works which appeal to so few people that the publisher hardly dares hazard their publication. "The Society for Publication of American Music," organized and supported by a group of enthusiastic musicians, of whom William Burnet Tuthill has been the indispensable, self-sacrificing leader, proposes to publish a limited number of works that the average publisher would be afraid to put out. The plan is to issue these to the members virtually on the subscription basis membership entitling the member to just so many issues. Professor Daniel Gregory Mason, of Columbia University, is actively interested in the movement, which he is convinced is most important in the artistic progress of America. A non-money-making, altruistic effort to give prominence to the works of American men and women who aspire to lofty aims is deserving of a large membership among real music lovers.-The Musical Courier.

Plagiarism. When the vast number of stories, poems, articles, jokes, and similar material bought daily by editors is considered, it would seem to be a comparatively easy matter to make a few changes in material published several years ago and to resell it without fear of being caught. To attempt such a sale is not a crime likely to lead to immediate punishment, or, indeed, to any punishment at all. To make such a sale is, of course, unlawful, but it is far more serious as an infallible method of blasting a literary career.

It appears that even fragments of verse are not likely to escape the watchful eyes of people who are always on the alert for plagiarists. A plagiarist recently collected a few dollars from Life for a verse which some astute reader immediately remembered as having appeared in a New York newspaper six years before. The reader happened to be a column conductor on a New York newspaper, and as a result the fake poet awakened one morning to find himself advertised widely as a brazen plagiarist. He can redeem himself only by changing his name, address and attitude toward the editors.

Fortunately there are few such plagiarists, and for the most part they are first offenders

and readily detected. It is not of record that a plagiarist ever made as much money out of his duplicity as he could have made at some employment, such as highway robbery, more congenial to his literary ability.-Indianapolis News.

The se

The American Short Story. cret of the American short story is the treatment of characteristic American life, with absolute knowledge of its peculiarities and sympathy with its methods; with no fastidious ignoring of its habitual expression, or the inchoate poetry that may be found hidden even in its slang; with no moral determination except that which may be the legitimate outcome of the story itself; with no more elimination than may be necessary for the artistic conception, and never from the fear of the fetish of conventionalism. Of such is the American short story of today, the germ of American literature to come.Bret Harte, "The Rise of the Short Story." What Is Dialogue? Dialogue is the vital fire which makes a play live. It is at once veins, blood, breath, and soul. The greatest idea in the world is lost if this dialogue is not well written. Most of Shakspere's plays were founded upon tales well known or upon familiar plays, but the Shakspere dialogue transformed the trite tale and the tricks and surprises of the vulgar theatre into the freshness and force of great art.

Can you ever lose your wonder at a play? Stop to think! A sculptor has his marble, a thing of real beauty; the painter has color, but the playwright has only the clumsy, unpremeditated, often misleading, speech of every-day life. Occasionally he takes the liberty of indulging in abstract lyrical passages, but the modern writer does so at the risk of his play, and, unless he is a great artist, this form of indulgence is as unwelcome as if he stepped out on the stage himself and explained the true significance of his lines, getting in the way of his actors and halting the progress of his play.

In writing living dialogue the playwright must avoid the speech which had gone out of every-day life if it was ever a part of it the speech which belongs only to the written word. There are many phrases that read

very well which carry no force in the theatre. You find them in the stories in the magazines and in the editorial columns. As every one knows, editors have a certain dead language all their own.

I doubt if any playwright, caught up in his story, has the double sense which makes him hear, in every instance, the tepid sound of these things which flow off naturally with the current of his plot and to put fresher, more vivid things in their place. This is too much to ask. But the great play shows its mark more in this than in any other thing, its freedom from the editor's phrases.

The dialogue of a play which seems to run on so smoothly and easily is like a great river which bears many cargoes; it may give explanation of time and place, foreshadowing of what will come, intimation of what has passed; it may reveal character, emotion, and the mood of the play, but nothing more must be seen of its efforts than is seen of the ripple of water at the prow of the vessel, which shows the river's strength and motion. The ideal of the modern dialogue is reached in Ibsen. Ibsen gives you at once what his character is saying and what he is not saying but wishes to say, and not only that, but what he does not even wish to say, what is beyond him and expressing himself through him without his knowledge; and all of this reaches us through the veil of translation.

