the feast, that

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near.

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and Such things necessary beneficial, but they are not pleasant. Unpleasant, too, the countless are minders of the imminence of misfortune and tragedy in daily life. Why should we carry this gloom with us into fiction? Why not, rather, enjoy to the full whatever the novelists have to tell, knowing well that it will all come right in the end?

The writers of romance, whose minds have not been obscured by a fog of petty truths, have always recognized this fact. Ivanhoe must wed his insipid Rowena, and the reader must never doubt that he is going to do so. D'Artagnan must win the military glory for which he longs; let his clothes be riddled with bullets, not one of them must be allowed to reach a vital spot before the marshal's staff is his. What should we think of David Balfour if, instead of living to write his memoirs, he had inopportunely died amid the Highland crags? It is only the novel-writers of today, the selfproclaimed students of humanity, who keep their readers in doubt, who veil the ending as something too awful to be disclosed before its time — which, indeed, it often is. We may read their books with interest, but we read the others with delight. The Bellman can venture to prophesy which type of book will have the more enduring life.The Bellman.

the poet receive less for his poem now than twenty years ago?"

On the contrary," replied Dr. Wheeler, He sells more verse "he receives more. and gets more for it. Not long ago the Poetry Society authorized me to investigate the condition of the magazine poetry market. I sent the following letter to twentyseven leading American monthly and weekly magazines:

I am endeavoring to procure for the Poetry Society of America definite data regarding the rates of compensation paid by the magazines for poetry and the Are you basis on which such rates are computed. willing to send me replies to the following questions? 1. By what method do you fix the price of a poem accepted for publication? By the number of lines, or the character of the poem, or how?

2. Do you pay upon acceptance or upon publication, or sometimes one way or sometimes the other? 3. What are your rules of payment, and what is the minimum for very short poems, such as quatrains?

"Of the first eighteen replies received, this is a brief summary. All pay on acceptance,' or within a week or ten days thereafter. In six replies the merit of the poem is given as the first consideration in fixing the price, the length of the poem reIn four ceiving secondary consideration. replies, the length of the poem is said usually to determine the price, and one editor states that merit is all he considers. To my second question, five editors replied that they paid from fifty cents to a dollar a line. Six gave fifty cents a line as their regular rate, and one said that he always paid a dollar a line. The minimum rate for very short poems was given in one letter as $10, in two as $5. in one as $2.50, and in one as $2, for couplets.'

"So you see, the rewards for poetry are increasing instead of decreasing. There are many poets, you know, who have no income other than from poetry, and who, nevertheless live comfortably. Alfred Noyes writes poetry for a living, and so, I believe, does John Masefield. In this country, Arthur Guiterman and Berton Braley live on the proceeds of the sale of their verse." - New York Times.

Churchill WilScouting for New Authors. liams, associate editor of the Saturday

Evening Post, and an author himself, was describing the methods used in discovering writers. In his office he explained to the interviewer how he goes about this important task.

"If you could come down to my house you would find it stacked with the latest magazines. I go through many of these, and when I come across stories of unusual merit I try to find their authors. I do not mean that I try to take an author away from a periodical with which he is connected, but I try to induce him to send us some material. But we do not give commissions. We always reserve the right to reject a story, even if we have told an author to write for

us.

Every week almost I go over to New York, where I meet some of these authors and I negotiate with them for stories. All the ideas that rule this paper originate right here with Mr. Lorimer, our editor. He gets an idea for a special article, for instance, and then names some one he thinks competent to handle it. Then I go over and meet the man. And it is pleasant work. There never was a man more happy in his position than I am. I find that I have as much room for creative effort as if I were writing myself. It is a great pleasure to find talent where no one saw it before. I do not think I am boasting when I say we discovered Montague Glass. We saw some of his humorous skits in some trade journals. I then found him in a downtown lawyer's office in by no means affluent circumstances. And we engaged him for the Post."

Speaking of Jack London, Mr. Williams said: "He reads extensively and absorbs a tremendous lot - economics, philosophy, and science. He finds time to put out a good deal of work and meritorious work at that. He has built himself a fine home in Glen Ellen, Calif., and I should not be surprised if his income were thirty or forty thousand dollars a year. And at one time he barely had enough to eat." Albert Mordell in Philadelphia Record.

masses whose soul she studies with such admirable skill and fidelity?" asks a writer in the New York Evening Post, who goes on to say: "The old New York familiesin The Custom of the Country' have such attractive names as Dagonet, Marvell, and Van Degen, but the climbers from the small factory towns of the Middle West are called Undine Spragg, Bertha Shallum, and Indiana Frusk. The girl in The Reef' is Sophie Viner. The idea seems to be that, coming from the cultureless region where everything is ugly, these successful Middle Western manufacturers and their women must bear ugly names. As a matter of fact the tribes who come out of Pittsburgh will: bear euphonious names like Howard, Gregory, Thompson, Roberts, Moffatt, and Brown. The Henry James influence is distinctly visible in this lorgnette attitude which would saddle the vulgar masses with a hideous nomenclature."

