ern progress and the broadest literary catholicity," and adds: "The fourth editor joyfully reaffirms this creed. There can be no simpler and more comprehensive statement of this magazine's present spirit and purposes."

Mr. Yard also pays tribute to the editorial aims and ideals of Richard Watson Gilder; quotes his prophecy, made in 1886, that there should be "during the next ten years a revival of creative literature," since American life was so rich in feeling and action and meaning," and adds this comment:

"Like most prophecies, Mr. Gilder's has been only partly fulfilled. Yet the eighteen years since he uttered it have proved at least that it was true, though its realization has been delayed by the extraordinary activity of these later years. The history of all human progress shows that the art of any period is, so to speak, the flowering of that period. The bloom appears only after stem and stalk have shot to their full growth and leaves have expanded and darkened to their maturity. The bubbling sap of Mr. Gilder's time is showing now in new and surprising growth and our problem to-day is not so much to enjoy the flowering literature which he promised as to study and to measure and to comprehend as nearly as possible the wealth of scientific and social and political and industrial achievement which has amazingly developed.

"There is no escaping the fact that civilization, like the river tumbling and swirling between two lakes, is passing turbulently from the old convention of the last several generations to the unknown almost unguessable convention of the not distant future. The feminist movement, the uprising of labor, the surging of innumerable socialistic currents can mean nothing else than the certain readjustment of social levels. The demand of the people for the heritage of the bosses is not short of revolution. The rebellious din of frantic impressionistic groups is nothing if not strenuous protest against a frozen art. The changed Sabbath and the tempered sermon mark the coldly critical appraisement of religious creeds. And science, meantime, straining and sweating un

der the lash of progress, is passing from wonder unto wonder.

"Perhaps Mr. Gilder's period of literary flowering, though surely coming, must be postponed another decade. The need of the moment is to discover where we are, what is accomplishing about us. Where have all these struggling activities brought us? What have they really done? What do they mean? Whither do they tend ?"

The salutatory ends with these words: "As for the rest, we shall conserve the best that the Century has stood for in the past. We shall offer a larger proportion of fiction than formerly, and shall bring it as near to truth and make it as interpretative of life as conditions allow. We shall maintain illustration at the highest point modern method will permit. We shall cultivate history and poetry and the essay. We shall explore conditions at home and abroad. We shall make this magazine, fearlessly and in the white light of to-day, as nearly the magazine of the century as courage and devotion and eyes that see and minds that shrink not can do."

Limiting the Scope of Writers. - In editorial circles there is talk of a new weekly to be launched by "the Hearst magazines" "to compete with the Saturday Evening Post." The phrase has become a cliché brought out every time the idea of a large weekly circulation arises. There is no reason, however, to think the gossip is without foundation.

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Writers who hear of the new weekly inquire: Are they going to corral a bunch?" Which being interpreted means are they going to standardize a group of writers-one for business stories, one for "love" stories, one for girls' adventures, one for humor, one for "the sob stuff," and so on. The process is first to confine a writer to his specialty and then rope him down to what he shall do in it. The anarchists are missing a chance to do literature a valuable service. They should convert the magazine editors. There is no class more in need of the doctrine of non-interference with personality.

The corralling process is being done rather for whole groups of magazines than for a

single one such as the new weekly. I heard yesterday of one proffered contract for one writer's whole annual output at ten cents a word. This particular profferee preferred liberty. Many do not. The piece-work system of magazine writing may be depended upon to suppress individuality and check growth in a large number of writers.George Crane Cook, in the Chicago Evening Post.

Drawing Characters from Life. "I largely model my characters," says Owen Johnson, "after recognizable types; and this with malice aforethought. For the public, which acquires its realism through the ne papers, recognizes inconsistencies in the concrete individual where it will not proceed philosophically to abstract generalizations.

news

"Create out of the imagination a character such as John G. Slade in 'The Sixty-first Second,' lay down the bold proposition that amid the financial adventurers to-day there can be two periods, one a conscienceless, brutal, lawless seizing of power, and the second a constructive period, when the same man, his power acquired, can turn with equal enthusiasm to projects of national good, and the thesis would be rejected as impossible and indefensible. But give to the character certain points of resemblance to three or four great promoters in the public eye, and the reader, adjusting the character of fiction to the characters in the day's news with which he is familiar, proceeds without irritation.

