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It is important for writers to know the meanings of the words they use, and not to forget what familiar expressions originally meant. The expression "Man Runs Amuck," may pass, but the newspaper headline, "Man Runs an Exciting Muck," was inexcusable.

"Most" is not properly used in the sense of "nearly." "Almost" is the proper word. "Most" is often used colloquially for "almost," but if written, it requires an apostrophe.

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The words "cyclone" and tornado " are often wrongly used. A cyclone is a violent storm, covering a large area, with wind blowing around a calm centre of low atmospheric pressure so that for any given locality it may be regarded as a straight wind. The cyclone may cover several states or half of the United States. A tornado is a violent whirling wind revolving in a smali area and progressing usually with much destruction. A cyclone may continue for several days, while a tornado lasts only a short time and usually occurs in the afternoon or evening.

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die annually in the United States" should read "each year in the United States," since one can die but once. The growing use of "kids " and "kiddies' instead of the good English word "children" is to be regretted. Both of these slang terms should be avoided, both in writing and in speaking.

A mantle is a cloak. A mantel is a chimney-piece. Don't get the words confused. "Ever" is often misprinted for "even," and "even" for "ever," because writers are not careful about their handwriting.

After you have said: "The scene beggars description," don't try to describe it.

"Etc." is a very good abbreviation for business purposes, but its use in writing anything that has any claim to be literature should be avoided. Generally it can be omitted without being missed. If some such phrase is really needed, it is better to write "and so forth," or "and so on."

"Asphyxiated by gas" is not tautology. Asphyxia is a condition caused by interruption of respiration, as in suffocation or drowning, or the inhalation of irrespirable

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THE WRITER is published the first day of every month. It will be sent, postpaid, 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.

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 publishers.

Not one line of paid advertisement will be printed in THE WRITER outside of the advertising pages.

Advertising in THE WRITER costs fifteen cents a line, or $2.10 an inch; seven dollars a quarter page; twelve dollars a half page; or twenty dollars a page, for one insertion, remittance with the order. Discounts are five, ten, and fifteen per cent. for three, six, and twelve months. For continued advertising payments must be made quarterly in advance.

**Contributions not used will be returned, if a stamped and addressed envelope is enclosed. THE WRITER PUBLISHING CO., 88 Broad Street, Room 416, BOSTON, MASS.

P. O. Box 1905.

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producing. One appears in the Century. The editors say that Ellis Parker Butler adventurously submitted a story to them and it was suggested to Mr. Butler that some changes in the story might possibly improve it. This reply was forthcoming :

E. P. BUTLER LITERARY FACTORY
242 State St., Flushing, N. Y.
Department of
Correction and Repairs.

April 30, 1913.

Editor the Century Magazine, New York. Dear Sir

Regarding your menio. of yesterday in regard to the 1913-model story recently purchased by you from this company, would say we cannot understand why you have found so many repairs necessary. While we only guarantee our product from one year from date of purchase, all goods are examined before shipment, and should reach you in good condition, and stand any ordinary wear and tear for twelve months. We cannot understand your complaint. Is it not possible you have allowed sand to get in the gear box of the story?

However, we are shipping you by this same mail material to replace the unsatisfactory parts, Nos. 13 and 14, and trust that, with these in place, the purchase will give you good satisfaction. In case further trouble please address this depart

of any

m'ent.

E. P. Butler Literary Factory,

Per E. P. B.

E. P. 1.-E. P. B.
In answering this communication please refer to
Correction No. 987.564.

The other bit is a story told by the New York Tribune of a successful pen-and-ink artist who received the following printed circular from an automobile firm:

"You are cordially invited to participate in our grand $100 prize-drawing contest. Each participant may submit one or more drawings advertising our automobile, and the winner will receive a grand prize of $100. Drawings must be sent prepaid, they must be original, and all unsuccessful drawings will remain the property of the undersigned."

The artist, who can hardly be persuaded to make drawings at $1,000 apiece, smiled over this printed circular. Then he took a sheet of note paper, and wrote to the automobile firm :

You are cordially invited to participate in my grand $10 prize automobile contest. Each partici. pant may submit one or more automobiles, fully equipped, of his own manufacture, and the winner will receive a grand cash prize of $10 in gold. The automobile submitted should be brand-new, and must

be shipped freight prepaid to New York. The unsuccessful automobiles will remain the property of the undersigned."

A reader of THE WRITER asks whether this extract might be taken as a description of any book issued within the year: — "If in a picture, l'iso, you should see A handsome woman, with a fish's tail,

Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,

Or limbs of beasts of the most different kinds
Covered with feathers of all sorts of birds
Would you not laugh and think the painter mad?
Trust me that book is as ridiculous
Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams,
Varies all shapes and mixes all extremes."