Through his simple dialogue, sometimes without taking his character out of his chair, without the clouds of steam and changing lights and all the panoply of the Wagnerian opera, Ibsen creates vast, mysterious places, terrible suggestion of hidden forces, all the unknown wonders of the universe.

It is good for the student to study the dialogue of the masters and to see their plays acted if he can, but he must never forget that the stuff from which he is to create his plays is not in his library, but in the life all about him, freely offering itself to him, and, if he be willing and patient enough to understand, ready to reward him lavishly.

The most masterly dialogue is simply the granting of the privilege to listen to other persons speak as they speak only to the one

nearest of all, and perhaps not even to him.. but to their own souls in the quiet of night.. On the stage the most beautiful love sonnet ever written has not the poignancy of the tortured, struggling, maybe grotesque, words. which are brought forth, live and bleeding, from the heart of the lover who utters them. Ten pistol shots in the dark cannot be as startling as ten words of truth from a naked soul.

Vital as the dialogue is, it should not be forgotten that its greatest value is when it leads, massively and unsteadily, but surely, like a band of pilgrims, to the greatest moments in the play its silences. Wellman, in New York Evening Post.

Rita

That

Maturity Needed by Novelists. considerable age and experience are as necessary as genius to the writing of real fiction seems to be demonstrated by the history of the novel. It does not appear sufficient that a novelist should be born; he must be made as well.

With the exception of Charles Dickens there is in the whole range of English fiction scarcely an instance of notable success at novel writing before the author had reached the age of thirty; and the first success of most of the leading novelists came even at a later age. The average is not far from the age of forty.

The case of Dickens might be open to discussion; for while he first became widely known through the "Pickwick Papers" before he had attained the age of twenty-five, this work is rather a series of sketches or dramatic situations than a study of character and ordinary life. It is true also that some half-dozen of Dickens's best known novels. appeared before the writer was thirty, but his more durable masterpieces, “David Coɔperfield" and "A Tale of Two Cities," came several years later

A contemporary and greater novelist than Dickens had to drudge more than a dozen years and wait till he was thirty-six before he gained anything like a wide hearing from the public; but when Thackeray did appear with "Vanity Fair," he knew men and women from real contact with them.

But the story is older than Dickens and

Thackeray. If DeFoe produced the first English novel with "Robinson Crusoe," then the history of fiction began with the work of a writer just fifty-eight years of age. If Richardson's "Pamela" was our first novel, as most of the critics claim, then the case is not materially different, for the author was fifty-one when he wrote this book that surprised everybody, chiefly the writer himself, with its popularity.

At the time "Pamela" appeared Fielding was thirty-five, but he had had quite a look around the world and was so disgusted with the pictures of life painted by the mildnatured Richardson that he not only called the latter a milksop, but proceeded to write a real novel in "The History of Joseph Andrews." The author of "Pamela" can, of course, be excused for the simple reason that he was not trying to write a novel or paint a picture of life, but rather to produce a book of model letters to be used by young ladies in their correspondence with gentlemen.

Then a few years later Goldsmith came along with "The Vicar of Wakefield," written at the age of thirty; but if this book is to be judged by the standard of probability in actual life, then Goldsmith ought to have waited at least another thirty years before he attempted anything in the way of a novel.

Jane Austen waited patiently until she was forty years old before she ventured into print with a novel, and then when "Emma" became reasonably popular it was clear that the author had carefully delineated the life she had actually known in the simple folk with whom her experience had been restricted. Scott broadened out considerably in his view of the world when at the age of forty-three he became famous with "Waverley," but he always admired the more faithfully executed work of Miss Austen.

Charlotte Brontë was thirty-one when she wrote "Jane Eyre," and she then confessed her inability to write another novel without fuller knowledge of life. George Eliot kept pretty thoroughly in line by appearing with "Adam Bede" at the age of forty, and none of her earlier work has equaled this book in popularity. Mrs. Gaskell was forty-two when her masterpiece, "Cranford," was published.

