salary. He had no influence to help him beyond his shorthand backing. Of course, in general newspaper work shorthand is only now and then of any particular use. The man who can write shorthand, however, is, as in the instance cited, frequently of more value to an editor than one who cannot, other conditions being equal.

No elaborate education is needed by a newsnaper man. The more he knows, the better; but the man who has something really worth saying, id says it in the simplest, tersest English pos

The following is P. B. Shillaber's own account of how he first began to write. It was the day after his wife's funeral, and while he himself was prostrated with grief and suffering from an attack of acute rheumatism, that he related to his physician and those about him how he came to be a "scribbler ":

"I did n't know I could write till I was thirty years old," said he. "I was a printer on the Boston Post and I don't know why it was, but if the others were away, or out, I was entrusted with such official work as receiving the communications, arranging and distributing copy, etc. There was a good fellow whose duty it was to write the poems when occasion required. This was about the time that the Irish Question was calling for a good deal of sympathy, and the Post's poet was called upon to write an appeal.

quill, and before long had my article written. I got a friend to take it over to Charlestown, and mail it there, as coming from some of the Harvard students. Well, in the mean time, I experienced all the feverishness of the young littérateur's dreams. Then one day, while I was doing something in the office while the others were out, I saw my article on the desk, marked Devilish good.' I tell you I went home that night with a feather in my cap as long as your arm.

"I wrote one or two more after that, and then took courage and began to hand my contributions in myself. No, the name 'Partington' did not, of course, originate with me. I had always been very much impressed with that saying in Sydney Smith about Mrs. Partington mopping back the tide of the Atlantic. It was the idea of perseverance of successful perseverance by small means. I was always thinking of it, in all manner of ways, and at all times. So, one morning, I sent in a paragraph with that name, because that name was always uppermost in my mind. I ought to say here, perhaps, that at that particular date the Western grain crops were of greatest interest. So I wrote: Whether the grain crop is good or bad, Mrs. Partington says a half a dollar's worth of flour costs just the same.'

"It was the public sentiment I touched. After all that was being said and written, that was the situation exactly. Just a line or two it was, but it flew from one newspaper to the other, and was copied all over the country. Queries came thick and fast as to 'Who was Mrs. Partington?'

"I was sending the paragraphs in pretty lively by that time. But when I began to contemplate putting them into a book I was filled with fears for the success of it. I believed my personality unknown to the publishing world, and it would be hazarding it, at any rate. But, happily, I was like the ostrich; while I had

What is better than a catalogue of new books to reawaken the drooping fancy? You sip at it like soup. It invites the appetite and prepares the mental digestion for things more nutritious. You toy with the leaves and toss about from title to title now science, now travel, now fiction. This title carries you to the slums of London, that to the gardens of Utopia this makes your heart throb with the free air of the West, that with the shame of a Siberian mine.

a name.

The sense of eternal fitness would demand a romantic title for a novel, but it is generally only The romantic histories of Esther and Job furnish us a precedent for so doing. We cannot use these old names, so we rehash them, and have a "Modern Circe," Telemachus, Diogenes, etc. "Adam Homo " is the name of a work by Paludan Müller.

But quaint or suggestive titles are more interesting. "Letters from Hell" or Richter's "Selections from the Papers of the Devil" you might wish to read as descriptive of a place not on the itinerary you have mapped out. Lady Morgan wrote "The Book Without a Name." "On the Origin and Antiquity of Bologna," by Azzoguidi (1716), belongs on the same shelf as "The Oxford Sausage" of Warton.

"The Great and Marvellous Acts of Nobody," by Jean D'Abundance, is doubly curious, as nothing is known of the author, and even his name is supposed to be fictitious.

There is an "Essay on Nothing," by Hugh Arnot (1777); "Memoir on the Observance of Silence by the Ancients," D'Ancora (1782); "Memoirs of an Elephant," Marchand; and an "Inquiry Whether the Earth is a Machine or an Animal," Carpov.

Anxious maidens might want "On the Art of Living with Men," Knigge (1788); and "The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony," La Sale; and possibly "The Elixir of Moonshine," Clarke (1822).