A prophecy regarding the newspaper of the future was made by Robert Donald, editor of the London Daily Chronicle, in his opening address as president of the Institute of Journalists. "The future methods of distribution," said he, "will be quicker and circulations will cover greater areas. Airships and aeroplanes will be used for the most distant centres. Electric trains and motor-planes running in special tracks will also be used. In the chief centres of population, papers will be distributed by electric or pneumatic tubes. News will be collected by wireless telephones. The reporter will always have a portable telephone with him with which he can communicate with his At the other end the wireless telepaper. phone message will be delivered to the subeditor printed in column form. At the people's recreation halls, with the cinematograph and gramophone, all the news of the day will be given. People may become too lazy to read, and news will be laid on to the house or office just as gas and water is now. The occupiers will listen to an account of the news of the day read to them by much. improved phonographs while sitting in their garden or a householder will have his daily newspaper printed in column form by a printing machine in his hall just as we have tape machines in offices now." Part of this prophecy no doubt will come true, but most inventors will probably be puzzled when they are asked to invent a device by which

a reporter's message sent by wireless telephone can be delivered in the office of his newspaper "printed in column form."

W. H. H.

WRITERS OF THE DAY.

Herbert Coolidge, whose story, 'The Lady's Man at the Show-Down," appeared in Collier's for July 5, is a California man, although he was born in Massachusetts. He grew up in Riverside, California, and spent five years specializing in English and sociology at Stanford University. Since leaving the university he has spent two years in Northern California among the Indians, doing missionary work and building up his health. He has spent several years in state sanitation work. During this time he has written stories which have appeared in the Youth's Companion, Outing, Out West, Sunset, and other magazines. His work deals with frontier life and conditions of the real West as he has known it. While a student he spent a summer in the high Sierras as forest ranger for the United States government. He has also traveled in Mexico and Lower California. Within the last few years he has settled down at his home, just outside Palo Alto, California, to devote his entire time to his literary work. His first book, 'Pancho McClish," was published last fall by A. C. McClurg & Company. The Popular Magazine has accepted the serial rights of a second book, and Mr. Coolidge is now working on a third long story dealing with western life. He is a brother of Dane Coolidge, who is also a writer of western fiction.

Robert Welles Ritchie, who had a story, entitled Fate Maketh His Circuit," in the Popular Magazine for August 1, and who has other stories of Mexico in revolution yet to be published in the same magazine, gathered his color of the grim country south of the Rio Grande at first hand while serving as a correspondent for the New York Sun during the Madero revolution. He was in Mexico City at the time the aged "Lion of Pueblo," President Porfirio Diaz, resigned

his seat in the face of anarchy, followed the fleeing executive to Vera Cruz, and accompanied him as far as Havana on the first stage of his voyage to exile. Being close to the core of action bore fruit in an exclusive interview, secured from the broken master of Mexico on the steamer that carried him abroad, but the price paid by the correspondent was high, for during the days of rioting prior to the abdication of the dictator, Mr. Ritchie was struck on the head by some missile from the hand of a rioter and badly hurt. One of his prizes of these exciting days in Mexico is an autograph letter from ex-President Diaz, thanking him for his sympathetic pen picture of the last days of the Diaz regime which Harper's Magazine published under the title, "The Passing of a Dictator."

Charles Saxby, author of the novelette, "The Idealist," in Ainslee's for August, is also the author of "Empire," announced for Everybody's for September, and of "In the House of the Old Mensah," to be printed in Ainslee's for September. He has had stories in the Smart Set, the Delineator, Success, Short Stories, and other magazines, as well. Mr. Saxby was born in Devonshire, England, but grew up in Trinidad and Barbados, West Indies. At the age of sixteen he went on the stage, but gave it up because of family objections. He spent some time in Italy and Southern Spain studying viticulture and the wine industry. Later he joined a friend in the Island of Teneriffe, expecting to revive the glories of the old "Canary Sack." They did not revive, and hearing of the formation of a company to search for gold and gem deposits in the Hinterlands of the Ivory and Gold Coast, Mr. Saxby went to London to see one of the directors, only to find that he had gone to Egypt for the winter. Mr. Saxby followed him and obtained a position with the company. He "trailed" around West Africa for more than two years, when the company went out of business abruptly. Mr. Saxby came down with the typhoid fever while up in the Bush, cut off by floods from everywhere, where he had nothing to eat but green plantains and