Poetry aims at the higher or ideal truth and may fairly ignore what the novel is chiefly concerned with the rather detailed and somewhat commonplace facts of everyday life. The true novel must, of course, present these facts in the light of permanent truth, and in order to do this a very careful handling of the facts is necessary. Age and experience must therefore aid the perception of ideal truth with which the poet may begin and produce fairly durable work. Kansas City Star.

-

An Editor's Rules for Contributors. Holbrook Jackson, editor of Today (London), has formulated a number of rules for those who submit manuscripts to editors: Don't enclose a loose stamp, but a stamped and addressed envelope. Don't write a letter of explanation to the editor. But if you do write

Don't tell him your stuff is good - he won't take your word.

Don't tell him it is bad bad writing needs no bush.

Don't tell him that your friends like it he does n't care.

Don't say that another editor advised you to send it along that would make him suspicious.

Don't say you want to earn money by writing he is not out to help you, but to edit his paper and pay those who help him.

Don't flatter him editors are cynics. Don't ask his opinion he may not have one.

Don't ask why he rejects your offer he may not know.

And, above all, Don't ask an editor to tell you what he wants posed to find out for yourself.

you are sup

CERTAIN LITERARY DEBUTANTS. The Point of View, in Century for February.

WRITING A PLAY IN A DEBTOR'S PRISON. Extracts from the diary of John Howard Payne, author of "Home, Sweet Home." Illustrated. Edited by Thatcher T. Payne Luquer. Scribner's for February. WHY AND How I WRITE. By the author of "The Trap," Herman Howard Matheson. Sunset for February.

THE ALLEGED DEPRAVITY OF POPULAR TASTE. Books and Theatre-going. Burges Johnson. Harper's Magazine for January.

LETTER TO THE PROOF READER. Winifred Kirkland. The Lion's Mouth, in Harper's Magazine for January.

OUR NEW POET AND HIS CHAIR. F. M. Colby. The Lion's Mouth, in Harper's Monthly for January. CARL SANDBURG, HUMAN BEING. Walter Yust. Bookman for January.

THE SEVERAL WAYS OF TELLING A STORY. Brander Matthews. Bookman for January.

EFFICIENCY AND ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. John Carl Parish. Bookman for January.

A MEMORY OF GEORGE D. SMITH. John Drinkwater. Bookman for January.

TWO WOMEN WRITERS OF THE SOUTH (Margaret Prescott Montague), Mary Newton Standard. (Bernie Babcock). Emma Forster. Bookman January.

S.

for

THE GLAD GAME IN STORIES. Olive Roberts Barton. Bookman for January.

KNUT HAMSUN IN LIFE AND LETTERS. Julius Moritzen. Bookman for January.

JOHN MASEFIELD OF THE PRESENT DAY. Gertrude H. Campbell. Bookman for January.

INTERIORS AND NOVELISTS. Rooms in Romances. William B. M'Cormick. Arts and Decoration for January.

THE SOURCES OF A TALE OF Two CITIES." J. A. Falconer. Modern Language Notes for January.

TUSITALA (Robert Louis Stevenson). With portrait. Mabel Ansley Murphy. St. Nicholas for Jan

THE STORY OF A GREAT LIFE LIFE. American News Trade Journal for January.

ESSENTIALS FOR THE EDITORIAL WRITER'S JOB. Fourth Estate for January 1.

MAKING HEADINGS FOR NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. Fourth Estate for January 8.

SHOULD A PAPER PRINT NEWS OR VIEWS? J. Ogden Armour. Reprinted from Leslie's Weekly in Fourth Estate for January 15.

CHANGE IN STYLE OF NEWS STORY HEADLINES. Fourth Estate for January 15.

LITERARY FASCINATION OF CRIME. Literary Digest for January 1.

IGNORANCE OF THE PILGRIMS. Literary Digest for January 8.

A SCOTCH TILT AGAINST MARK TWAIN. Literary Digest for January 8.

THE "BRASS CHECK" ON THE PRESS. Literary Digest for January 15.

AMERICAN LITERATURE SCORNED AND UNREAD. Literary Digest for January 15.

BEGINNING WITH CHESTERTON. Literary Digest for January 22.

