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 some

thing 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 experience. He 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.

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS.

[Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicals 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.]

FRANCIS THOMPSON. Darrell Figgis. North American Review for October.

THE NEW ENGLAND OF SARAH ORNE JEWETT. Edward M. Chapman. Yale Review for October. THE BUSINESS MAN IN FICTION. William Arthur Gill. Atlantic for October. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL S. MCCLURE. I. McClure's for October. JOSEPH PULITZER, REMINISCENCES OF A SECIllustrated. Alleyne Ireland. Metropolitan

RETARY.

for October.

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 ). Collier's for With portrait. Peter Clark Macfarlane. 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.

Illustrated.

Bellman for

Bellman for

H. J. Has

THE YOUNG GOETHE. Outlook for September 27.

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 Princeton, '83; Robert Sterling Yard, 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 Journalism at Columbia University is finished.

Henry C. Shelley opens the new Literary Shrines Series to be published by Little, Brown, & Co., with a volume on "Shakspere and Stratford."

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 de velopments 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 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.

Recently I have encountered several productions of a popular writer in periodicals rather outside my usual field of reading. They attracted my attention and led me on, until presently I began to feel a certain dragging sensation. The cause was not at first apparent. The characters were interesting, if rather repellent; there was plenty of the "action" so strenuously demanded by constituencies of the better sort, and the dialogue had a sparkle, even if it was somewhat hard and metallic in its glitter.

It was in the dialogue that the drag was most felt, and further analysis discovered

No. II.

the cause. In one short passage I met these expressions —

'Need any help ?" husked A.

"They're our best revenue," defended B.

66

I Still your jolly self," greeted C.

"It's a wonder they don't square themselves," chatted D.

In another of the stories are these choice bits:

H.

"I know his kind," fondly remembered E. Why should n't he?" scorned F.

"It's a lie!" perfunctorily denied G.
And these in still another :

"Very thoughtful of you," dryly thanked

"He can win her love," she faintly surrendered.

These are but a few of a host of expressions which grated on my mental ear and distracted attention from the story itself. "A husked." Why husked? Does the word contain some recondite allusion to the oldtime barn and bee and red ear and pretty girl? Or does it mean that A was a "husky" person and spoke in a loud tone of voice? Or can it be an abortive attempt to intimate that his voice was hoarse? If so. why not say "hoarsed A"?

After a careful examination, I believe I have reached the true diagnosis. The trouble of this writer and those like him is an acute case of logophobia. They dread the sight of the good old word "said" as a hydrophobic patient dreads water. But why? It is an eminently useful and even respectable word, one which our best authors have not feared nor disdained to employ, and employ freely. Taking down a volume of Thackeray, for instance, and opening it at random, I note that he does, indeed, use synonyms "says," "cries," shouts," "remarks," continues," "bawls," "asks," etc. - all of which, fairly implying, as they do, the idea of saying, are

66

66

perfectly legitimate. But he does not deal in such monstrosities as are quoted above. Indeed, he is not above writing said" with half a dozen speeches in succession. Furthermore, in Scott's "Ivanhoe" we meet "said " eight or even nine times on a single page, and in Hall Caine's "Manxman" it occurs eleven times in twelve successive speeches. Nor is Jane Austen more timid in employing the simple word from which this writer shrinks with such loathing.

Of contemporary authors, few have used the language more effectively than Rudyard Kipling, yet he seems to have been hopelessly ignorant of the new canon. In his short story, At the End of the Passage," selected wholly at random, the abhorrent "said" occurs seventy-three times about once every hundred words as against only thirteen occurrences of substitutes. Inci

dentally, we may note that the simple "said " is found eight times on one page of about 370 words. Like examples may be found in our own Poe, and even in Howells.

Undue repetition of any word is, of course, to be avoided, but why fly to the opposite extreme? Why so evidently go out of your way to escape the natural expression? The very effort defeats itself, and frequently where "said" would pass without notice the forced substitute obtrudes itself to the distraction of the reader.

In college I never had the least inclination to "make the crew." I was a pale, slender girl that specialized in English and pulsated with Magazine Writer thrills.

When I graduated I could detect at sight the difference behind a novelette and a short-story (thanks to Professor Brander Matthews for the hyphen) and I could microscopically dissect the essay and the sketch, romantic and realistic fiction, dramatic and narrative poetry and I owned a glistening typewriter of my very own, with a tinkletinkle beil.

From my steam-heated study, where I had dictionaries and encyclopaedias and synonyms and antonyms strewn around me, I sent forth to magazine editors quires and quires of linen bond covered with platitudes strung grammatically together.

But my

manuscripts promptly came back, with the regulation printed rejection slip, and crowded

themselves through the letter-box slit in the front door with a resisting scrape that proclaimed their thickness and profundity.

At that period of my rejection-slip career I did not acknowledge even a bowing acquaintance with my own soul. I had heard that I had one, but my intimacy with the Venerable Bede was closer. At the end of the first year of perpetual writing, when the earnings from my machine footed up something less than fifty cents a week, I came to the conclusion that Father ought to begin to draw dividends on his investment in my college education and literary equipment. Then I suddenly remembered the explosive words of one of my professors:

"You need to get outdoors and live. LIVE-I tell you."

And I wondered (shut up in my steamheated study with my humiliating account book in front of me) what it might mean