. The chief use of the book is that made of it when a writer wants to quote exactly a quotation which he only half remembers, or wants to trace a familiar and well-remembered quotation to its source. The arrangement and indexing of such a book, there-fore, are of the first importance. Next comes the question of completeness, next that of ex-actness in quotation and in reference, and finally that of good judgment in selecting the quotations included in the work. Of the two dictionaries mentioned at the beginning of this review, Bartlett's has long been a standard American work, the first edition having been published in 1855, and the ninth and culminating edition having been copyrighted in 1891. Each new edition of the book has been materially enlarged, the ninth edition, for instance, being larger than the eighth by 350. pages of text and 10,000 lines of index.. Wood's dictionary, on the other hand, is a new book, begun, the author says, three years ago, and only recently published in England and America. It is only natural, then, that its merits should be judged by comparison with the work to which Americans have looked for nearly forty years as the standard of its kind.. The plan of Mr. Wood's book includes an alphabetical list of quotations, arranged according to the first letter of the first word, and followed by a topical index, which, though copi ous, includes no mottoes and few proverbs, indexes quotations by ideas rather than by keywords, and is intended only to refer to subjects of which there is anything of significance said. The index, too, is limited to subjects that are not mentioned in alphabetical order in the body of the book. Thus, Mr. Wood says, there was no need to index what is said on certain pages about "Art," "Beauty," or "Christianity," as the reader will expect to find something concerning them where they occur in the order adopted. In Bartlett's dictionary there comes first an alphabetical index of authors, with the pages of the dictionary on which quotations from each are to be found. This is followed by a list of anonymous books cited. Then come the quotations, all those from one author being put together under his name, and the date of his birth and death being given in each case. The order of arrangement is chronological, the list beginning with Chaucer, and ending with Grover Cleveland, Bret Harte, and Francis W. Bourdillon. Following these come miscellaneous quotations, translations, quotations from the Bible, and an appendix explaining the origin of many familiar phrases. Last of all is an exhaustive index by key-words to all the quotations in the book. The advantages of Bartlett's plan of arrangement are manifest at a glance. Assume, for instance, that a writer wishes to use the quotation comparing the power of the songs of a nation and the power of its laws, which he may remember, possibly-as, in fact, it was quoted in a recent national song prize offer made by the editor of the Dominant-in this form: "I care not who makes the nation's laws, if I might write its ballads." Taking Wood's dictionary, the searcher naturally looks first under "I care not," and finds out at once that if the quotation is in the book his memory of it is inexact. He next tries the index, deciding that the main key-words of the sentence are "ballads," "nation," and "laws." Under the headings "laws" and "nation" he finds nothing to his purpose. Under the heading "ballads," however, he finds the entry, "Ballads more powerful than laws, 241, 33," and, turning to page 241, he finds the thirty-third of the forty-nine quotations on the page every fifth quotation being numbered by a figure in the marginnoted thus: Let me make the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes the laws. Quoted by Fletcher of Saltoun. Now let the searcher take up Bartlett's dictionary, assuming that he knows no more about the quotation than he did when he started out to find exactly what it is. He has the keywords "ballads," "nation," and "laws." Under "laws" he finds the entry, "Laws of a nation, 281" under "nation he finds the entry, "Nation, ballads of a, 281 "; under "ballads he finds "Ballads of a nation, 281." All these references send him to page 281, where he finds the following: ANDREW FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. 1653-1716. I knew a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation. -Letter to the Marquis of Montrose, the Earl of Rothes, etc. It appears from this that, if the searcher's memory of the quotation had been that it spoke of "songs," instead of "ballads," he would have failed to find it in Wood's dictionary, since the only key to the phrase in Wood's index is under the word "ballads." In the same case, on the other hand, he would have found the quotation all right in Bartlett's dictionary, for, although he would have discovered no mention of it in the index under "songs," he would have found the necessary reference in two other places, under "nation" and under "laws." Moreover, having traced the quotation in Wood's dictionary, he finds that it is given inexactly; in Bartlett's dictionary, on the other hand, he gets not only Fletcher's exact phrase, but the dates of Fletcher's life. Throughout, Bartlett's dictionary has the advantage in the exactness with which quotations and references are given. Rev. Mr. Woods says in his preface: "Except in the case of quotations from Shakespeare, the editor has quoted only the names of the authors or the books from which they are taken, or has not, as might be expected of him, supplied either chapter or verse, because he did not think it worth the labor and expense that would have been involved." It may be doubted whether those who use the book will agree with Mr. Wood in this. Not only is it desirable to trace a quotation to its source, and make certain of its exact form, but it is often important to know the context in which the quotation originally appeared. Bartlett always gives exact references, as, for example: "Canterbury Tales. Troilus and Creseide. Book III. Line 1721.' His quotations, too, are generally more exact than those of Mr. Wood. The greatest usefulness of Wood's dictionary comes from the fact that it has a broader plan than Bartlett's, including quotations, in the original, from Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and other languages, as well as English.. "Gnothi seauton," for example, is given in Greek, while in Bartlett only the translation, "Know thyself," is