NEWS AND NOTES.

The Press Congress of the World, originally scheduled to meet in Australia, will be held in Honolulu instead, from October 4 to October 14 inclusive, and will be followed by a special excursion to the Philippines on invitation from the Philippine government. Representative journalists from all over the world are expected to come as delegates to the Congress, which was organized in San Francisco in 1915. It is expected that all the delegates from North America will sail from a Washington port on the same vessel. Representative workers in every department of journalism and authors are eligible to membership, with election by the executive committee of the Congress. The president is Walter Williams, Dean of the School of Journalism of the University of Missouri.

The Authors' Society of Switzerland has adopted a proposal to set aside money for a fund from which writers may draw advances on their work. Publishers are refusing now to make advance payments, owing to the increased costs of production and the general difficulties of the publishing business. A committee has therefore been appointed to which authors in need may apply. The money advanced will be recovered from the royalties or subsequent payments received for the completed work.

William Lyon Phelps, the literary critic and Lampson professor of English at Yale, has recently said that "It is pleasant to record that in the front rank of American living novelists we find four women, who shall be named in alphabetical order. The big four are Dorothy Canfield, Zona Gale, Anne Sedgwick, and Edith Wharton."

Robert M. McBride & Co. (New York) have republished in pamphlet form Hugh Walpole's article, "The Art of James Branch Cabell," which appeared in the June number of The Yale Review. Copies of the pamphlet may be secured upon application to the publishers.

From now on the Nobel Prize for Literature is to be given to that writer who has created the most helpful and ideal work within the preceding year, regardless of his record as a whole.

The Patterson Cup, offered by the University of North Carolina for the year's best volume of essays, has been awarded to Winifred Kirkland, for "The View Vertical" (Houghton Mifflin Company ).

The second series of "Chief Contemporary Dramatists," by Thomas H. Dickinson (Houghton Mifflin Co.) represents the later tendencies in the drama of Europe and America. Among the authors included are Arnold Bennett, Edward Knoblock, W. Somerset Maugham, John Drinkwater, St. John Ervine, Lord Dunsany, Josephine Preston Peabody, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Eugene Walter, George C. Hazelton, Jr., Edmond Rostand, Georges de Porto-Riche, Sacha Guitry, Ludwig Thoma, Hermann Bahr, Schnitzler, Jacinto Benavente, and Maxim Gorky.

Harper & Bros. have brought out Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms," by F. Sturgis Allen, the late editor of Webster's International Dictionary.

George H. Doran announces an authoritative biography of Herman Melville, the literary discoverer of the South seas, by Professor Raymond M. Weaver, of the department of English, Columbia University. Professor Weaver has examined the unpublished documents, letters, journals, and other material in the hands of Melville's heirs, who have lent him the heartiest support and cooperation.

"Modern Business Writing," a study of the principles underlying effective advertisements and business letters, by Charles Harvey Raymond, is published by the Century Company.

'Bibliophily, or Booklove," by James F. Willis, is published by the Houghton Mifflin Company.

Dr. G. Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, has sold the American Journal of Psychology to Cornell University. The publication was established by Dr. Hall in 1887.

The plates and publishing rights of the books, booklets, folders, motto cards, calendars, and novelties which have been issued by W. A. Wilde & Co., have been taken over by Henry T. Fitz Simmons and the business I will be continued under the name of the Canterbury Company, Chicago.

The Journal of Geography, the official organ of the National Council of Geography Teachers, edited by Professor Geo. J. Miller, of the Minnesota State Normal School, is now published by A. J. Nystrom & Co., Chi

cago.

as the

Mrs. Charles D. Warner, known heroine Polly of the famous papers "My Summer in a Garden," first published by her husband in the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, of which he was editorial writer, died last week in Hartford.

Mrs. Margaret Cable Brewster died at Modesto, Calif., in December, aged fortythree.

John Beattie Crozier died in London January 8, aged seventy-three.

Rev. Edgar Page Stites, the author of "Beulah Land," died at Cape May, N. J„ January 9, aged eighty-five.

Mrs. Emma Huntington Nason died at Gardiner, Me., January 11, aged seventy-six.