"I do not mean to say that my characters are close transcripts from living persons. This is very rarely true. Usually three to six personalities of the same general condition will be drawn upon and the character evolved, just as the artist builds his landscape from several sketches. Of course to the professional this is the commonest A, B, C. Balzac is full of recognizable portraits, such as those of George Sand and Alfred de Musset. Even lately in the old police records which Stoddard Dewey has been investigating have been found the records of that most highly colored character

Advice to Playwrights. Personally, I do not look upon playwriting as an art. To me it is toil; real, downright, sleep-destroying, nerve-racking labor, which, to accomplish the best results, should be started with an apprenticeship in the theatre that begins at the stage door and which, to thoroughly absorb, should be continued until its technic, from the curtain line to the gridiron, is as familiar as A, B, C. If the ambitious author of the future would adopt this course he would not be compelled to knock at so many managerial doors before finding one willing to produce his plays. George Cohan, in Chicago Record-Herald.

M.

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS.

[Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicais indexed for copies of the periodicals containing the articles mentioned in the following/ reference list will confer a favor if they will mention THE WRITER.]

THE TRIBULATIONS OF AN AMATEUR BOOK BUYER. John L. Hervey. Atlantic for September. THE BUSINESS MAN IN ENGLISH NOVELS. William Arthur Gill. Atlantic for September. LETTERS OF WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY. - II. Atlantic for September.

AMERICANISMS, REAL OR REPUTED. Thomas R. Lounsbury. Harper's Magazine for September. A VISIT TO WHISTLER. Maria Torrilhon Buel. Century for September.

THE SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY. Topics of the Time, Century for September.

LIVING ENGLISH POETS. R. A. Scott-James. North American Review for September.

LIITLE PICTURES OF 0. HENRY. for September.

EMIL VERHAEREIV. F. Theis. Review for September.

- IV.

Bookman

North American

Paul Armstrong, the playwright, dramatized Alias Jimmy Valentine" from 0. Henry's story in five days and has received royalties of $75,000 from the play, according to an affidavit filed in court. It was testified that the ideas, structural arrangements, and situations of the play were all suggested by George C. Tyler, of Liebler & Co., the producers of the play.

The Princess Troubetskoy, formerly Amélie Rives, suing for $3.000 damages an automobilist whose car stuck her horse while she was riding last October, causing her to be thrown, says that she has lost $2,000 on account of the accident, through inability to fulfil a literary contract.

Alfred Austin, the late poet laureate, for many years did his daily task as a journalist at home with the assistance of a telegraph wire run into his study sixty miles from the London Standard office. His instructions went over the wire, and his editorial article went to town by train. Sometimes he would telegraph the whole article.

William Lequeux, writing from Brussels to the receiver in whose hands his financial affairs have been put on petition of his wife, who claimed $1,500 arrears under the deed of separation, says he regrets he cannot attend the meeting of his creditors, as he is in Belgium, "without the necessary funds to go to London."

"Hawthorne and His Publisher," by Miss Caroline Ticknor, is a record of a long friendship between an author and his publisher.

In "Oscar Wilde and Myself" Lord Alfred Douglas will seek not merely to give an analysis of the purely literary and artistic aspects of Wilde's work, but also to say something about the many prominent people that made up Wilde's circle in artistic London. He will also give a large number of anecdotes and sayings of Wilde, with drawings, facsimile letters, and other illustrations never before made public.

A biography entitled "Ouida: A Memoir," prepared by Miss Elizabeth Lee, will be published soon.

"The Early Life of Mark Rutherford by Himself" is published by Humphrey Milford in London. Its autobiographical notes were written by Mr. White when he was seventyeight years old.

The Century Company is to publish this fall a study of "Beaumont the Dramatist" by Charles Mills Gayley, professor of the English language and literature in the University of California.

William Morris," a study in personality, by Arthur Compton-Rickett, is published by E. P. Dutton & Co.

The music department of the General Federation of Women's Clubs offers a prize of fifty dollars for the best music for the federation hymn, and the contest is open to any member of the federation until January I, 1914. It is desired that the music be written in two or three parts for women's voices.

The Rogers Peet Company, 842 Broadway, New York, is going to publish a boys' magazine, which Frank D. Halsey has in charge.