For Bohemians "The Art of Dining Out (en ville) for the Use of Authors," De Colnet (1810), and Hoare's drama, "No Song, No Supper."

Thorns may not bring forth figs, but a Dutch poet, Beets, produced "Cornflowers," a volume of poems.

Lancelot Andrews wrote " Torture of Tortus " as a retort to a book by Matthew Tortus. John Knox blew a " Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," which was answered by Bishop Aylmer's "Harborowe for Faithful and True Subjects Against the Lateblown Blast."

There is many a "Dunciad," but there is also a "Mousiad" by Krasicki.

Bulwer's "What Will He Do with It?" might suggest a foundling or a white elephant. It is as elastic as Gray's farce, "What D'ye Call It ?" In sociology, we have Mrs. Opie's "Illustrations of Lying," and the "National Histories of Stuck-up People," by Albert Smith. Judge Sharswood's "Byles on Bills of Exchange" is an old Harvard text-book.

A bibliography of Cromwell's time is a bookworm's paradise. Here are a few of that vintage: "Tobacco Battered and Pipes Scattered by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mt. Helicon," by Sylvestre ; "Crumbs of Comfort for the Chickens of the Covenant"; "Highheeled Shoes for Dwarfs in Holiness"; "The Spiritual Mustard-pot to Make the Soul Sneeze with Devotion"; "Biscuit Baked in the Oven of Charity Carefully Conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the Sweet Swallows of Salvation."

A clergyman, being asked to harmonize "The Gun of Penitence," said, “A duty to be discharged."

In 1592, Richard Johnson gave to the world "The Nine Worthies of London; Pleasant for Gentlemen, Not Unseemly for Magistrates, and Most Profitable for 'Prentices." Heywood wrote a play in 1606, "If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody; or, The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth."

An old almanacke, published at intervals from 1553 to 1605, by Digges, bore this title: "A Prognostication everlasting of Right Good Effect, fructfully augmented by the Author, Containing Plaine, Briefe, Pleasant, Chosen, Rules to judge the Weather by the Sunne, Moon, Starres, Comets, Rainbow, Thunder, Clowdes, with other extraordinary Tokens, not omitting the Aspects of Planets, with a Briefe Judgement for ever, of Plentie, Lacke, Sicknes, Dearth, Warres, &c., opening also many naturall causes worthie to be knowne. To these and other now at the last are joined divers generall pleasant Tables, with many compendious Rules, easie to be had in memorie, manifolde wayes profitable to all men of understanding." William Benbow.

READING, Penn.

A lawyer once criticised this expression, which occurred in the report of a trial in court: "A few minor witnesses were called first." The point taken in the criticism was, that, from a lawyer's standpoint, no witness whose testimony. is relevant and admissible is considered of minor importance. Each one forms a link, without which the chain of evidence would be incomplete; and, consequently, all witnesses are - from a lawyer's point of view - of equal importance.

It has occurred to me that this criticism might apply with equal force to those necessary, though sometimes inconspicuous, components of

fiction commonly denominated "minor characters." It seems to me that in consequence of this erroneous generalization a very large and respectable class of fictitious ladies and gentlemen has suffered slights at the hands of their creators which they would have been spared had their true status been recognized and acknowledged.

Study the great masterpieces of literature, and you will find in the most humble portraits that they contain the same evidence of careful delineation that makes the nobler figures seem instinct with life. But how frequently we observe in the works of less finished literary artists pal

An expert carpenter whom I used to know was in the habit of saying that nobody but a "born botch" would drive a screw with a hammer, and I remember seeing him discharge a new employee for nailing two boards together with a monkey-wrench. He said he could tell a good workman from a poor one by noticing whether he kept his tools sharp, and whether he gave to every tool its particular use.

There is a large class of writers, notably newspaper reporters of the average sort, — of which I am one, who use words as do the botches who drive screws with hammers. Any word that will cover the ground at all is good enough, they think; and the bad habits into which they and others of like carelessness and lack of discrimination have got us have led to the abuse and degradation of many a good and useful word which cannot well be spared from its proper place.

