hardens the sensibilities. How can it be otherwise? Human suffering, unbridled passions are very often the basis for the unusual and spectacular happenings that make news. The newspaper reader passes over these things lightly. He feels that murder is a far cry from his normal and perhaps not unpleasant life. Such things may happen but they are far from his ken. But the newspaper man works over this stuff; whether he admits it or not, it "gets under his skin."

Suppose you had been on a copy-desk the week before Christmas. Three of

the big stories that week were the sinkof the S-4, the Hickman murder, and the Remus acquittal. Six men slowly suffocating to death a hundred feet under water; a little girl butchered and thrown at her father's feet; twelve jurors deprived of reason and sense of duty to society by the cross-mummery of a demagogue, as sinister an indictment of democratic institutions as could be found anywhere. Suppose it was your regular job to work over that kind of stuff, day after day, year after year. Would n't it "get you" in time? Wouldn't you develop callouses all over your emotional and artistic sensibilities?

At least the advertising copy-writer can remain an optimist, if his copy "pulls." So long as he is willing to accept sales and profits as the measure of success, he can be happy. If he is honest with himself, however, he soon begins to wonder if this is the proper aim of literature, if "sales-resistance" may not be one of the cardinal virtues. When he reaches that point he is in the ideal frame of mind to do fiction, provided, of course, that his reaction is not so violent that he bullies the working folk who, after all, do make the world go round.

It would appear that, logically, the next rung in the ladder above journalism. or advertising would be magazine editorial work, and in this also the opportunities are larger than the man in the street believes. A job in which the literary worker both reads manuscripts and does staff-writing is an ideal combina

tion. The first teaches him the typical weaknesses of writers and the other gives outlet to whatever creative talents he may have. But such jobs are not so numerous and, curiously, seem to be falling into the hands of women - the new generation of eastern women's college graduates with stenographic training. They are immediately valuable at a small salary; if intelligent, they quickly get the "run of the office," and are on hand when editorial openings occur. Just at present they seem to be sifting in so fast that men with good, well-rounded training are becoming scarce. That may explain the epidemic of "boy-editors" in New York.

The competition for editorial positions is keen, almost as keen as free-lance competition in the selling of stories and articles, and good editorial workers are about as scarce as good stories. Most of the job-seekers have nothing but ambition to recommend them. There are real opportunities open to anyone who will tuck a scrap-book of clippings of his work under his arm and assail the editorial offices. He will find the anterooms crowded but he will see few scrapbooks in the crowd.

It is natural and perhaps regrettable that personalities should play so large a part in setting the feet of the select in the paths of success. The dominance of the graduates of two or three eastern colleges in magazine and book publishing is notable, and the explanation cannot be wholly that educational standards are higher in these colleges.

Mr. A., assistant editor of the Blank Magazine, which has published much of the work of Mr. B., the famous critic, invites Mr. B. out to lunch to meet Mr. C. Mr. A. and Mr. C. were classmates in college. Mr. C. has just written a book; he wants a "blurb" from Mr. B. Mr. B. may not give it but at least he has given up an hour of his time to meet Mr. C. "One swallow may not make a summer" but Mr. B can swallow only so many lunches and read only so many manuscripts.

Those who complain that the volume of American letters is small in quantity and quality need to be reminded that the literary watershed is still not very broad. It is spreading just as rapidly as the realization that the possession of money without the knowledge of how to spend it is a doubtful asset. There are still a good many places where a native can point out the richest man in town without drawing the obvious retort made famous by Ring Lardner, "Well, what of it?" But fewer and fewer as we come of age. Are we coming to the time when the four sons of the richest man in town will be marked, one for the army, one for the arts, one for the professions, and one

"IF

for trade, each according to his talents, as it has been in other days in other lands?

Unless the network spreads so that the Detroiter can find a place in the educational mill of authorship as easily as the New Yorker, the best training for writing seems to be newspaper work or advertising copy-writing wherever you are. for two or three years. Then if you must go on and are sure you have something to say, go to New York. It will be "make or break" - probably break if you haven't a ready entrée or the patience and capital to wait. But apparently that is the way it is being done.

F it were not for fillers," a distinguished novelist once wittily remarked, "many of our best writers would have settled down to the practice of law." Fillers have a queer habit of bobbing up in print at unexpected moments and thus cheering the drooping spirits of those inclined toward writing, especially when a surplus of paragraphs has been allowed to accumulate in several editorial offices. Or, again, when items written for special occasions, such as Christmas, the Fourth of July, or moving day are used, after having been overlooked or crowded out on several successive years. One story of this kind, about Spring, remained "up" in type in the composing room of a Boston newspaper for nearly five years. But although most free lance writers know only too well the utility of fillers in closing up the gaps between the arrivals of larger checks, few realize the extent to which fillers may be of service in helping even the experienced writer to develop the practice of his craft.

Fillers sharpen the reportorial instinct, without which no writer, be he realist or not, can entirely exist. It has been said

of Conrad that he had a photographic mind, enabling him to take in all the characteristic details of a room the moment he entered it. This was, however, not entirely a natural gift, but a faculty which Conrad developed only through long practice. Any writer who keeps an eye out for filler ideas will find that gradually the scope of his vision widens and that he "sees" more than his neighbors. Moreover, he will discover that he can extend his power from ideas for fillers to ideas for longer and more important subjects.

Filler subjects, as a matter of fact, are everywhere. To write out even a few of them is to become humble toward the lowly filler as well as toward one's craft, as Sherwood Anderson would say, and to realize that the range of good subjects will outlast the attack of the most tireless and ingenious of writers. A chance remark about the telephone once suggested to this writer the change that is being wrought along back country roads. by the development of radio. Seeing someone drop a cube of butter on the floor in a businessmen's lunch room furnished the idea for a few inches on

"Butter, a Key to Character." No one can enter the central post office in a large city without harvesting at least one or two good subjects out of the wisps of over heard conversation or quickly glimpsed types. A bad connection in a telephone booth, on the other hand, once supplied this writer with a column and a half article about the types and mannerisms of those frequenting pay stations, which was printed in the Boston Transscript. Keeping a sharp outlook for filler material not only trains the writer in using his eyes and ears, but furnishes him with an excellent note-book. Many ideas, hastily worked up for fillers, have later given me clues for feature articles. To the average human being this method of posting notes has the added attraction of appearing to be a much less tiring form of exertion than the abstract practice of merely jotting down ideas for undetermined future uses. Moreover, for the short story writer, and, perhaps, even the novelist and playwright, this means of stimulating the imagination seems invaluable. Ideas which one has once written about become a part of one's experience. The objection may be raised that these ideas cannot, by the majority of writers, be written about a second time in the same way or from the same point of view. Yet even if this be true, the ideas have been lodged securely in the sub-conscious mind and are ready to be drawn upon or to pop out unexpectedly in new forms through being assimilated into the writer's experience background.

Probably the greatest help that the writing of fillers can give one lies in the development of that, for many writers,

most difficult of all qualities, facility. Fillers can always be finished at one sitting and may often be attempted on trains or while one is waiting for a friend in a hotel lounge. Notes do not have to be spread about; pad, pencil, and an idea are the only necessary equipment. Writing fillers in this way trains the young writer in the art of putting order and a point of view into loose, amorphous material. A filler may often be little more than a scenario for a longer subject to be written at some future time. It has, however, been carefully considered, even put in literary form. Furthermore, in the development of concentration and facility of expression, irrespective of the urge to write, fillers make good material to practice upon. If the writer finds himself "cold," if he spoils an idea, he need not distress himself over having destroyed his interest in many dollars' worth of potentially good copy. On the other hand, after a little practice, having little to lose, he may find it an excellent practice to occupy spare moments, which otherwise might be wasted, in writing out the same material several times, often with varying points of view. This habit tends also to avert the one danger of writing at odd moments - the tendency to slap things through superficially. Not every writer can accustom himself to producing creatively under any and all conditions. But for the playwright whose workshop too often must be a hotel bedroom or the dim corners of an auditorium during active rehearsals, the ability thus to assemble his thoughts is almost indispensable. Like the lowly tortoise in the fabled race, the filler possesses many unsuspected virtues.

they had enough talent to write. As it is, they won't take anyone's word for it, and they won't even be guided by the fact that they can't sell the stuff they write!" "Of course not!" cried Lucinda. (Now isn't she absurd!)

"The test is simple," I swept on. "A "A would-be author goes to an opera without knowing even its name in advance or looking at the program after he arrives. He works out the story from what happens on the stage. On going home, he consults a 'Story of the Operas' to see how close he has come to the actual plot. If the stories coincide, he has imagination, without a doubt."

Lucinda was looking at me as if I had appeared with a new face or in purple satin.

"Well," she declared finally, "your scheme shows you have more imagination than I ever supposed."

"I was a little surprised," I agreed, disdaining false modesty, "at the way the test worked in my own case."

"What opera did you say you saw?" demanded Lucinda.

"That reminds me. I must hunt up my program and find out."

"Perhaps I know the story."

"Let's see. The first principals to enter were some young men in becoming but impractical velvet and swords, who played a game, that is, two would sing together, then 1 would dart to 3 and sing with him, then 3 with 4 and so on. It's a common game in operas. The hero was so black I took him for a negro at first, but the heroine was white, so he couldn't have been. I decided he must be considerably tanned or else Moorish."

Lucinda started as if struck by an idea, so I continued hastily.

"The heroine wore a gorgeous gown, most unsuitable for street wear, but appropriate for the public concert she gave right on the curbstone. By act 2, I discovered she loved the dark man, but was married to a jealous person at whom everybody kept singing 'Yah-go!' I never found out what they meant, for he never went anywhere. He ran about, first to

his wife, and then to the dark man, remonstrating at the way they carried on. The woman got so nervous she nearly ruined a hanky embroidered with red."

"Oh!" said Lucinda. "Strawberries?" "Perhaps. But the handkerchief had nothing to do with the plot. The prima donna was just nervous.'

"But I think-" began Lucinda. I glared at her and continued.

"In the last act the heroine had a rendezvous with the dark man in her bedroom. She had gone to sleep before he finally arrived, which made him furihe was naturally excitable — and he strangled her right there."

ous

"Lydia, don't you" tried Lucinda.

"Do let me finish!" I cried. "Yah-go! himself came in then, found his wife dead, and flew for the police. The Moor, seeing he could not escape, slashed his throat. But he had breath enough left for a long, long solo. Now do you remember any opera with that plot?"

Lydia must have breathed-in her egg, for she nearly choked.

"Get your program," she gasped finally. When I returned with my velvet opera bag, she was still wiping her eyes.

"I may have made minor mistakes," I said, as I fished for the program. "But didn't I do pretty well for a beginner? I don't think it would be hard to get up a plot entirely my own."

Lucinda nearly strangled again, as she fluttered the leaves of the program. "You have!" she announced. "The opera you saw was 'Othello'." "Wha-Oh!"

A moment later I said "Oh!" again. "The unfaithful wife you invented was Desdemona, perhaps the most guiltless woman in Shakspere. Your colored lover was her Moorish husband, Othello. As for Yah-go!” Lucinda paused to gurgle again.

"Why, Iago is the name of the villain. in the play!" I cried.

To her everlasting credit be it said, Lucinda did not crow. She did not need to. No Juggernaut ever left behind a flatter person than myself.