upon a worthy emulation of the really great magazine-writers like Steele and Hawthorne, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, Dwight, Hergesheimer, Eugene Rhodes, Ben Ames Williams, and Barry Benefield, but rather upon a set whose "work" is no longer, even by those who praise them, entitled "distinguished," but

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rather "significant." One cannot help reacting, when one uses one's own mind on the matter, to the alleged significance as redolent of the brothel and the mudhole, but one might even bear with such a general choice of material for signification if only its proponents would learn how to write!

DITORS receive a great many stories which are pretty good-but they seldom buy them. The reason is that while there is no particular reason for rejecting one of these offerings there is no particular reason for accepting it, either. And the story or article which may be accepted or rejected with about equal propriety goes back to its author every time. In the writing world, the unsolicited manuscript is in the rôle of defendant. In law, the defendant gets the benefit of any doubt. But a manuscript must prove its case.

The young writer-or the old one, either, for that matter-should never send out a manuscript which has not at least one outstanding selling-point. One is enough. The contribution otherwise may be mediocre. It sometimes may get past even though it have glaring faults. And it is not as difficult to provide this selling point as it might seem. A little thought devoted to the matter will often work wonders.

Of course, everybody can't be a barber, but everybody can be something. A writer who has never been anything but a writer, unless he be a great genius to whom all life is more or less of an open book, is in hard case. The material which a writer has collected in the practice of his profession is the worst material in the world, for the reason that every writer has it. Newspaper stories and stories of the literary life are seldom accepted when they come from the most skillful hands. They are no novelty. Every editorial mail is heavy with them. But the chances are you have once earned your living in some way apart from literature-or lived on your money, or sponged on your relatives, or begged your bread. It does n't matter what you have done. Write about it if you wish to sell.

A successful author also takes considerable pains to acquire information which has not come to him in the ordinary course of events. He visits places and gets acquainted with the people he finds there. The unsuccessful author draws upon his inner consciousness, what he calls his imagination. What he is really doing is faintly remembering what he has read. His work is a washed out copy of other people's work. And he wonders that he cannot compete with the originals! Knowledge of material is a selling point which anybody who is not too lazy to live can put into every manuscript he puts into the mails. Of course

For instance, knowledge of subject is always a good selling point—especial knowledge of subject, I mean. If you are writing a story about a barber and happen to have been a barber in your time, the chances are that you will say some interesting things about the details of the profession. Your very view-point will show everything up in a novel light to the reader, and if the story itself is not very bad indeed it will cause any editor to sit up and take notice.

he should be careful not to overload his stuff with information. A few good facts go a long ways. But they are like salt in bread, they make the product taste very flat when they are left out.

Another selling point is clear and definite and agreeable characterization. It is more difficult to supply than mere knowledge of material, but it comes from the same source. After all, people are material, the most important sort of material. They are all around us. To put them on paper one must learn not to be photographic. Uncle George will probably not work well into a story if you try to represent Uncle George just as he is. But if you can take a hint from Uncle George-his timidity in the presence of young women, for instance (did you ever notice it?), he becomes a story on the spot. You may help him out with a hint taken from Aunt Sarah, if necessary. She is very fussy about her clothes.

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Now what if Uncle George were suddenly dropped down in a blacksmith shop in the country? He is a city man, afraid of young women, fussy about his clothes, and having been caught by a very pretty girl when he was in his old clothes trying to do a paper-hanger's job, he runs away rather than meet her again. An old friend of his owns blacksmith shop. George visits him, hangs about the place, gets interested in the work, the friend dies, and George finds himself the proprietor. At the same time his city income stops through some contingency or other. He is now a blacksmith. He likes it. No women thereor not the sort of women who frighten him.

The rest is easy. He marries one of the neighbors' daughters. At the last minute, however, it looks as if the city girl would mix things up. She is horseback riding, and her horse casts a shoe near the blacksmith's shop. George has to put it on, right in front of her, in his old clothes, and everything. And he finds to his surprise that he does not care a rap. What has been the trouble with

him was the idea that he cared for that sort of girl. He would not have been so shy but for this mistaken notion that they were the sort he must look to for a wife. Once that is out of his system, he can marry the right girl and be happy.

Lay this story among familiar scenes, or scenes with which you have made yourself familiar, and your character will not be like every other character. He will be real, and will stand out as a selling point.

Mere writing seldom sells a story these days, but exceptionally good handling sells a good many. By good handling, I mean that sort of treatment which gets started with the action from the drop of the hat, uses words sparingly, and indulges in what description and analysis is absolutely necessary only after a suspense has been created.

Suspense is of two kinds, both based on curiosity. If you arrange it right the reader becomes curious to know what happened in the past in order to bring about the present situation. If a man is found shot, for example, one is curious to know who shot him, and why. The other kind of suspense arises from curiosity as to the future. Two men who hate each other are left alone. There is a revolver in the table drawer. Neither of them knows it. Will either of them find out? And what will happen? A penniless young man meets a girl at a dance. He will fall in love with her. How will he get money enough to marry her?

Suspense of any kind always arises from concealing things from the reader, and to be effective should result in surprise. Two solutions are put before the reader, for example, and in the end a third solution is suddenly found. The young man finds enough money to enable him to marry the rich girl-and he marries a poor girl who has been in the story all along, but that he never thought of till some circumstance shows him how fine she is.

Suspense and action working together

have sold many a story. But action working alone, a mere moving of pieces rapidly about the board, is very poor stuff. It must originate in the characters and the surroundings to mean anything. Therefore it is well not to have too much action in your mind when you begin. Get out of the habit of describing your people in mere words. Don't saddle them with a plot. A plot is nothing but a clash of characters, or a clash of character with circumstances, told in incidents that flow along naturally, leading to suspense and a sudden, unexpected conclusion. The minute you have a human being with a human desire confronted with a difficulty you have the beginning of a plot.

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Let your characters be real folks, but exaggerated a trifle, and in a short story by no means full length figures. Let them work out their own salvation among scenes which you know to the life. Let your incidents flow naturally and swiftly, with the big scene at the end. Choose subjects which are timely. Write only for magazines you are familiar with. The editor will soon discover in your work a difference from the ordinary run. And he will manifest his appreciation in the only way he can manifest it-checks signed by the business department. These checks are the only kind of favorable criticism which are worth the paper they are written on.

ROFESSOR Daniel Evans, of Andover Theological Seminary, speaking at the fourteenth annual national business conference in Babson Park, (as reported in The Boston Herald), reviewed book censorship through the ages, with especial reference to its recent history in Massachusetts.

After pointing out that the desire to censor books, plays, magazines, and scientific treatises was growing in the country at large, the speaker held that while the movement was a ripple today it might be a wave tomorrow and "engulf not only books that deal with sex, but also books which deal with all advanced scientific ideals, moral ideals, and religious truths.”

The provision of the existing laws were next cited by Professor Evans, who went on to say: "The difficulty, as I see it, lies in the law, which was meant to reach a definite and dangerous evil but is now used to cover an entirely different matter. The original situation was the sale or exhibition of pornographic pictures and pamphlets and books to youths. The law

was needed for this situation and is still needed. The officers of the law still need to be vigilant to oppose this evil and there is still need of voluntary organizations or societies to aid in the beneficent work. The difference of opinion arises, however, as to books and magazines which are not intended to be obscene, or indecent, or impure, nor being written, published, or sold with this purpose in mind. It is admitted that there are books which children and boys and girls should not read at their period of life, but which their parents should have the right or privilege to read and which the children themselves will read later in life. Here it is a case of milk for babes and strong meat for adults.

"The question still remains in view of, or in spite of, these conditions-what are obscene, indecent, or impure books? Here is the crux of the matter. Who is the judge? By what standard is the judgment to be made? Who are the persons qualified to judge what is obscene, indecent, and impure in distinction from the realistic, true to life presentation of matters? Who can tell us what is safe

and what is dangerous? What subjects are tabu and what permitted? How much or how little freedom should the writer, the publisher, the seller, and the reader have? How much do we believe in and value the principle of freedom of thought and of utterance whether in speech or in writing?

"Social problems are now our vital interests. The scientific temper is the intellectual spirit of our time. The exclamation of the old New Englander, 'I want to know,' is no longer a matter of exclamation but of live curiosity.

"There is a new frankness that has grown out of this new scientific spirit. Sex is no longer a thing of dirt, nor of whispered talk; it is recognized as a part of life, it is one of the fundamental impulses of the human; it has more to do with the making or the marring of human happiness than any other impulse. It makes for life's divine comedy and also for its terrible tragedy. It has played an immense part in human life and it has very much to do with religion. It has always been deeply studied by poet and philosopher. Recently it has become the paramount study of the biologist and psychologist. This varied interest in and study of sex has been made the subject matter of literature in a franker, freer, and saner way than ever before.

"This treatment of the sex motive in literature and this new attitude toward it in life generally are evidences of changed standards. We have moved into a new world. The standards of yesterday no longer avail us. The customs of this new world are different. The indecent of yesterday is not the indecent of today. The obscene of yesterday is not obscene today; or the impure of yesterday impure today. When censorship therefore places a tabu upon certain subjects for literary treatment; when it makes the moral welfare of adolescent youth the measure of the knowledge and reading of adult persons; when it takes the notions of indecency and impurity which prevail at a given period as decisive for later periods with different

standards; when it would prevent advanced ideas and ideals; when it would prohibit the candid presentation of the great human experiences of life; when it says, 'thus far and no farther' shall human thought move; then such censorship is not a virtue, but a vice; it is not a good thing, but a bad. And since this is now the situation in which we find ourselves, through the law on our statute book, and through the supreme court's interpretation, and because of the sense of responsibility which the district attorney and the police officers feel, then it would appear wise to change the law and make possible the possession of books that men competent to judge of moral and literary values write, publish, and sell; to secure for these ministers to the minds of men protection from criminal procedure and to save Boston from being the laughing stock of the country at large.

"This is the constructive suggestion for our consideration as it applies to our local situation. This would save us from our present predicament. There is, however, as we suggested earlier, something that has a wider bearing and is of more fundamental importance. There is a principle at stake, and the principle is the foundation of thought and expression. The less freedom, the less work of life, and the value of the literature produced; the more freedom, the richer the life, and the greater the creative impulses and the nobler the literature.

"We should all strive to secure the largest possible freedom of thought and expression. We should dread the danger of killing a great book because it does not conform to present standards, notions, or customs. We should keep vividly in mind that the prohibited books of yesterday have become our classics and that these very books have made for these changes in thought. And we should remember that human nature in the long run is the only true censor, for it has kept alive the great books dealing seriously with all aspects of human experience, and has let die those that were

superficial and sentimental, and those that were really obscene, indecent, and improper. Nor should we forget that we ourselves are censors.

"We make possible, by our reading and buying, the books that are worthy to survive, and also the books that should never have been made. The principle at stake in this whole censorship matter is the principle of freedom of thought and writing. Discussion will discover the truth and debate test the issues.

"It is a time to take down our Milton from the shelf and read not once, nor twice, but many times, his immortal 'Areopagitica,' that we may learn anew the cost and the value of freedom of thought and printing, feel again the quickening of our our pulses, and find once more reinforcement in our determination to be free, and the renewal of our faith in the power of truth. Parliament had passed an order to regulate printing: That no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be first approved and licensed by such or at least one of such, as shall be appointed.' Milton addressed himself to them and declared:

'Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a book, kills reason itself.

Kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps, there is no great loss; and a revolution of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for want of which whole nations fare the

worse.

'We should be wary, therefore, what persecutions we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see that a kind of homicide may thus be committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it stand to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth-essence, the breadth of reason itself; slays an immortality other than life

'Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously be licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing..

'For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, no stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those on the shifts and the defenses that Error uses against her favor; give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true..... rather turns herself into all shapes except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time .. until she be adjured into her own likeness.'