indexed. In Bartlett, however, the use of the idea by Pope and Cervantes is quoted, while under the passage from Plutarch's "Consolation to Apollonius" containing it is a foot-note saying: "Plutarch ascribes this saying to Plato. It is also ascribed to Pythagoras, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, and Socrates; also to Phemonë, a mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period. Juvenal (Satire xi, 27 ) says that this precept descended from heaven." Bartlett, in short, gives more information about the phrase, but Wood gives the original Greek, which Bartlett does not. In the same way, Wood's dictionary includes the French, "Rira bien qui rira le dernier ("He laughs best who laughs last"), while Bartlett does not mention even the English saying, his nearest approach to it being Othello's "They laugh that win," which Wood also gives. As Rev. Mr. Wood is an Englishman, it is, perhaps, not strange that his dictionary makes. no mention of the familiar, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Bartlett, on the other hand, quotes the phrase from the memoirs of Colonel Henry Lee (1756-1816), as it was spoken in Lee's eulogy of Washington, December 26, 1799, and in a foot-note gives further information regarding the quotation and its origin. As a final example of the way in which Mr. Wood's index works, may be cited his treatment of the phrase which ought to be engraved deep in every writer's memory: "Easy writing's curst hard reading." In Wood's dictionary the index entry is: Writing, advantage of, 369, 9; art of, secret of, 53, 9: bene-fit to few, 469, 6; clear, condition of, 554, 30; condition of,. 305, 23; ease in, how acquired, 449, 45; easy, Sheridan on, 568, 6; etc. The searcher for the epigram who has got so Sheri It will be noticed that "curst" is misquoted "cursed." On page 76, however, in the proper alphabetical place under "Easy," the quotation, "Easy writing's curst hard reading. dan," is correctly given. Bartlett quotes the couplet, and credits it as follows: "Clio's Protest. Life of Sheridan (Moore). Vol. I., p. 155." The conclusion is that the writer who is trying to decide which of these two dictionaries he would better buy should buy both. If he cannot afford that, he will probably find Bartlett's the more generally useful of the two, since it is more nearly complete, more exact, more thorough, better planned, and better arranged. Wood's dictionary supplements Bartlett's, however, in a most useful way, particularly because it gives so many quotations in foreign languages. With both books in his library, there will be very few desired quotations that the owner of the dictionaries will try in vain to find. The success of "Ships That Pass in the Night" is naturally followed by the publication of another volume of Miss Harraden's work. "In Varying Moods" is a collection of strong and interesting short stories, of which the longest, "At the Green Dragon," fills about a hundred pages. The author's brief preface, signed with a fac-simile of her autograph, tells us that the story "was written in Mentone, amongst the olive trees," and that, as she now writes, the landlady of the Green Dragon sends her a box of daffodils and asks if she has yet invented a tale about her favorite inn. In the preface are given also hints of the origin of "The Painter and His Picture," "The Umbrella Mender," and "The Clockmaker and His Wife," other stories in the book. Most of the tales, Miss Harraden says, have in them more of truth than fiction. It is interesting to notice that this book is copyrighted in America. Ships That Pass in the Night" was not protected by American copyright, and there were many unauthorized editions of it. 66 W. H. H. PHOTOGRAPHIC MOSAICS. An annual record of photographic progress. Edited by Edward L. Wilson. Thirtieth year. 295 pp. Cloth, $1.00. New York: Edward L. Wilson. 1894. Any one who is fortunate enough to have a complete set of the annual volumes of 46 Photographic Mosaics" from the beginning has a complete record of progress in photography scores of others during the last thirty years. The little books are invaluable to all who are interested in the photographic art. The 1894 volume, for instance, begins with an historical record of photographic discoveries and inventions during 1893, touching on such subjects- among 66 -as Photographing the Vowel Sounds," "Photography Without Light," "Flexible Glass," The Field-glass Camera," "Tele-photographic Lenses," "Handcamera Work," Photography by Artificial Light," "Watch Dial Portraits,' etc., etc. Following this are papers by experts on various subjects connected with photography, interesting to amateurs and professionals alike. A lavishly illustrated article on "Brittany: Illustrated by Hand-camera and Lantern," and "The Last Venture of the Photographer," a story by Alphonse Daudet, are features of the book, which has besides many fine half-tone pictures. Altogether, "Photographic Mosaics for 1894 is a very interesting and useful little book something that every one who is interested in photographic work should have. W. H. H. SIR FRANCIS BACON'S CIPHER STORY. Discovered and deciphered by Orville W. Owen, M. D. Vol. II. 200 pp. Paper. Detroit: Howard Publishing Co. 1894. The frontispiece of Dr. Owen's second volume of his "cipher story is a picture of the "wheel," improvised for ready reference, used by him in deciphering what he assures the world is Bacon's cryptogram. When Dr. Owen goes farther and explains the system on which his work is done, the results of it may be worthy of serious attention. Until then it is not worthy of consideration. BOOKS RECEIVED. W. H. H. [All books sent to the editor of THE WRITER will be acknowledged under this heading. They will receive such further notice as may be warranted by their importance to readers of he magazine.] SEBASTIAN. A dramatic poem. 93 pp. Cloth. Buffalo : Charles Wells Moulton. 1894. THEY MET IN HEAVEN. By George H. Hepworth. 209 pp. Cloth, 75 cents. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1894. HELPFUL HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS. To Read Curled Manuscripts Easily. — When one is trying to copy a manuscript which has been rolled, a satisfactory method of holding the objectionable matter under control is simply to lay a pane of glass over the opened sheet. When the paper is held thus there will be no trouble in reading all that is written on the page; and copyists will be saved the bother |