canned salmon. He was carried in a hammock two hundred miles to Axim, where he was put on board a steamer and shipped home. He spent eight months in the hos pital and then was advised to go to California for the "climate." He went, took to the mountains, living in a tent for eighteen months, and got well. Mr. Saxby's literary tendencies evinced themselves at the early age of ten, when he wrote a historical drama on the subject of Queen Elizabeth, which had six or seven acts and was played in about ten minutes, including intervals. He also ran a magazine, the Bagasse (title suggested by older brother; "bagasse" is the refuse from the sugar cane, good only to burn). The price was one cent a copy - the same copy - there was never more than one. Publication was stopped by parental decree, owing to innocently scandalous revealings of the private lives of the coolies. Mr. Saxby never wrote a line with any serious intent until he was twenty-eight years old, but from living so much alone in strange places, beyond the reach of mails and with only blacks about, he formed a habit of telling himself stories for entertainment. He began writing travel articles for the Sunday supplements. Then came a story, mailed to a big monthly in utter hopelessness result, a check for one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Since then Mr. Saxby says there have been more - sometimes.

Anne Ueland Taylor, whose story, "Alma Does for Herself," was printed in Harper's Magazine for August, is the wife of Kenneth Taylor, of St. Paul, Minnesota. She was graduated from Wells College in 1908, was married in 1909, and spent the year 1911 doing newspaper work, both editorial and reporting, for the Minneapolis Tribune. The story in Harper's is the first that she has had accepted by one of the big magazines, although she has had articles that were not fiction in the Atlantic, Collier's, Good Housekeeping, and several newspapers.

Louis Untermeyer, whose "Folk-Song" appeared in Harper's Magazine for August, declares that he owes his success in the

A Lyric Sherman,

literary field to the jewelry business. at least, the latter makes his performances in the former possible. During the day he designs and directs the making of link-buttons and pendants. At night he writes the lyrics and insurrectionary verse that appear in the Century, the Forum, the Smart Set, the Delineator, Harper's, the Independent, and other publications. His sonnet, "Mockery," was awarded the first prize in the International's poetry contest, some of the judges being Richard Le Gallienne, Edwin Markham, Hudson Maxim, and Edward J. Wheeler of Current Opinion. Mr. Untermeyer's first volume, "First Love Sequence," was published by French & Company, in 1911, and his new book, Summons," is being prepared for publication late this year, and will include the striking series of socialistic poems which have been appearing in the Masses. Mr. Untermeyer also conducts a bi-weekly department in the Chicago Evening Post- half critique and half causerie under the caption," And Other Poems." Mr. Untermeyer is twenty-seven years old, and has lived in New York all his life. He contributes occasional prose articles to the New York Times and the Independent, and is one of the editors of the Masses.

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LeRoy Titus Weeks, author of "A Double Star" and "A Triolet," both in the August number of the Century, has had other poems published by the Century Company-"All 'at Out's In Free," Snowing," "The Bobolink," "The Jaybird," "The Chickadee," "The Red-winged Blackbird," "Bob White," and "The Maryland Yellow-Throat." Of "A Double Star" a poet writes: "There are three poets in New York who covet the first line in this sonnet of yours. Any living poet might be proud of having written that line." Rev. Dr. Weeks has also had a story, Bargold," in the Cavalier, and a volume of his poems has been published by T. Y. Crowell & Company. In his Doctor's thesis he worked up "The Order of Rimes in the English Sonnet," a part of which was published in "Modern Language Notes." Dr. Weeks has just about completed a book,

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Some of Mr. Bridges' works are, by their very nature, shut out from the possibility of popularity. For example, we never expect to find among the best sellers the Latin poem, Carmen Elegiacum de Nosocomio Sti Bartholomaei Londinensis." Then, too, many of his best poems have been printed privately at the press of his friend, Mr. Daniel, of Worcester college, and circulated only among collectors of rare books and personal acquaintances of Mr. Bridges. Recently, however, there has come from the Oxford University press a volume of his lyrics, entitled "Poetical Works of Robert Bridges," and this book has enlarged the circle of his admirers in England and America. In that admirable series called "The Poets and the Poetry of the Ninteenth Century," published by E. P. Dutton & Co., one volume is "Robert Bridges and Contemporary Poets." Here are to be found many of his best poems, lyric and dramatic. Although seldom he is called "Dr. Bridges," this poet, like Keats, has studied medicine. Unlike Keats, however, and like two American poets, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Dr. Weir Mitchell, he persisted in his studies and gained a distinguished place in his profession.

Robert Bridges is sixty-nine years old and comes of a distinguished English family. At

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