All Outdoors, a new quarterly, is published by the Outing Publishing Company, of New York, publisher of the Outing Magazine.

The Home Magazine is the title of a new magazine published in Chicago by Frank O. Balch, formerly publisher of Home Life.

Munsey's Magazine has stopped using serial stories and now prints a complete novel in each number.

The Watchman (Boston) and the Examiner (New York), two well-known Baptist papers, have been consolidated. The consolidated paper is called the Watchman-Examiner and will be published from Boston and New York. Dr. Curtis Lee Laws has resigned his pastorate in Brooklyn to become the editor-in-chief. Dr. E. F. Merriam will have charge of the Boston office and the New England edition of the paper.

Norman Hapgood says in the first number of Harper's Weekly issued under his control: "We do not intend to use fiction to build up circulation in a way that would collect for us a mass of readers who care for little else."

Eugene Berry Watt, a young man who for two years has operated The National Authors' Institute" in New York City, has been arrested on a charge of using the mails to defraud, and has been put under $2,000 bonds for trial. The postal authorities say that Watt obtained about $20,000 by duping hundreds of inexperienced short-story writers and moving-picture playwrights. He charged fees ranging from $2 to $50. Watt was convicted in 1908 for conducting a similar scheme and sentenced to two years in the Atlanta penitentiary, but his youth and promises to reform gained him a release on parole.

Richard G. Badger and Gordon Badger and the Gorham Press, of Boston, have been made defendants in a suit for $100,000 brought by David T. Smith, of Louisville, Ky., said to be an aged attorney, for alleged breach of contract in connection with the printing and publishing of a manuscript by Smith.

The story printed in the May number of Short Stories under the title "Aft A-Gley," which Doubleday, Page, & Co. bought from James Fraser, of Edwardsville, Kansas, was really W. W. Jacobs' story, "Twin Spirits," published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in book form in 1901, in a volume entitled "Light Freights." Mr. Fraser denies any intent to plagiarize, and says he does not remember ever having read the story.

F. G. Browne & Co., Chicago, publishers, have incorporated under the name of Browne & Howell Co., with a capital stock of $60,000.

Hall Caine's latest novel appears in English, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, French, and Swedish, with other versions in German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Yiddish soon to follow.

Miss Nell Speed died August 2 in Richmond, Va., aged thirty-three.

Michael Maybrick ("Stephen Adams") died at Buxton, in the Isle of Wight, August 25, aged sixty-nine.

Alice Miller Wicks (Mrs. Albert M. Kruger) died in Philadelphia August 26.

Charles Chapin Sargent, Jr., died at Bedford, N. Y., August 26, aged thirty-nine.

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149 149 149

Barry Benefield, 149 V. H. Cornell, 150 Elias Lieberman, 150 Gerald Morgan, 150

No. 10.

to both sexes. "Employé" and "employée are French words, and the first cannot be applied to a woman or the second to a man. Employé" is not properly written without an accented "é."

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The German word Kur" does not mean cure," but " 148 treatment," so that "Traubenkur," for instance, should not be translated grape-cure," but grape-treatment." "To cure" in English means "to restore to health; to effect a cure," but in other languages it means merely to apply "a method of remedial treatment of disease, medical or hygienic care; method of medical treatment." The German word for " restoration to health" is "Heilung," not "Kur." The Latin word cura" means merely "care," a shade of meaning which is preserved in the derived term "curator." An Italian physician was made to say, when his article was translated into English: "I cured ten typhoid patients last month and six of them died." What he really said was that he had treated the patients.

150 151

Robert Browning, 151" Pierre de Coule

151

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vain," 151 Stewart Edward White

CURRENT LITERARY TOPICS

The newspaper reporter who wrote of a statue of a guardian angel completed by a sculptor as a monument for a cemetery : The piece has been fashioned for a private party," meant "for a private person."

It is no more correct to say of a lady: "She was beautifully gowned," than it would be to say of a man that he was handsomely coated, vested, and panted.

Nom de plume" is a poor French phrase for "pseudonym," or "pen name." It will be looked for in vain in a French dictionary. The French have the phrase "nom de guerre," meaning the sobriquet which in ancient times a soldier took when he enlisted, and by extension the phrase has come to be generally applied to a borrowed name under which a person is generally known. The phrase, "nom de plume," is no better be