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story, the whimsical story of every-day life, and even the story of high adventure (which Stevenson revived with such exquisite - even too exquisite - touch, and which to-day Jeffrey Farnol and others are shabbily counterfeiting). The change of fashions

affects only the relative cash value of the different types of stories. What the hour approves is worth from two cents a word upward (there being no maximum). The untimely story, however beautiful, brings newspaper rates or even less (except when the value of the author's name is added to it, or when the author turns it in on a contract). Now, even the best writer cannot produce steadily fine specimens of the more profitable style; and the fairly skilful one may count himself fortunate if he can hit it off once in four tries. Hence there are only two roads to money-making: The author may make his few fine stories so very fine that they earn him a reputation which will be added in dollars and cents to his less admired output; or, on the other hand, he may invent an enormous number of stories, write them without much attention to finish, and make quick sales and small profits.' Most professional writers choose the second course in the beginning of their careers, and by sheer bulk of production acquire a facile technique, a sense of story values and public taste, and a variety of information about life which, sooner or later, enable them to enter upon the other, pleasanter path. This may not be the course of genius, but it is that of the craftsman.

"In the light of all this we may estimate the writer's chances of success as follows: The earning power of an author depends upon three factors: (1) His sympathy with contemporary tastes and thought; (2) the quantity of his monthly output; and (3) the ease of his technique. A marked decrease in any one of these must be offset by an increase in one or both of the others, if success is to be assured. Figures dangerous here, but I venture to say that the person who, after a thorough study of technique, cannot write every month at least

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two stories of average magazine length (4.500 words, say) should not aspire to become a professional. I do not say that he must be able to sell two stories a month, nor that all that he writes at this speed shall wholly please him. The measure is adjusted only to his narrative composition. If he can hold the pace, he probably has his technique well enough in hand to justify further efforts, and also his imagination is likely to be moderately vigorous. If he cannot hold it, he still may join the great majority, who write occasionally. This course may turn out to be quite advantageous. If a school teacher, let us say, can sell only five good stories a year, that adds from five hundred dollars to a thousand or more to the annual income."

To the story writer Mr. Pitkin says: "Form some habit of regular work. What it shall be you alone can decide, only let it be strenuous. Probably four hours of writing every day is the least you should content yourself with during the years in which you are mastering technique. Shun classic literature as a source of story ideas. Study it only for the pleasure of it, and for information about technique and rhetoric. Read current magazines carefully, even those which you dislike. Watch the work of the more successful writers. Compare their themes with those which are being discussed by essayists, journalists, politicians, social workers, and other men of the world. Observe to what extent fiction draws upon science, reform, and practical affairs for its underlying thoughts. Keep some record of every story idea that pops into your head, no matter how silly, or highflown, or clumsy it may be in its original form. Infinite are the possibilities of combining, weaving, and twisting thoughts, and what the result will be no man can foretell. Some great stories have had trivial, even ludicrous origin."

These extracts and abstracts give some idea of the value of Mr. Pitkin's book. Its philosophy is practical, and those who are ambitious to do good work in story writing may study it with profit.

BOSTON, Mass.

Arthur Fosdick.

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THE WRITER is published the first day of every month. It will be sent, postpaid, ONE YEAR for ONE DOLLAR.

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P. O. Box 1905.

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to subscribers who are more than a year in arrears, unless there has been a payment or a request for renewal and a definite promise of payment. Subscribers for THE WRITER, therefore, are asked to look at the address label on the wrapper of the magazine. If the date on the label is earlier than April, 1912, it is necessary for them to send a remittance, or a request to continue sending the magazine, with a definite promise of payment. Will subscribers kindly give this matter their immediate attention?

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The only good jokes, according to the Christian Science Monitor, are those that do not, intentionally unintentionally, wound the sensibilities of any person or of any class, that do not bring into ridicule things held sacred by any person or by any class, that do not openly or covertly belittle the affection, faith, hope, aspirations, or idealisms of any person or of any class, that are not vicious, impure, unfeeling, or These limitavulgar in their tendencies. tions apply not only to jokes, but to literary work in general.

The rewards of authorship are not always limousines and terrapin. We hear a good deal about the success of writers who demand and get sometimes a thousand dollars or more for a short story, and of others whose books sell to the number of hundreds of thousands of copies, with a royalty on every one, but the experience of the unsuccessful author, or of the author who is only moderately successful, is seldom set forth in print. One of this latter class, a minor an Englishman, who calls himself novelist," has recently told the tale of his career, and it certainly is not encouraging. In 1899, he wrote his first book, which consisted of about 100,000 words. It was refused by seventeen publishers, but the eighteenth publisher to whom he offered it paid him $225 for the copyright. With expenses deducted this amounted to about $175, but for his second book he got $250. It took him a year to sell his third book, for

which he received $150, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth books were sold for about the same amount. One of his later books brought him more than $750, but another, published afterward on the royalty plan, paid him no more than $100. Altogether in thirteen years he has produced fourteen novels published and three unpublished, with total receipts of about $3,230, or a little less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year. Deducting the cost of typewriting and postage, his fourteen novels have not brought him two hundred dollars apiece. He would not have got even $3,230 in fourteen years if he had not had the luck to serialize three of his novels, the price for serial rights in one case amounting to five hundred dollars. In all probability he has not won much fame, although he says his first book was sold out very quickly in England, and two impressions were disposed of in this country. Is it any wonder that he has announced his intention now of giving up literature and setting up as driver of a taxicab?

W. H. H.

WRITERS OF THE DAY.

Paul Lee Ellerbe, who wrote the story, "The Vacant Forty," published in the March Lippincott's, is a native of Alabama, twenty-nine years old, who for the last eight years has lived in Denver, where he is serving as naturalization examiner in the United States Department of Commerce and Labor (now the Department of Labor). "The Vacant Forty" is the first story that he has had published.

Ida M. Evans, who had a story, entitled "An Uplifter," in the Red Book for March, was employed for several years in the wholesale millinery houses of Chicago, but three years and a half ago she began to write, and has since had stories published in the New York Sun, the People's Magazine, Short Stories, the Cavalier, the Coming Nation, Holland's Magazine, Young's Magazine, the Red Book, the Blue Book, the Black Cat. and the Chicago News. She also has a

serial now running in Lieutenant-Governor Barratt O'Hara's Chicago Magazine, and the Green Book will soon bring out one of her stories. Miss Evans says that this does n't sound interesting, but that it has been.

Henry E. Haydock, whose articles, "The Ruby-throated Humming-bird," in Country Life in America ; "The Phoebe Bird," in Suburban Life; "The Chickadee," in Young People; and "Birds and the Garden," in Farm and Home, have appeared during the past year, is a great lover of birds, and finds their companionship a source of continued and varied interest at his home on Long Island. Mr. Haydock is also a writer of short stories, which have appeared in Collier's, the Ladies' World, Pennsylvania Grit, the New York Evening Mail, the Chicago Daily News, the Boys' World, and the American Boy. He has won prizes in competition with the stories, "The Winning Touchdown," published in Golden Days, "An Automobile Adventure," in the American Home, and "The Blue Ribbon," in Poultry Success. His farm and poultry articles have appeared in the Farm Journal, Farm and Home, the Orange Judd Weeklies, the New York Tribune Farmer, Successful Farming, the Country Gentleman, the National Stockman and Farmer, the Fruit Grower, the American Poultry Advocate, and other publications.

Clara Odell Lyon, author of the story, "The Strategy of Hezekiah John," published in Lippincott's for March, has for some time been writing rhymes and jingles, with an occasional story for children, which have appeared in such magazines as the Outlook, the Woman's Home Companion, the Youth's Companion, and St. Nicholas. Quite a number of her verses and stories have been used on the Children's Page of the Cincinnati Enquirer, as well as a number of fairy tales which she translated from the Spanish. Her first attempt at publication was a story sent to the editor of the Epworth Herald. She allowed a day for going, a day for the reading, a day for coming —

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three days, or four, at the most - and then she would know. But days slipped into weeks until a month had passed and she had received no word, and she concluded the story was not even worth returning. year later a friend told her that she had just read a story of hers. "Where?" she said, astonished. "In the Epworth Herald." So she sent a letter of inquiry, and the answer came, enclosing check, and saying that while return postage had been enclosed when the story was offered, the name and address was written on the letter only, and not on the manuscript, and that the letter had been lost.

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Marion Pugh Read, whose story, Fancy and Fact," was printed in the Editor's Drawer of Harper's Magazine for March, has been writing but a short time. Her first story was a little Quaker tale, 'When Silence Was Golden," which appeared in the Christmas number of Harper's, in 1911, the heroine being this same little girl, Caroline Spense. Others of the same series wil! appear in Harper's in the near future, and a little Quaker story is coming out in the July American. These little Quaker settings come quite naturally to Miss Read, since she was born and brought up in the environment of Friends, one of her ancestors, Richard Townsend, having come over in the Welcome with William Penn. Miss Read is not a Friend herself, although she comes of Quaker stock, both of her grandmothers being Friends. Her home is no longer in Pennsylvania, but in New York city. Since leaving college she has spent considerable time abroad and on a ranch in the West. The Housekeeper last year published three of her stories, two of them being Western stories.

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the beginning it was vexation o' the spirit, and weariness o' the flesh. It was a good, hard droogery, siftin' mostly a monstrous accumulation o' lies, and o' all the nations the Garman lies with most scrupulosity and detail, and tryin' to make a consistent character of Friedrich out o' a confused mass o' endless, conflictin' detail, and not a book among them all with an index. Piles on piles o' rubbish to be dug into, and dug through, dirtyin' yer hands with the dust o' worms, and never findin' any helpfulness or assistance in the work which other men had done before ye. I sometimes thought I'd geeve it all up, but by dint o' regular work and exercise I at last got through with it."-Scribner's Magazine.

Clemens. Albert Bigelow Paine, in his authorized Life of Mark Twain, quotes Mr. Clemens as saying: "I like Joan of Arc' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others: twelve years of preparation and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation, and got none."

That Mrs. Clemens was her husband's severest editor is instanced by the following way in which she dealt with "Following the Equator." In one of her comments she

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Boomerang has been furnished with a special train- that is, I've turned it into the "Appendix." Will that answer?' Page 1,002. I don't like the shady-principled cat that has a family in every port. Then I'll modify him just a little. Page 1,020. Ninth line from the top. I think some other word would be better than "stench." You have used that pretty often.

But I can't get it in anywhere. You've knocked it out every time. Out it goes. again. And yet stench is a noble, good word.

Page 1,038. I hate to have your father pictured as lashing a slave boy.

It's out, and my father is whitewashed. Page 1,050. Second line from the bottom, change breech-clout. It's a word that you love and I abominate. I would take that and offal" out of the language.

You are steadily weakening the Eng-. lish tongue, Livy.

Page 1,095. Perhaps you don't care, but whoever told you that the Prince's green stones were rubies told an untruth. They were superb emeralds. Those strings of pearls and emeralds were famous all over Bombay.

All right, I'll make them green Green emeralds, but it loses force. rubies is a fresh thing. And besides it was one of the Prince's own staff liars that told me.

CURRENT LITERARY TOPICS.

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The Story of "The Broad Highway.”calling his struggles at authorship, before his success of The Broad Highway" came to him, Jeffery Farnol in the course of an autobiographical sketch appearing in T. P.'s Weekly, says that a large part of that romantic novel was written in a dismal studio in a building at the corner of Thirty-Eighth street and Tenth avenue, New York, where he was seeking a precarious livelihood as a scene painter. "For two years every moment I could snatch from other work I gave to my writing, and at the end sent it out into the world to try its fortune. It was returned from two publishers the Century Co. and the Scribners with promptitude. Dodd, Mead & Co. declined it as 'too long and too English.' An actor friend. with the very best intentions - took it with him to Boston, intending to submit it to a firm in that city, but forgot all about it, and brought, it back at the end of a year unopened. Then I was minded to burn it- it was cumbersome, and a disappointment - how great only those who have been similarly circumstanced can know. But wiser counsels prevailed, and I decided to send the manuscript to my mother, feeling sure that if she, who had ever been and is still my severest

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critic, thought well of it, something might be done with it in England. After carefully reading it, fearing her own judgment might be prejudiced, she gave it to her old friend, Shirley B. Jevons, at that time editor of the Sportsman -to whom I subsequently dedicated the book; and he, seeing virtues in it which I fondly hope may be there, it was duly published by Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., the only firm it was submitted to on this side of the Atlantic."

Charles Reade's Struggle For Rea gnition. The London Bookman, in the current number, which is complimentary to Charles Reade, prints an account with literature " which the famous novelist drew up in 1851 after he had been struggling with literature for twenty years:

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"Item From Bentley for book of ‘Peg Woffington,' £30.

"In all, £105. That is to say, about half a crown a week for eighteen years not enough to pay for pens, ink, and paper, leaving copying and shoe leather out of the question."

"Good God," Reade once said, "had it not been for the fellowship - which, though it bound me to celibacy, preserved me from pauperdom — and a mother's generous help I must have been in the workhouse or breaking stones on the highway."

It was after this long and fruitless apprenticeship that the writer was by chance turned into the path which was to bring him recognition finally. It had always been his aim to succeed in the dramatic field and his endeavors had been in this line, but at

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