quite aware that I was getting nowhere, either in accomplishment or capacity.

So I made myself a whip in the form of a monthly magazine, called "Stuff and Nonsense." I appointed in addition an unknown jury of prospective subscribers who would pass judgment on my efforts and exact every jot and tittle of my task. I bound myself by law and equity to the fulfillment of a contract to deliver every month so much of readable matter. And I gambled both time and money on my convictions that I could get away with it. The first issue had four pages, five hundred copies, and no subscribers. By the sixth issue the sheet was up to eight pages, and subscribers had passed the hundred point. In two years the subscription list was in the neighborhood of one thousand. At the end of the third year the subscription list is close to fifteen hundred. So much for history.

The magazine now pays its own way, ignoring the investment entailed in the first year. This, however, does not constitute its principal success. The principal assets of the magazine and the justification for the experiment lie along more intangible lines.

The amateur writer needs three things; he needs practice, he needs to measure his own capacity, and he needs good friends. Practice contemplates not only fluency but restraint; a sense of the jealousy of the printed column, and willingness to cut and slash. Your amateur one-man magazine gives you both. The thing must be filled every month; it comes around like rent day and the light and water bills; the customers have paid for it and it must be filled, acceptably and neatly. The overflow article becomes an abomination in your sight, and you learn to lacerate the creatures of your own brain, and prune them to fit your space. You learn variety, for no good tune can be played on a single string. In your capacity as editor you become very stern with yourself as author, and you acquire an invaluable sense of detachment from your own enthusiasms. And you are never satisfied. All of which is as it should be.

The question of capacity is important. There are a thousand ways to write and a hundred thousand things to write about, and the urge to journalism will tell you the truth about yourself in short order. After the first accumulation of subscriptions from friends and neighbors, the state of your subscription list will reflect with painful accuracy the degree to which you write yourself into your stuff. If you strike a fortunate note it will be echoed in correspondence and in the accession of new subscribers. Inevitably you will begin to develop a type and a style and a dominant interest, which will be a reliable guide to focus your efforts in the professional field. And you will have in addition a valuable chart of your own progress, spread through the back file of your magazine.

The question of good friends is a vital one, even though all editors be disinterested and impartial. Other things being equal, a slight margin of advantage will be accorded to the familiar name. Your magazine, if you have as much confidence in it as you must needs have in your writings if you propose to send them to an editor, should be mailed to every address that promises you any good. If you get no good out of it, you may be guided accordingly to a proper modesty. If you get an occasional letter, an occasional review, and an occasional subscription out of the world of editors, reviewers, critics, and reporters, you may feel encouraged. And if you really have something you will get more than that; you will get invitations to write an article or two or review a book or express an opinion

publication of a one-man magazine, assuming that it is all that the name implies. There is much that can be learned of typography, make-up, and good taste, and your magazine should gain steadily in attractiveness if it is really making progress. This has no direct bearing on your success as a writer, but it tells you something of the problems of an editor. You will also learn something about the public, particularly that your audience and anybody's audience is a stratum of society, a scattered layer of individuals that happen to respond to the note you strike. This is an important truth; it involves a clean-cut recognition of the essential individuality of current magazines, and may teach you to study them more closely before you attempt to break into them. Finally, your magazine will teach you patience, and willingness to wait for big results.

In dread lest too many shall succumb to my plausible narrative and there ensue a crop of one-man magazines, let me append some warning and advice. Don't do it, unless you have a tested confidence in your stuff. Amateurs send out many a manuscript that they hardly believe in themselves, comforting themselves with the thought that it costs only a few cents postage. Your magazine is going to cost you money. Its first year is going to show a lot of red ink; you have to hang on if you are going to declare yourself a dividend. Personally I have no question that I have made a good investment, but you must determine for yourself whether this will apply to your own case.

Don't be local. A merely local sheet will fail to achieve the principal things you are after, unless, of course, you aim to be editor of a country newspaper. If you intend to contribute to national magazines you cannot afford to localize your style or your stuff. If

you have anything in your magazine worth reading, you will be pleasantly surprised at the wide range of your subscription list. My own sheet goes to forty states and twelve foreign countries. It does not depend on goodwill of neighbors and friends for its existence.

Be personal. The one-man magazine must have the appeal of the newspaper column or the successful after-dinner speaker; it cannot compete with the synthetic importance of a regular magazine. Get your customers to look for it as they might look for a personal letter from a friend. Further than that, use your knowledge of psychology and the persuasiveness of your pen and typewriter to make your customers branch agents for your sheet. You cannot spend money on advertising it, at least, not enough to do any good,

but if you are lucky your customers will pass the good word along, and often in the fashion of gift subscriptions. Answer every new subscription with a personal note, and acknowledge all letters and comments. And be careful of contributors; if you allow one or two into your magazine, you will be involved in all sorts of embarrassments. If your magazine is at all successful you will find that the customers want principally to hear from you, and will resent anything that affects the clean-cut character of your venture.

There is only the slimmest possibility that you will ever make any money out of a oneman magazine. But you will have a lot of fun, you will learn good habits, and you will be going to school under the tutelage of public opinion. Out of the experience you will learn the sort of wisdom that will disillusion you, or you will become an increasingly competent free lance. It is worth some time and effort and even money to get this matter settled.

EW things are more misleading to the

FEW

student of modern poetry than the average reviews of verse to be found in the book sections of the newspapers. With the exception of the special articles, which are generally assigned to writers who know something about their subject, nearly all the criticism one reads is ignorant, if not perverse. The best poetry seldom reveals its full measure of beauty at the first reading; rather it continues to unfold with familiarity, and after years still impresses one with new and surprising loveliness. Particularly is this true of lyric poetry. For example, many of the shorter poems of the Elizabethans, of Blake, of Bridges, scarcely touch one, except by their verbal music, at the first reading. After a while one begins to hear the secondary voices, and only after committing the lines by heart from long familiarity, does one appreciate their significance. Such study is, of course, denied to the ordinary book reviewer. A modern lyric poet is lucky if his book is read through even once before judgment.

"Miss Camphire's outpourings breathe forth a spirit of mystical ecstasy, partly idealistic, partly earthly, through which we hear the beat of a human heart and the fluttering wings of a human soul." At their most harmful they make a dogma of their ignorance: "Mr. Roraback is to be praised for his startling originality. He is individual both in thought and expression. Here is complete freedom from the English tradition. The work is unmistakably American."

In another paper I have already dealt with that fallacy of "startling originality," but the question is so important that I may be excused for presenting a summary of my views for the benefit of new readers.

Originality, in the sense intended by reviewers, is not to be sought after but eschewed. True originality is almost synonymous with sincerity; it implies, merely, that the writer was indeed the origin of the emotion or idea expressed. Now it may be a thought which has been expressed hundreds of times before. It will almost surely be just that. Nearly every human being has at some time experienced love, yet no poet can be condemned for writing about love so long as he has actually experienced it. If he has not done so, and still insists on writing about it,