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 An abridged dictionary that is up to date is better than one that is unabridged but out of date.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 work three 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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would not agree with the editor's judgment, and would desire to state his case. Then the editor would try to defend his decision, unless he capitulated at the first shot, which would be most unlikely, for that is high treason to the editorial brotherhood.

The Epworth Herald, in common with all papers whose editors have been on both sides of the rejection slip, dislikes the cold formality of its impersonal "No." If somebody would invent a mutually satisfying form of sound words to be used in returning an unavailable manuscript, he could retire on his royalties.

But until that genius appears, the slip which says "No" and adds to it no reason save that once ascribed to women - "Because "must still be our dependence.- The Epworth Herald.

What Makes a Story Great. What constitutes the vital in the literature of imagination? What is the indescribable power that makes one book great and another commonplace? Not style, not plot, not analysis. Neither Thackeray nor Dickens is master of style; neither is strikingly original in plot, but both live. The answer to the question that has SO often perplexed writer and reader who attempt to find the source of the mysterious power that eludes discovery but reveals itself in a great book is to be found in one word-creation. The vital in literature the literature of imagination — is originality. Not the meretricious originality of trick or dialect or forced contrast, not the sordid parade of vice or the refinement of virtue; not the flaunting of passion or the subjecting of emotion - these do not constitute originality as the test applied to literature. Originality - creation - means something more than a mere catalogue of motives; it means the power to create a reproductive type; to visualize life; to project on the screen of existence a figure that is immediately recognized. Literature, the literature of imagination, when it rises to its supreme height and is really literature, is not merely the reflection of life. It is more than that, something higher, nobler, more

elevating. It is the baring of the soul, the swiftly illuminating flash by which man sees what he is or may become; it is prophecy as well as hope. It is this character creation that makes literature, that has left its vital impress upon morals and conduct. Real literature is Ymir's well in which wisdom and wit lie hidden, and from its unfathomed depths is drawn creation. Man is less influenced by sermons than by experiHe hears and heeds not, but he sees the created vision of the novelist, and wonders if there has not been revealed to himself his soul in all its nakedness. A. Maurice Low, in Harper's Magazine.

ence.

, Broadhurst. Metropolitan for October. MR. VEILLER'S REPLY TO MR. BROADHURST. Metropolitan for October.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA LEAGUE MOVEMENT. John Corbin. Scribner's for October. WALT WHITMAN, A WORLD'S POET ? Albert Schinz. Lippincott's for October. ROUSSEAU, TOLSTOY, AND THE PRESENT AGE. With portraits. Maxim Kovalevsky. American Review of Reviews for October.

THE LIBRARY - - ITS ARRANGEMENT AND FURNISHINGS. Lillian Purdy Goldsborough. Suburban Life for October.

THE CHARM OF ENGLISH PROSE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard University, 1913. Samuel M. Crothers. Harvard Graduates' Magazine for September.

OUR LITERARY AMBASSADORS. Henry van Dyke, Hamilton W. Mabie; Walter H. Page, Isaac F. Marcosson; Thomas Nelson Page, "An Intimate Friend." Bookman for September.

THE STORY-TELLER'S CRAFT. The Artist and the Public. Arnold Bennett. Metropolitan for September.

THE BETTER PART IN CONVERSATION. O. W. Firkins. North American Review for September. THE POETRY OF CHAUCER. Henry Newbolt. English Review for September.

A VAGABOND POET (Nicholas Vachel Lindsay ). With portrait. Peter Clark Macfarlane. Collier's for September 6.

SPORTING STYLE. Bellman for September 6. MADAME DE STAËL. Isa Carrington Cabell. Bellman for September 13.

THE DRAMA LEAGUE OF AMERICA. Richard Burton. Bellman for September 27.

BYRON AT HARROW. Illustrated.

Bellman for

NEWS AND NOTES.

Jeannette Lee has resigned from the faculty of Smith College, where she has taught English for several years, in order to give her entire time to authorship. She is the wife of Gerald Stanley Lee.

During a recent discussion of the old question, college versus non-college, one of the contestants remarked that the substantial monthly magazines were not edited by college graduates. The man who made the remark was promptly confronted with the following record: The Century, edited by Robert Sterling Yard, Princeton, '83; Scribner's, edited by Edward L. Burlingame, Harvard, '69; Harper's, edited by Henry M. Alden, Williams, '57; Atlantic Monthly, edited by Ellery Sedgwick, Harvard, '94; Review of Reviews, edited by Albert Shaw, Grinnell, '79; and World's Work, edited by Arthur W. Page, Harvard, '05.

Mrs. Lillian Bell Bogue, who was married to Arthur Hoyt Bogue in 1900, is seeking a divorce.

The wife of Paul Armstrong, the playwright, has secured a divorce, with alimony of $15,000 a year.

The building for the Pulitzer School of finJournalism at Columbia University is ished.

The Earl of Lytton has finished his life of his grandfather, Bulwer Lytton, for publication in two good-sized volumes on both sides of the Atlantic soon.

A life of W. T. Stead is announced for publication this fall by William Heinemann in London. It has been written by the late journalist's daughter, Miss Estelle W. Stead, and the title of the book will be: My Father; Personal and Spiritual Reminiscences."

"The English Novel," by George Saintsbury, published by E. P. Dutton & Co. in the Channels of English Literature Series, is a survey of the novel as it has come from the hands of all the more important novelists, not now alive, up to the end of the nineteenth century.

The new biographer of Benjamin Disraeli, George Earle Buckle, formerly editor of the London Times, is at work on the third volume of the book, but it is not likely to be ready before spring.

Two biographies announced for autumn publication are Sir Sidney Colvin's "Keats" and Francis Watt's "Robert Louis Stevenson."

Pupils of the secondary and normal schools everywhere are invited to compete for prizes offered by the American School Peace League for the best essays on one or the other of these two subjects: "The Opportunity and Duty of the Schools in the International Peace Movement," and "The Significance in the Two Hague Peace Conferences." The first subject is for seniors in normal schools, the second is for seniors in secondary schools. Prizes of $75, $50, and $25 will be given for the three best essays in both sets. The contest will close March 1, 1914. Essays should average 3,000 words and must not exceed 5,000 words. They are to be forwarded to Mrs. Fanny Fern Andrews, Secretary, 405 Marlborough street, Boston.

Pulitzer's Magazine, a new periodical, published in New York by Walter Pulitzer, has incorporated with it Uncle Remus's Home Magazine. Mr. Pulitzer, who is a nephew of Joseph Pulitzer, is talking of organizing in Chicago a $5,000,000 publishing house, which will print monthlies, weeklies, and dailies of national appeal.

The policy of the National Newspaper Men's Magazine, to be issued monthly by the National Newspaper Men's Publishing Corporation, Times Building, New York, is outlined in this quotation which appears on the first page of the first number: A publication to voice the views of responsible newspaper writers from everywhere."

Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr is to be editor-inchief of the Suffragist, a weekly newspaper and magazine to be published in Washington, beginning October 19, by the congressional committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Following the withdrawal of William B. Howland and his sons, Harold B. and Karl V. S., from the Outlook and their joining the forces of the Independent, the latter magazine has been reorganized as follows: President and editor, Hamilton Holt; vicepresident and assistant editor, Harold B. Howland secretary and treasurer, F. E. Dickinson; managing director, William B. Howland. With the issue of October 2 the Independent will appear in a new form, with many improvements. The page will be enlarged to accommodate more and better illustrations, and there will be a variety of other changes. The editors say that the Independent will, in its new form, become preeminently a forward-looking weekly magazine, discussing such topics as the solution of the problems of family life; the conditions under which business may be fairly conducted and the interests of the workers conserved, while those who invest the capital may be adequately protected; the lifestories of strong men and women; the developments of science and art; the world of books; the vital interests of the child ; the field of sensible recreation; the progress of education.

M. C. Young, owner and publisher of the Family Magazine, Chicago, has bought Farm News, of Springfield, Ohio. The Springfield organization will continue to operate as the Simmons Publishing Company, with M. C. Young, president. Mr. Young will publish the Family Magazine and Farm News in Springfield hereafter.

The New York Board of Education has opened a free evening class in proofreading and copy reading at the Stuyvesant Evening Trade School, in Fifteenth street, near First avenue. The course is divided into lectures and practical work. Lectures will be given on proofreaders' marks, punctuation, division of words, capitalization, compounding, abbreviations, copy editing, and the editorial and typographical construction of books and magazines.

Stephen Phillips writes to say that he is not editor of the Poetry Review, and suggests that letters should be addressed "The Secretary, The Poetry Society," or "The Manager, The Poetry Review," London, W. C.

A movement to raise a $10,000 fund for a memorial to Eugene Field has been started in Chicago by Will J. Davis, Slason Thompson, and Harry J. Powers, all personal friends of the poet. Charles G. Dawes, of Evanston, is the treasurer of the fund.

The Uncle Remus Memorial Association, which early this year purchased "The Wren's Nest" at Atlanta, Ga., Joel Chandler Harris's home, as a lasting monument to him, has issued a thirty-eight-page booklet written by Myrta Lockett Avery, giving a sketch of the author's life, and an account of the work of the association.

"Pierre de Coulevain" (Mlle. Favre) died at Lausanne, Switzerland, August 22, aged sixty-eight.

William Carew Hazlett died in London September 8, aged seventy-nine.

Eugene L. Didier died in Baltimore September 8, aged seventy-four.

Professor Arminius Vambéry died in Budapest September 15, aged eighty-one.