Commenting on this, the San Francisco Argonaut remarks: "An Eastern critic asks why Mrs. Wharton chooses such ugly names for her middle-class heroines, and cites the name of Sophie Viner, the chief girl in. 'The Reef.' Now Sophie Viner is not a beautiful name, but we fail to see what else this particular damosel could have been. called. The name fits her like a glove. As soon as we know that she is called Sophie Viner we seem to have a premonition of exactly what she will do. To have called. her Montmorency, for example, or Dagonet, would have frustrated the whole story. If we were writing a novel, which solemnly promise not to do, the name of the heroine, or the hero, would be made the subject of prayer and meditation, although not of fasting. Any one can find beautiful names, but to find appropriate names is a very different matter. Imagine changing the name of Mr. Pecksniff, or of Mr. Snodgrass, or of Mr. Pickwick. It could not be done without fatal results. And Sophie Viner by any other name would be quite another girl."

we

A "New Style” in Journalism. There is also, it seems, a new style of reportorial and

editorial writing - a "human nature

style, if you please. A syndicate is seeking-for modest compensation - to popularize the new style. Here's a sample of it:"Motherhood's primeval passionate grief, barbaric in its lone immensity, is the one heroic aftermath of woe that will long mark the Dayton and the Hamilton floods of recent memory."

If this is human nature, give us sub-human nature. If this is new, give us the old. Give us reporting and editorial writing that show knowledge of facts, possession of ideas, directness, lucidity, and brevity of expres

sion.

It is an affront to poor human nature to advertise in its name empty, meaningless rhetoric, pathos, and a sad "derangement of epitaphs."-Chicago Record-Herald.

Naming the "World's Work."— In the Bookman Isaac Marcosson relates how the World's Work got its name. A conference was held to determine the character of the new magazine. Rudyard Kipling was in this country, and being a member of the socalled "D. P." family, he "sat in." Doubleday, so the story goes, was for a magazine with a literary flavor.

"No," said Page. "We want a magazine that is live, virile, constructive - that will be the voice of the democracy."

After he had his way, the question of a title came up. Kipling, who had listened attentively, spoke up:

"What you really want is a magazine that deals with the work of the world."

In a flash Page leaped to his feet, pounded the table (for he is very demonstrative), and said :

English possess the richest language in the world, but pride themselves upon keeping their wealth of words between the covers of a dictionary and expressing themselves in slang.

If our language is growing at the rate of five thousand words a year none of us need hope to acquire any considerable proportion of the new words as they find their way into the dictionaries, but a good vocabulary is a great asset to any one, not merely to writers, speakers, and teachers.

What are you doing as the years pass to increase your vocabulary, in other words, to secure your share of the wealth of words?

Reading good literature gives you easy means of becoming acquainted with new words. Even in old works you will find many possible and useful additions to your vocabulary, but the surest means of increasing your store of words, and at the same time increasing precision not preciseness — is to get into the habit of consulting the dictionary.

Of course, nearly every home boasts a dictionary. A majority of business establishments have one for use as a last resort in emergencies, but comparatively few persons recognize the dictionary as a source of lasting information and even of genuine entertainment - as well as a friend in need when a dispute is to be settled or when there is doubt as to the spelling of a word.

The dictionary habit, once formed, is a constant and positive source of pleasure as well as of profit.

To reach its greatest usefulness the dictionary must be available at the cost of a minimum expenditure of energy. In the library it should be at the reader's elbow, and, preferably, where it is not necessary to lift its weight. Upon its availability depends to a large extent, the reader's acquirement of the habit of consulting it not merely to ascertain the meaning of a word in order that the sentence containing it may be understood, but to discover derivations and shades of meaning.

The habit of consulting encyclopedias and other reference books is profitable, and pos

sesses cumulative interest. It develops a faculty for amplification that gives vitality to a great deal of the history of to-day and yesterday that has little meaning to those who confine their readings to headlines and cablegrams, and the further one's acquaintanceship with reference books progresses the further he gets away from the idea that they are published mainly to give an air of dignity and solidity to the library. But ahead of all reference books in general utility is a good dictionary. When buying a dictionary at a bargain be sure that it is not sold at a bargain because it is printed from old plates. An abridged dictionary that is up to date is better than one that is unabridged but out of date.

Don't use the dictionary to make a high seat in a low chair for the youngest child. Use it for the benefit of your mind and your vocabulary. It will pay for itself ten times. -- Louisville Courier-Journal.

The Earnings of Writers "A successful novel brings its author from first to last fifteen thousand dollars. The novel's average length is a hundred thousand words. A thousand words is an easy day's workthree hours allowing ample intervals for inspiration. Therefore, you may reckon that a novelist with an assured public is paid at the rate of fifty dollars an hour!"

