ing." The sentence as it stands is absurd.

Another example of this neglect of the participle is seen in the following case: A steeple is being described and we read: "Cutting the sky one can see it from a great distance." Grammatically the participle "cutting" must be linked with the word "one"; and so we have the image of a gazer cutting the sky in order to see the tower. The writer might have said: "One can see it cutting the sky," or, "Cutting the sky it is seen," or likewise.

There are few writers who do not occasionally blunder into loose handling of the participle, and it is therefore worth while for every one to have an eye to this possible fault.

An example of the same kind of mental ellipsis of the needed words is seen in a sentence cited in the Literary Digest from some writer who is appraising Miss Braddon's work. Of "Lady Audley's Secret," he says: "Written when quite a young girl, the story..." He means, of course, when Miss Braddon was quite a young girl, but what he actually says is that the story, when quite a young girl, was written.

That the wrong or loose use of the participle is a common error is seen in a compound sentence from no less famous a pen than that of Benjamin Franklin. The friendly vernacular of the style hints how easily a speaker may fall into this pitfall. He says: "They joined him in desiring him to speak his mind and gathering 'round him he proceeded to speak as follows." The participle, "gathering," is left "up in the air." It cannot be tied to the subject of its part of the sentence, "he," for "he" is the actual object of this gathering idea. . Who or what does the gathering is of course plain to imagination from the preceding subject and predicate, "they joined." Grammar permits of no such breezy ties. There must be the plain family grouping in each and every complete sentence. All that follows after "and" must be explainable on its own ground. Who then does the gathering? No vestige of any such persons after the word "and" can be found. Does the writer mean "gathering 'round him his friends he pro

There is oppor

So the rule must be watchfully heeded to declare the actor in every active participle, or the person acted upon when the participle is passive. The error is most often found when the participle is active. No one would have written 66 grouped 'round him, he proceeded." Any one would have said: "Grouped 'round him they listened." Christian Science Monitor. An Incentive to Authors. tunity offered by the Camp Fire Club of America, credited with being the largest and most active organization of hunters of big game in the world, to all who love the out-door life where nature is itself, and have ability to write, to win literary honors by writing books directly or indirectly dealing with and advocating conservation of many resources, love of nature and out-door life, and the camp fire spirit."

The club has a committee on literary honors which passes on the merits of any such books that may be submitted to it. Its membership includes Dan Beard, president of the club; Ernest Thompson Seton, Dr. W. T. Hornaday, Dr. Louis L. Seaman, Dr. Robert T. Morris, A. W. Dimock, Charles Livingston Bull, Irving Bacheller, Emerson McMillan, General George W. Wingate, Frank Presbrey, Dr. George G. Van Shaick, Kenneth Fowler, and William Edward Coffin, vice-president of the club. These men are well known as authors, artists, naturalists, explorers, or scientists.

The committee is assisted by a number of volunteers from the membership of the club. A book when received is submitted to a

group of specialists upon the subject treated, and a group is selected to represent the general reader. Nature value, literary value, story or sustained interest, character drawing, maps, illustrations, and camp-fire spirit are considered. Written reports by these readers are submitted to the committee preliminary to a decision. If the vote is favorable the board of governors issues a "highly commended" certificate. The publisher is permitted to use this certificate in advertising, and to imprint the club emblem on the cover of the book commended. Every effort is made to base conclusions on exact, broad, and just lines, free from influence or favoritism. So far this year more than twenty books have been submitted.

The standing of the Camp Fire Club, the personnel of the committee, and the serious method of review should render this certificate desirable. To receive it is an honor of which many an author would be proud. - Albany Journal.

AMERICAN PLAYS OLD AND NEW. With portraits of Bronson Howard, Augustus Thomas, Edward Sheldon, James A. Herne, Clyde Fitch, Booth Tarkington, George Ade, Percy MacKaye, and William Vaughn Moody. Hamilton W. Mabie. Outlook for December 28. WHITELAW REID. Outlook for December 28.

NEWS AND NOTES.

Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett has gone to Bermuda to finish her new novel, serial publication of which will begin in this month's Century.

Montague Glass, creator of "Potash and Perlmutter," recently left for Europe with Mrs. Glass. They will settle down in some little town in Spain, where they will live for a year.

Thomas Dixon is doing his writing now in a log cabin of his own planning on his new five-hundred-acre estate, "Elmington Manor," Devondale, Va.

The Outlook announces as its main feature for 1913 "Some Chapters from a Possible Autobiography," by Theodore Roosevelt, in which Mr. Roosevelt will write about his life from boyhood to date.

