which none of them would consent to print. Finally the editor of the Cavalier, who had once rejected the manuscript and who was haunted by it, asked permission to print it with an introduction giving its history of rejections, and it appeared in the Cavalier for January 16. Mr. Cobb wrote this story thirteen years ago, when he was only twenty-four years old. Its publication left him with no more unsold manuscripts on hand.

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Annette Thackwell Johnson, who contributed the story, The Churail," to Lippincott's Magazine for February, was born thirty-six years ago in India, where her father had gone as a civil engineer under the British government. While there he became converted and entered the American Presbyterian Mission. Her mother was the daughter of the moderator of the General Presbyterian Assembly. When Mrs. Johnson was five years old she was brought "home," and visited Scotland and Oxford, Ohio, but her seventh birthday found her back in India, where she spent the next seven years. Then she was sent to the south of England, to Lancaster in Cornwall. After remaining here for a little more than a year she went to Lille, in the north of France, where she spent nine months. Her parents then sent her to Wooster, Ohio, and she attended college there for four years, when she married Frank Orr Johnson and, at the age of twenty, returned to India as a missionary's wife. With her husband she spent six years and a half in India, just at the end of the terrible famine, going through plague and cholera, and ending up at the Sabathen Leper Asylum. Then, as their little boy was almost dying of malaria, they came to America. Mr. Johnson was soon called to be pastor of the Shield's Presbyterian church in Sewickley Valley, Pennsylvania, and was there seven years. Last spring he entered the Episcopal church and is now rector of Christ Church, Pittsburgh. Mrs. Johnson says she always thought she could write. At boarding school she used to keep the girls up nights telling them stories, and while she was at college she wrote some short stories that were pub

lished in Womankind, of Springfield, Ohio. For years after that she was too busy to think of writing, but after the family moved to Pittsburgh she started in to get experience and to "learn how." She did space work on the Pittsburgh Dispatch and Pittsburgh Gazette-Times for about a year, and then tried the magazines, and her stories. came back and back and back - though generally with letters, in place of rejection slips, begging for stories on cheerful, merry themes. But as Mrs. Johnson says, she has spent her life helping people to die, or trying to make them live, and writing stories about doll babies and pink clouds and tame cats does not come natural to her, for as she puts it, she has seen life too naked. "When you once get down," she says, "to the bed-rock of primitive emotions hunger, thirst, lust of life, hate, greed of possession it is hard to write pretty stories. My stories aren't cheerful. I know they aren't. How could they be? If I ever succeed, it will be because there are editors bold enough to publish a woman's real thoughts, instead of the polite ones she ought to think." Besides the story in Lippincott's, Mrs. Johnson has had a story in Young's Magazine, and one in Holland's Magazine, published at Dallas, Texas, and the March Lippincott's will contain another of her East Indian stories.

Ralph Roeder, whose story, Sunset. Island," was printed in Harper's Magazine for February, was born in St. Louis twentynine years ago, and is now a practising lawyer in that city. His earliest literary work was done at the age of thirteen, when he wrote and published several very thrilling novels, designed for a schoolmate who frequently devoured the regular printed supply he brought with him several hours before school was out, and then made hurry calls on Mr. Roeder to supply the deficiency. Later Mr. Roeder edited the paper at the Central High School in St. Louis, and when he attended Washington University he contributed to the monthly there. His work now is done in the intervals of his law practice, and he has had stories in the Youth's Companion, Collier's, Adven

ture, the Semi-Monthly Magazine Section, Young's Magazine, several magazines of the Munsey group, and in other publications, including a series of legal stories in the New Story Magazine. His first story was accepted at a good price at the first place to which he sent it.

Fleta Campbell Springer, who had a story, "Wild Oats," in Harper's Magazine for February, is the wife of Thomas Campbell Springer, also a writer of short stories. Mrs. Springer was born in Kansas, and spent her early years in a little frontier town in Oklahoma, forty miles from the nearest railway. The family then moved to Texas, and later to Canfornia, where her father, John H. Campbell, was a practising attorney until recently, when he engaged in the business of grape-growing in central California. Her mother has been all her life interested in educational work, and is the founder of an organization in California for the bringing together of teachers and parents of school children, which is the only one of its kind in existence and which has had a phenomenal success. While living in California Mrs. Springer contributed articles on various subjects to western magazines and newspapers. A year ago she began writing fiction, and her first short story, "The Solitude," was printed in Harper's Magazine for March, 1912. This was succeeded by stories in various magazines, and Mrs. Springer is now engaged on a novel.