For instance, there is one little word that even the best writers have abused until the poor little thing hardly knows its own province. I mean the word "very." It remains for the younger writers, now, to restore to this unfortunate little duosyllable its lost rights and prerogatives; to smooth and polish its battered surfaces, and to place it again in the tool-rack whence it has been taken to serve lazy men's purposes.

of speakers and writers to think that ordinary words are not strong enough in their original meanings, but must be reinforced, even for commonplace description, by exclamatory words of the "very" sort which, by right, should rest in their places until need arises for an extra emphatic adverb or adjective. The average reporter, writing of a church sociable or a parlor concert, must say that "the attendance was very large," or "the entertainment was very enjoyable," or, even worse, "it was very generally conceded." In none of these cases does "very" serve any purpose except to weaken the sentence.

Of a fire, the newspaper says, "the loss was very great." I doubt that that "very" accomplishes any increase of emphasis it seems to me to lessen the idea of the loss. Writers will find it an interesting experiment to place a special guard over this little word, and allow it to leave the mental storehouse only under strict espionage. It is instructive to go over one's work and strike the word out mercilessly; then to notice whether it is missed.

And what shall we say of the writers - usually feminine, I believe - who, of a concert, the the decorations in a church, the weather, a plate of soup, or almost anything else, say that it is simply perfect"?

The word "simple" and its sister forms have a sweet significance all their own, and it

is nothing less than brutal to force them to perform a service for which they were never intended, and which, indeed, they cannot perform properly. My sister, if you are willing to say deliberately that anything is "perfect," — and if you write with care, you will seldom use the word,- you will find that the expression needs no assistance. If the piano solo or the picture was indeed "perfect," you can pay it no greater tribute than to say so. "Perfect" is one of those words that cannot be emphasized. It describes the climax of excellence.

"Awful," "horrible," "fearful," "exquisite," "nice," "wretched," - half the words we use, - we misuse constantly. We would do well to give our dictionary a place beside our Bible, and to give some careful, reverent study to the

delicacies and refinements of the English language. There is no word of all its wealth that is not indispensable in its own place; there is no word so small or so common that it has not its own meaning and shade of meaning.

The difference between the writer who thoughtfully gives to each word its value, and who has for each idea its nicely-chosen words, and the literary botch who uses the word nearest at hand, if only it will serve the purpose somehow, is the same kind of difference as that between the skilled workman who uses each tool for its particular purpose and the slovenly fellow who drives screws with a hammer or pulls out tacks with a framing-chisel.

HARTFORD, Conn.

John P. Gavit.

The chorus of ill-omened birds has croaked so long that perhaps a cheerful note, however humble, may be agreeable by way of variety. The aids to young authors, which are so numerous nowadays, are almost invariably pessimistic in tone, as if one would say, “If you must write, this is the way to do it; but don't if you can possibly help it, for you are almost sure to fail." Over and over again have we been told, by those who profess to have been through the battle, that literature is the last profession in which one should think of engaging, "the hardest work for the poorest pay"; that editors and publishers are leagued together to punish the folly of the aspiring young author; that it is the wildest nonsense to think of making a livelihood by literature alone; and that, as a business, taking in washing or blacking boots is preferable.

Those of us who are in the habit of reading the newspapers have probably learned to be discriminating as to what we are to believe, and without wishing to seem suspicious, one would like to ask these wailing prophets for

their credentials. Are they tombstones set up over the graves of buried hopes and failed ambitions? Has the peculiar, effervescent, champagney fluid, distilled in the working of strong, ardent, inspired mental processes, for them turned sour by reason of long waiting on the editorial pleasure? Or know they not such exhilaration, that they utter such complaint of the drudgery of literary work?

The profession has yet to be discovered wherein one may lie at ease on a bed of roses. Some of us would prefer to "be up and doing, with a heart for any fate," and to plant roses, rather than lie on them. One does not ordinarily engage in any line of work with the expectation of seeing the rest of the world set to and assist him with favors, large and small. The path of literature, though rough, like the world, lies among the highlands of life, and its occasional steepnesses are richly compensated by its breadth of outlook and its invigorating atmosphere. Some have made great successes therein. Perhaps, if they were asked, they would say that their thoughts were so ardently