The death of William F. Monypenny, almost on the day of publication of the second volume of his "Life of Benjamin Disraeli," will not prevent the completion of the work, as the writer had virtually all the material ready for his publishers.

A book just published in London, "The Complete Mystery of Edwin Drood," by J. Cumings Waters, is a kind of encyclopaedia of the subject, of nearly 300 pages, with a full account of the sequels and “infallible solutions," numbering thirty-two.

In "The Problem of Edwin Drood," published by the George H. Doran Company, Sir W. Robertson Nicoll has attempted to determine how "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" was to end, by a study of Dickens's methods.

"The Wren's Nest," the Atlanta home of Joel Chandler Harris, has passed formally into the hands of the Uncle Remus Association, which will convert it into a memorial

museum.

Alfred Halewood, a Preston, England, bookseller, has just issued "Francis Thompson, the Preston-born Poet, with Notes on Some of His Works," by John Thomson. The erection of a commemorative tablet in memory of Thompson suggested the publication of this brief life.

66

The Authors' League of America has been incorporated in New York. The purposes set forth in the application for a certificate of incorporation are: To procure adequate copyright legislation, both international and domestic; to protect the rights of all authors, whether engaged in literary, dramatic, artistic or musical composition, and to advise and assist all such authors voluntarily in the disposal of their productions." The articles of incorporation also provide for a council, which may place the authors in Class A, B, or C, as it sees fit. There are thirty members of the council, and the following will act until the second Tuesday in April and pass on the writings of different authors: Class A-Ellen Glasgow, Carolyn Wells, Gelett Burgess, Harvey J. 'O'Higgins, A. E. Thomas, Cleveland Moffett, Milton Royle, Charles Rann Kennedy, and Hamlin Garland. Class B-Gertrude Atherton, Rachel Crothers, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Will Irwin, Meredith Nicholson, Jesse Lynch Williams, Walter P. Eaton, Robert Grant, Winston Churchill, and Will Payne. Class C-Kate Douglas Riggs, Ida M. Tarbell, George Barr McCutcheon, Rupert Hughes, Rex Beach, Arthur C. Train, Owen Johnson, William M. Sloane, Louis Joseph Vance, and Ellis Parker Butler. The headquarters of the league are at 30 Broad street, New York.

The French Society of Poets has started a pension scheme, the terms of which provide that any French poet who produces a copy of his legal record, whereon any crimes for which he has been prosecuted are noted, and who pays an annual subscription of two dollars will be able to enjoy a pension after he is fifty-five years old.

The English high court of justice recently has reiterated the opinion that there is no valid copyright in a title of a book or play.

The National Municipal League offers two prizes of fifty dollars each for the best 10,000-word essays on "The Best Sources of City Revenue" written by college students and submitted before March 15. Information will be given by Clinton Rogers Woodruff, secretary of the National Municipal League, North American building, Philadelphia, Penn.

Stephen Phillips has become the editor of the journal of the English Poetry Society, which is now called the Poetry Review, and will deal, in his first article, with poetic drama. The society intends to offer a series of monthly premiums, including one of £5 for the best poem between fifty and 200 lines in length, and several small sums for short lyrics.

Housewives

The first number of the League Magazine has been published by the Housewives League, which was started only a year ago, but which already has more than 400,000 members. The magazine, like the League, will be national in scope. It will be illustrated, and will contain special articles covering all the interests of the home. Mrs. Julian Heath, founder and national president of the League, is the supervising editor, and the publication offices are at No. 31 East Twenty-seventh street, New York.

A monthly magazine for hoboes is to be published by Jeff Davis, the new president of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association. It will be known as the International Hobo Review, and, according to President Davis, the contributors will include James Eads How, of St. Louis, the founder of the organization; Jack London, James Seymour, the hobo poet; Walter Maillard, and Robert Hunter. The hobo is defined as a man who is always looking for work but frequently cannot find it.

A newspaper magazine section, devoted entirely to children, is scheduled to appear January 5. The Century Syndicate, 50 Church street, New York, is getting out the supplement, which will form a part of the following newspapers: New York Sun, Pittsburg Leader, Chicago Inter-Ocean, Philadelphia Record, Boston Herald, Buffalo News.

Art in America, an illustrated quarterly, to be edited by Dr. Wilhelm R. Valentiner, is announced by Frederic Fairchild Sherman, the New York publisher. It will aim to further the knowledge of the works of art owned in this country, through the publication of scholarly articles upon these subjects and others relating to them, with particular reference to the many treasures in American private collections.

The first number of the American-Scandinavian Review has appeared. It is published bi-monthly at 507 Fifth avenue, New York. with the object of creating closer intellectual relations between the people of the United States and those of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

The first issue of Neale's Monthly, a new magazine published by the Neale Publishing Company, of New York, contains fiction, essays, and verse about the variety of miscellaneous material found in most magazines designed to reach the majority of readers.

Williams & Norgate, London, are publishing a new shilling monthly, the British Review, which has incorporated the Oxford and Cambridge Review. The first number was issued in December. The editor is R. J. Walker, the son of the head master of St. Paul's School.

The name of the new London weekly which is to be published by Bernard Shaw in conjunction with Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb has not yet been announced, and the paper is not expected to make its appearance until immediately after Easter. It will be a political and literary review of the type of the Nation or the Spectator, and the price will be sixpence. The distinctive object of the new journal will be to deal with public affairs from the point of view of the adherents of Collectivism, which aims at the centralization of the management of industry in the people collectively or in the state, and is opposed to individualism.

The Challenge is a new magazine published in New Orleans.

The Poetry Journal (Boston) is published by the Four Seas Publishing Company.

The Oriental Review, which has been published in New York, will continue to be issued, new capital having been found to maintain the venture. M. Honda, who has been editing the journal, will return to Japan.

John A. McKay, president of the Stuyvesant Company, announces that a substantial interest in Town and Country (New York) has been acquired by H. J. Whigham, the editor; Franklin Coe, for ten years past associated with Collier's; and Frederick I. Thompson, publisher and principal owner of the Mobile (Ala.) Register. Mr. Coe will retire on February 1 from the publishing firm of P. F. Collier & Son, Inc., of which he has been treasurer, to assume the management of Town and Country.

The McGraw Publishing Company of New York has been incorporated, with a capital of $2,000,000, to do a general publishing business. The directors are: Herbert S. Mallalieu, Joseph A. Kucera, George W. Elliott, Arthur B. Gilbert, Lawrence E. Gould, Addams S. McAllister, New York; Louis W. McGraw, Newark, N. J.; John T. De Mott, Brooklyn; Daniel T. Pierce, Glen Ridge, N. J.; Eugene F. Roeber and Edward J. Mehren, East Orange, N. J.

Rev. Robert Collyer died in New York November 30, aged eighty-nine.

Dr. Alice B. Stockham died at Alhambra, Calif., December 2, aged seventy-nine.

Professor Eben Jenks Loomis died at Amherst, Mass., December 2, aged eightyfour.

General Gates P. Thurston died December 8, aged seventy-seven.

James Otis Kaler died in Portland December 11, aged sixty-four.

Mrs. Laura Case Collins died in Maysville, Ky., December 13, aged eighty-six. Whitelaw Reid died in London December 15, aged seventy-five.

J. Cheever Goodwin died in New York December 18, aged sixty-two.

Will Carleton died in Brooklyn December 18, aged seventy-seven.

THE

VOL. XXV.

Those who have long looked upon the garrets and by-ways of Grub street as the Alma Mater of newspaper and magazine men doubtless read with interest last fall the announcement in the daily press that New York University was to offer a twoyear course in connection with the School of Commerce, Accounts, and Finance leading to the degree of Bachelor of Commercial Science in Journalism. Students in the University College may, with the permission of the faculty of that school, take courses in journalism and have the same counted toward the degree of A. B. or B. S.

No. 2.

When James Melvin Lee resigned the editorship of Judge a little over a year ago to become director of the Department of Journalism, the idea uppermost in his mind was to establish a complete course in journalism where those who have the "itch" - or, to be more dignified and academicthe "urge" to write might have practical instruction. All the journalism courses at New York University are practical. They do not aim to produce De Maupassants, but they do try to train the "journeyman writer."

It is interesting to note how Mr. Lee first got his idea of teaching magazine writing. In a recent interview he said to me :

"I am indebted to Walter H. Page, editor of the World's Work, for the suggestion. In a little talk given before the Vagabonds (a club of magazine writers and editors, meeting weekly for luncheon at the National Arts Club in New York city) Mr. Page called attention to the fact that editorial offices were constantly besieged by young people that wanted to write.

"Those of us,' he said, who work at current literature with hammers say to them "Well, you wish to write?" 'Yes." "Then go ahead and write; we will buy your writings if they are good enough." "Oh!" the embryo writer exclaims, "I want to learn." "Well, we are sorry, but we don't keep school."

"The thought came to me then, why not keep school? When the School of Commerce of New York University offered the opportunity I decided to leave the editorial chair for that of the teacher."

The magazine courses now offered at New York University are Magazine Writing, Special Feature Work, Magazine Editing