Thomas Grant Springer, who wrote the story, "Moses and the Rock," which was printed in Lippincott's for February, is a Californian, hailing from San Francisco. He comes of a family of printers, his grandfather having published one of the earliest California inland papers, later being elected state printer, in which office Mr. Springer's father succeeded him. After some early experience in the newspaper business, Mr. Springer, with Adam Hull Shirk and Albert Schertzer, published a magazine called the Satyr, concerning which he says: 'The Satyr kicked its heels joyously for six months, being regularly roasted' on its appearance, and as gaily responding. After

that it gave a final kick, not however at its creditors, and retired from the prosaic world to its native Hesperian Groves." Mr. Springer then began contributing to the Sunday Section of the San Francisco papers, the News Letter, the Argonaut, the Pacific Monthly and Sunset Magazine, both in prose and in verse. He "did" a series of lyrics for John Metcalf, the composer of "Absent," and other songs, which were published by Schmidt and Company. He also wrote a number of lighter lyrics for various vaudeville singers, and a vaudeville sketch of his has been produced in New York. In 1911 Mr. Springer, with his wife, left San Francisco to loaf along the West Coast, through Mexico and Central America, and write up Panama for Sunset Magazine, and their article appeared in Sunset May, 1912, number. Since coming to New York, Mr. Springer has been a literary free lance, and since then has had articles in the Smart Set, Adventure, Young's Magazine, the Cavalier, the Black Cat, the Semi-Monthly Magazine Section, and Lippincott's.

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT AUTHORS.

Fielding. The solemn banning by the Doncaster free library committee of "Tom Jones' reminds one that the publisher's Reader who first recommended "Tom Jones" for publication was a woman.

Andrew Millar, to whom the manuscript was submitted, handed it over to his wife, as his custom was with all the lighter kinds of literature. The good lady read it and advised her husband not to let it slip through his hands on any account. On the strength of her recommendation Millar offered Fielding $3,000 for the manuscript. It was a good sum in those days, and Fielding had not expected to get half as much. Millar, however, had no cause to regret his bargain. "Tom Jones" profited him to the extent of $90,000, out of which he made presents to Fielding to the value of $10,000. - London Special in New York Sun.

in Richmond, Virginia. Now she lives and writes almost entirely in New York city. "I have just finished a book," she said. "I must go rather slowly about writing. I cannot write more than one book in two years. That is not very many I cannot understand how any one can finish and publish two books a year regularly. It seems that one ought to give more of one's self to a book than that. For my own work, I should like to write each novel and keep it ten years before I publish it. But my friends tell me : Of course that is impossible. You change so much in ten years all would be different. You would be obliged to write it all over again.' I suppose that is true.

"I don't find it best to write about people or places when they are immediately before me. When I first came to New York, to live here for a time it was two years ago -I expected to be here for six months of the year perhaps, and to do most of my work in Richmond. Actually, it turns our that I am now here about nine months of the year, and spend one month in Richmond. Even at the time I worked altogether there, however, I did not write the things immediately about me. One really must get at some distance and obtain a perspective, especially for realistic writing. I believe strongly in the realistic novel, but realism is n't a photographic reproduction of life. It is rather the truth of life portrayed and in the novel, with an interpretation, for one must put one's self into the writing. In my present book, everything is taken wholly from actual life; it had all been in my knowledge and thoughts for ten years or more.

"All of my novels have been cast in the South. In this last book of mine, two or three chapters are set in New York city. My idea was to tell the life story of a woman in the transitional period - the book begins in 1884 in the South. The years since then have been the period of transition-the change has come in that time from the old to the new.

"I have in my mind the stories of several women," she said. "I want to write several books, each taking the life story of one woman and working it out. I want to tell for one thing the story of the business

woman who has been highly successful. She has always interested me.

"These books will not deal with problems. I do not ever let a problem get into my novels - there is none, except, of course, as some problem of an individual life may present itself to the character. I am not concerned with any propaganda. A book should never serve any purpose but the teliing of life as it is being faithfully realistic. "And realism is only the truth of life told, and is the writer's true business. Hawthorne was strongly realistic. He did not try to be pleasing or pleasant. He wrote things as he saw them."-New York Evening Post.

Hutchinson.

A. S. M. Hutchinson, who has scored his second big success with "The Happy Warrior," began writing about eight years ago, when he was a medical student; but his ambitions lay in another direction, and he did not drift into journalism — he deliberately walked into it. "I always intended to earn my living with my pen," he says, "and took the plunge when I had about one short story, two articles (for Punch), and some verses (for Scraps) accepted. I did not know a soul who had the remotest connection with literary work, but I was and have been frightfully lucky." Mr. Hutchinson wrote all manner of things all day long for three months or so; some of them attracted the notice of the publishers of Pearson's Magazine, and he presently obtained a place on their magazine staff. For a while he was assistant editor of the Royal Magazine, then co-editor of the Rapid Review. Then he made another plunge "; he cut himself adrift from editing with a good practical knowledge of what the magazines require, "thanks to the pains that had been taken with me," he remarks, "by P. W. Everett, Pearson's Magazine editor." He cut himself adrift simply because he wanted to make headway in other fields, and, hearing that the Daily Graphic wanted a leader-note writer, he sent in some specimens and secured that appointment. During this period he wrote "Once Aboard the Lugger"; as soon as it was finished he found a publisher for it without difficulty, and it was immediately and widely successful.

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In the same year (1908) he was appointed night editor of the Daily Graphic, of which he has recently been made editor.

