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Paul Armstrong, the playwright, dramatized Alias Jimmy Valentine" from O. 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."

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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.

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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.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS.

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XXVI. Edward B. Hughes. STORIES THAT ARE NOT STORIES. William Edward Park

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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 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." 151 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.

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"Win and similar phrases would be better if the out" were left out.

Instead of saying “After I have rested up," why not say simply "After I have rested"?

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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

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The plural of "turkey" is turkeys," not 'turkies," and the plural of “chimney” is chimneys," not "chimnies."

"Inaugurate" is not properly used with the meaning "to celebrate the completion of, or the first public use of; to dedicate, as a statue, or the Peace Palace at The Hague."

Any one has a right to object to the sign, "Go slow," who would call out when in sudden danger and in need of help: Come quickly!"

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day" should be "Tomorrow will be Thanksgiving Day." Nobody would say: "Yesterday is Christmas."

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Authoress" and 'poetess" should be used for "author" and "poet " only when absolutely necessary and that will be very seldom. Edward B. Hughes.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

STORIES THAT ARE NOT STORIES.

"The style is clean-cut and pleasing, the treatment of scenes and characters is natural and convincing, the manuscript is neatly prepared, spelling and punctuation are excellent, all the details necessary to make a salable story are present - except one."

"And that missing detail-what is it?" "The story itself."

Has the foregoing significant dialogue ever been handed out to you by critic, editor, or your own suddenly-awakened perception? The occasion for such warning and advice is frequent, in any event. An editorial friend informs me that the mails are overloaded at all times with such un

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available material stories that comply with all the minor requirements, and yet are sadly lacking in the main essential — stories, in short, that are not stories.

Many story-writers err at the very beginning in mistaking situation for plot. A bright idea occurs, a dramatic situation is evolved. The writer exclaims: "This will make a splendid story!"

More than a mere dramatic situation or a single appealing idea is required, however, to make the sort of story that will be read through by the editor, let alone found purchasable by him.

For instance, a baby, carried down river

in his cradle in a flood, is adopted by a woman who rescues him. That is an appealing and measurably dramatic situation though no longer a new one.

But it is not plot.

In the same home there is a baby girl. The two children grow up together, and ultimately wed.

This is a logical sequence to the original situation. It is narrative, but it is not story or the kind of plot required for story.

A plain narrative of growing up and marrying is not plot, just as the narrative of a picnic without rain is not plot. Plot demands the element of doubt, of suspense. To create this feeling of doubt or suspense, there must be obstacles rendering the object which the reader wishes to see accomplished to all appearances impossible of accomplish

ment.

Take the original situation of the "waif of the waters." Study that situation, and develop, with it as a beginning and the marriage of the boy and girl as the desired culmination, certain obstacles and complications that render the outcome doubtful.

For instance, the two grow up believing themselves to be brother and sister. This belief creates a primary obstacle.

The boy, not yet a man, runs away from his foster home. Here is a still further obstacle to their ultimate union. He meets adventures and forms connections which render the desired outcome of the story still more unlikely.

He meets a girl with whom he falls in love. Here again enters the element of doubt. There is a rival for this girl's affections more suspense and uncertainty. The girl favors the rival - still further uncertainty. She marries the rival. Your readers wonder what will happen next.

What happens next is that the girl's husband runs away with her money and another man's wife, leaving her bereft in a double sense. The young man befriends her. Then the faithless husband is killed trying to climb Mount McKinley. An obstacle is apparently removed when

The young man discovers that the sorrowing widow who is now ready enough to wed

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If so, take that basic situation or idea, and, instead of stringing words after words in aimless narrative, sit down in some sequestered, quiet spot-on top of an oil derrick or in the lowest shaft of a coal mine, or in the depths of the primeval forest, or in the heart of a big city — and by dint of thinking, thinking, persistently thinking, develop that original idea until it is rich in complications, in turns and twists, in surprises and variations in short, till it grows up into a fullformed plot.

Then hang your most attractive story clothes upon it, and send it out. Perhaps you will score a hit where hitherto you have persistently and, to you, inexplicablymissed the bull's-eye.

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