This estimate is not mine, but the calculation of a prominent British publisher, who adds: "A few makers of fiction earn much more than the above the great majority infinitely less. Thus the public will not buy a book by a new novelist (however well it be reviewed) except in the rarest cases, and a first novel generally means less than one hundred and fifty dollars for its author. Moreover, popularity is elusive and hard to gain. It was generally stated on George Meredith's death that his yearly income from his novels had never exceeded five thousand dollars, and it is probable that there are not fifty living English novelists whose average incomes exceed that sum. There are barely ten who earn an average of fifteen thousand dollars a year from fiction alone.

"Many men and women, whose names are

quite well known at the publishers' and in the libraries, turn out three books a year and earn, with serial rights included, a bare fifteen hundred dollars.

"On the other hand, the play 'Milestones' is reputed to have brought Arnold Bennett and Knoblauch as much as three thousand dollars a week (no wonder Bennett prefers playwriting to novel writing ), and Sir J. M. Barrie has been widely reported to have received one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a year from his novels and plays. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that The Bondman' and 'The Manxman,' in their dramatic and narrative forms, must each have earned Hall Caine an equal amount. H. G. Wells's figures also run into hundreds of thousands.

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was paid half a dollar a word for his Sherlock Holmes stories in America alone, and the greatest detective of modern romance must at a moderate estimate have been worth $250,000 to his creator. Rudyard Kipling sold the serial rights of Kim' for twenty-five thousand dollars, and Mrs. Humphry Ward has received fifteen thousand dollars for the serial rights of more than one of her novels. Five hundred dollars a thousand words is Kipling's price for a short story, and an editor counts himself lucky if he can get one at all, even at this inflated price."

"I, personally, was once empowered to offer Mrs. Humphry Ward down the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars on account of the book rights of her next novel - of which, by the way, nobody but herself had then seen a line. This sum she promptly refused. It was not large enough."- London Letter in Philadelphia Record.

the furrows of daily toil; in another to fill the place of bad thoughts or to suggest better; in yet another to induce an idler to study the history of his country. In all. save where the perusal interrupted the discharge of serious duties, to furnish harmless amusement.'

Plays Now Written for Women.-To-day for the first time in all the years of the drama's history, the playwright finds himself devising plays especially for women. Men in the modern audience are very much in the minority. Until the last decade or so it had been quite the opposite, and during several periods in the course of the drama's evolution women not only did not care to attend the theatre, but their presence at dramatic presentations was not permitted.

Plays in those plain days were made for men. They told, from the masculine point of view, a story meant for masculine ears and frabricated from material that consisted mostly of masculine problems, passions, and emotions. To-day the state of affairs is exactly the reverse. The coin has been turned about and we see the obverse side woman.

It is woman now whose problems are propounded, whose life aims are expounded, and whose future is forecast.

The Hamlet of the modern stage is a woman Hedda Gabler. The Iago, the supreme villain of the drama of to-day, is a woman Laura, the captain's wife in Strindberg's play, The Father." Most modern plays are centred about some woman, are made from some crisis in a woman's life. "A Doll's House," "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," 'Mrs. Dane's Defence," 'Magda," "Iris," "Mid-Channel," "Countess Julia," The Easiest Way," "Hindle Wakes," La Flambée," are but a few from the long list of plays that prove this statement true. Arthur Pollock, in Neale's Monthly.

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Writing an Opera, - The collaboration of d'Annunzio and Mascagni upon their new opera, Parisina," has been so far most inti"We worked together," Mascagni says. "He stood near the piano and listened intently while I played. 'Do you

mate.

feel that I have justly interpreted your thought?' I used to ask him and he approved, happy to find a living relation between the harmony he hoped for and the harmony he heard." Often Mascagni improvised a melody and submitted it to D'Annunzio, who inyariably exclaimed: "Well, very well, indeed! Do not change a single note!" D'Annunzio does not know music, Mascagni says, but he feels it in a strange manner, and his phonetic memory is infallible.

"Often after improvising a melody in his presence when I set it down and played it for him he would interrupt me by saying: Ah, you have changed it.' He detected the slightest and most insignificant alterations, even if a single note was lower or higher. We are both happy with our work, as we are convinced that we are proceeding with nobility of intent. I have been swayed by the joy of being influenced by a magnificent poem and my soul has been ablaze with rich and melodious verses. It is due to poetry that I could work without any difficulty spontaneously and rapidly."- New York Sun.

"The Editor Regrets." The printed form which accompanies an unaccepted manuscript on its return to the author is a necessarily blunt instrument. No matter how many or how honeyed its words, it says just one word: "No!"

That word must be said concerning good manuscripts and poor ones, long and short, witty and solemn, wise and foolish. It must be said to the editor's best friends and to perfect strangers.

The "must" of it is in the nature of things. Fifty manuscripts out of a hundred are not good enough, ten are not timely, ten deal with themes already in hand, ten are too long, ten were not written with the paper's constituency in mind, five are just right if the paper could double its size - and the other five are accepted!

To tell the ninety-five authors just why their manuscripts are not accepted would wear out the editor by the sheer physical labor of it. And much of the telling would 'start something." The author, naturally,

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