Mr. Hutchinson devoted four years to the writing of "The Happy Warrior," partly because he had very little leisure, chiefly because he took the most laborious pains with it. He could have published it two years ago, but it did not satisfy him, so he set to and re-wrote it from start to finish. "It was a dreadful task," he sighs. "Some of the scenes in it have been written a horrifying number of times, but I found, when the thing was done, that, so far from tiring of it, I had grown uncommonly, fond of Percival and the rest of the characters." -New York Times Review.

CURRENT LITERARY TOPICS.

Henry James's Later Style. - The "later manner of Mr. Henry James," according to a critic in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, is far inferior to his earlier manner. In revising "Roderick Hudson," for instance, Mr. James is apt to substitute a general word or phrase for a particular one. Thus, the older text reads in one place: "It would have made him almost sick, however, to think that on the whole Roderick was not a generous fellow." In the last edition this becomes: "It would have made him quite sick, however, to think that on the whole the values in such a spirit By were not much larger than the voids." the same process, a transparent brown eye" reappears as "a transparent brown regard." Formerly, Roderick "looked at the straining oarsmen and the swaying crowd with the eye of a sculptor"; now he looks at them "with the eye of an artist, and of the lover of displayed life." Then Mr. James substitutes for the natural word a word which is commonly used in a somewhat different sense, as when he alters "I shall be better entertained" to "I shall be better beguiled." Sometimes this change provides the reader with a puzzle, as in the sentence: "She had already had a long colloquy with the French chambermaid, who

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had published her views on the Roman question." The fact is that this chambermaid was not so learned as these words would imply, but that Mr. James has merely employed the word "published" in the sense of "expounded."

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French idiom seems to have a marked effect upon his later style. Christina remarks: 'She's capable of thinking that, mamma," where mamma is not a word of address, but a noun in apposition with "she." Another example occurs when the phrase, "paying, to Rowland's knowledge, his first compliment," is changed to "acquitting himself, to Rowland's knowledge, of his first public madrigal." Here we have, not the English use of “acquit,” but the equivalent of "s'acquitter de." Mr. James is even guilty of altering "said it was very promising" to "pronounced it tremendously trouvé," and of changing no fixed day" to "no fixed jour." He is also given to increasing vagueness. In the first edition of

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Roderick Hudson" there is an admirable directness, as in the sentence: "During the dreary journey back to America, made, of course, with his assistance, there was a great frankness in her gratitude, a great gratitude in her frankness." This is diluted in the revised edition into the statement that "she had used him, with the last rigor of consistency, as a character definitely appointed to her use." A gem of this sort of revision is the transformation of " shaking his hunting whip with little quick strokes" into "still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase."

He "Said." The technique" of the present day short story writer embraces a curious error in observation and judgment, set forth precisely in the advice of a successful novelist to aspirants: Never use the phrase "He said," "She said," etc., where any ingenuity or invention can produce a substitute. Other couplings must connect the dialogue.

The advice evidently is based on rule 44 or rule 109, or some such, of the short story writer's technique. In one interesting tale by a writer of much popularity there may be

The

The eye must hunt for them, it so accepts the probability of their being there. construction is submerged. In the modern technique it is crying aloud like a kicked pup. The older generation used "he said" and "she said " as if they were well-ordered walks along which the dialogue might go without hitch and without interruption. The modern regards them as offenses against invention, monotonously reiterative, and overlooks the apparent fact that the reader who makes no ado at all of them, if they be seen at all, is likely to find himself, in the case of the ingenious substitute, observing with curiosity the cement in which the sentences are set, and not at all the sentences themselves. Chicago Tribune.

The Art of Writing. Writing is a craft, and the first requisite is to have a good and flexible syntax. The great difference between two writers of more or less equal imaginative or intellectual powers, one of whom is beginning to write while the other has had a good deal of practice, is that the latter will find his sentences land on their feet like cats as soon as he throws them out. It is possible to acquire this facility, and

certainly imitation of writers with an agreeable rhythm, in whose hands language is a pliable instrument, is a means to achieving it. But, unfortunately, rhythm is a personal property; it expresses the mood of the writer almost as clearly as his choice of words, and it is fatal to acquire the manner of another man which is unsuited to the aspect in which things actually appear to ourselves. Imitation is therefore a snare unless we are careful to choose for imitation an author who sees more or less eye to eye with us and then there is a danger of becoming a mere echo. - Desmond McCarthy, in the Eye Witness, London.

What is an insert? What is 'B' copy, 'C' copy, etc.?

"What do you mean when you say 'write me three sticks on this'?

"Write the top-deck of a head, with any labeling you think necessary.

"When handling copy for an 'extra' what is the chief thing to be born in mind?

"What does the word 'alleged' accomplish in the way of saving your face when you handle a dangerous (from a libel standpoint) story?

"As a copy reader, how do you regard the sworn testimony against prisoners taken in a magistrate's court?

"What is a follow' story and a follow' head?"

Particularly interesting was this: