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as he contemplates their stones in the cemetery, have their distinct personalities which make them real and important to emphasize their unimportance in Bernard's scheme of eternal motion, perpetual flux, originating in the Godhead and ending - where? The real villain of the story is not any of the women, not Bernard's vacillating inner self, but Pauquette, Wisconsin, that town where the contemplation of "birth, death, disease, disgrace, marriage, bethrothals, recipes, patterns," makes up the whole of life. "Money and sex," even if they are no less truly the dominating elements in the life of a city, show more barely their influence in a town like this, a town where old Mr. Hawes, after a long period of lively usefulness and activity, can retire to the quiet of his porch and days full of the emptiness of making buttonholes, and still be counted a rational citizen. Bernard might have lived to the same end elsewhere; or leaving Pauquette when his notion of structure and movement in everything had grown too strong, he still might not have been able to find the release through appreciation he sought. But growing along with his philosophy in Pauquette, and staying there at the fruition of his doctrines, he was doomed to his role of "crazy" man. The town and its people are presented with a sure hand by the author, and even in the first few lines the reader knows that if any vengeance is to fall upon Bernard Mead in this drama, it is the vengeance of Pauquette.

The cat went under a couch and he stood thinking of that vast soft brotherhood of beasts, Wisconsin beasts, American beasts, world beasts, - millions of them. . . He went out on the veranda, stood there staring into the dark and the thing began again: and the thing began again: The trees the tree, trillions, sextillions, trillions, sextillions, nonillions what came next? - all standing, growing, putting forth leaves, harboring birds . Birds he grew dizzy with birds

multitudes of wings, folded or flying, multitudes. How high they flew as high as the clouds. Then it began all over again with clouds, miles of rolling mist, square miles of cloud, curling and curving, in the sun or in the darkness, incredibly near, so that he could see fold and shadow, and beyond them the stars. The stars! now he must go through the thing with the stars, seeing the innumerable masses of them, passing among them, discerning them as if they were fruit hanging from boughs — their gold, their motion, his motion among them. Motion it was all motion. In space, in his head, in his body, in every object about him forever, ceaseless, visible motion, motion as the breath of creation, just as his own breath made motion in him. . . . Mead could say nothing. He found cigars, pressed them on Barling, and thought: 'What if the thing begins in me again with cigars- trillions of them, growing as tobacco, dried, rolled, lit, rising in smoke, falling to ashes falling to ashes-billions of barrels of ashes .' He saw the smoke, the ashes, all blowing, moving . . He began on matches, billions of them, growing, cut, re-cut, cut again, tipped, boxed, scratched, lit, blazing into innumerable flames blowing, moving, experiencing ..

What manner of man would think such thoughts? What man could feel, when his world refused to listen to his insistent desire to explain what he knew and to seek an explanation of what he could not know, that his mother who was aged and infirm and already on intimate terms with death was the only one who possibly could understand with him? Such questions which must naturally be aroused by the last book of "Preface to a Life" may be found answered by the first two books: a man like Bernard Mead, who compromised his physical life to conform to Pauquette's standards, but could not ever think Pauquette's thoughts.

Under the headline "Nation-Wide Fraud Laid to Negro Porter" appears in the Baltimore Sun a long news item from which I select a few paragraphs.

"How a Negro porter in a Baltimore printing establishment succeeded in obtaining thousands of dollars in credit for advertisements in nationally known magazines and newspapers and other thousands in cash from ambitious writers seeking publication was related yesterday to J. Frank Supplee, United States Commissioner, when J. Franklin Johnson was arraigned on a charge of using the mails to defraud.

Among the magazines which accepted advertising copy from Johnson, for which, it is alleged, he never has paid, are the American Mercury and the Outlook. Among the newspapers said to have accepted similar copy is the New York Times. Johnson also, it is charged, placed advertising on credit with

newspapers in San Francisco and Chicago.

"From ambitious writers, for whom Johnson acted as 'literary agent' to obtain publication and exploitation of their literary efforts, Federal officials assert that Johnson collected between $6,000 and $8,000.

"Johnson described himself as a high school graduate who had taken a 'post graduate' course from a correspondence school.

"The letterhead was that of the Co-operative Service Company, 317 North Fortysecond street, Philadelphia. This organization, it is alleged, was supposed to have branches in Baltimore, New York, San Francisco, and Wilmington, Del. It purported, according to the letterhead, to be 'Agents for Authors, Publishers, and Motion Picture Producers Publisher of Authors' Books.'

"The same letterhead also stated that the company managed departments in psychoanalysis, constructive criticism, manuscript

sales, education, typing, revision, marketing, publication, distribution, advertising, and printing."

It may be interesting to readers of THE WRITER to read our correspondence with the Co-operative Service Company.

THE WRITER, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Sir:

Here is our new advertisement to run for the months of November, December, January, and February, 1927, issues of your publications. The size of the advertisement is two inches over one column. Kindly send us your rate card for our files. Bill us monthly.

Yours very truly,
CO-OPERATIVE SERVICE CO.,
MARION A. WILSON,
Advertising Dept.

THE CO-OPERATIVE SERVICE COMPANY,

254 Drexel Building,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

My dear Miss Wilson:

Thank you for your order for two-inch space in the next four issues of THE WRITER.

In accord with our policy in regard to new accounts, we must request you to furnish us with references. We, therefore, ask that you send us the names and addresses of three people whose books you have published.

Upon receipt of this information, we shall then be glad to take up the matter of your advertise

ment.

Very truly yours,

THE WRITER PUBLISHING CO.

To this we received no reply.

How long will it be before advertising managers of magazines realize that advertisements offering service to writers must be scrutinized as carefully as patent medicine advertisements.

Apparently, Milwaukee is the center of the

American industry for leasing out space to poets. I have before me two circulars. From one I read "Also, and most important of all, the...... ....will in the course of

the year, publish and print two of your best poems to be selected by the ... They will appear in an attractive publication which will be mailed by the Publishers to every leading magazine editor and publisher in the United States."

And from the other: "We will publish any of your poems of twenty lines or less in ....for five dollars and will also supply you with twenty copies of this magazine containing your poem. This price covers our printing, mailing and handling costs plus a small profit. The benefit to you as an author will be worth ten times this small fee."

What has happened to our old friend, The National Publications of Chicago, Illinois? The courageous editor of The Specialty Salesman recently paid his respects in the following terms. "Apparently those who would like to tell stories and articles, and sell them as well, are numerous, for there are quite a few schemers after their money. Here is a concern that has a rather elaborate scheme to rob would-be authors.

"The National Publications, 5428 South Wells Street, Chicago, Illinois, advertise for staff writers. To those who answer their advertisements they send literature full of glowing promises and lurid lies. Needless to say, anyone with any knowledge of the business of publishing either magazines or newspapers knows that this concern is absolutely fraudulent and that the money sent them by guileless dupes is as certainly stolen from their victims as if it were taken from their pockets at the point of a gun."

Editor, the Forum:

Once upon a time there was an artist who studied patiently under many masters, and the result of his studiousness was that a jury of competent judges accepted some of his pictures for an important exhibit, and so informed the artist. He notified his friends and, on the opening day, he gathered with them in the salon where his pictures were hung. At least, he supposed it was the proper salon, until he entered it. The pictures did not look like those he had submitted and yet, he noted that each one bore his signature. But a tree in one had been given an added luxuriance of foliage; a figure in another had been replaced by a group, the coronet of a lady of quality had been removed and she wore the headdress of a peasant.

The artist sought the judges and they were very affable, also most self-complacent. “O,” said one, "that tree in the snow scene was not the right shape. No I've never been in those particular woods, but our patrons do not like those bare branches." Another said, "A group gave more vigor to that scene, than just one figure." And the third said, "Maybe that particular kind of a lady does not wear that particular kind of a headdress, but I have visited in that country," proudly he tossed his head, "and I have seen that sort of headdress. It is more picturesque."

This is not a true story. If it were, the end would be murder, and sudden death. But it is a very straight analogy of the relationship between authors and some publishers.

For, once upon a time there was an author who, after years of training under much correction by editors began to find markets for all her material, among high grade publishers, who never changed a word, and who bought her stories, "because we do not have to edit them." One day she wrote a story of a Louisiana family, whose poverty in no way diminished the exquisite breeding that they had brought straight from the courts of France. It was accepted and it was published. The author, reading eagerly, stopped amazed to find her grande dame of a grandmother calling her flower-like niece a name, in French, so vulgar that she could not believe her

eyes. A name she had never heard even a Negro servant use to a child. And there it was, not under the signature of the editor who had interpolated it but under the signature of a person who had been reared in the very atmosphere of which she wrote. What were the consequences? Immediate and severe criticism from every old-time friend. What of the editor's defense? She had been once in a Southern town, and heard the expression. She felt it would give color to the story, and so it did, but the wrong color, for which the author was blamed.

Again, reference was made in an essay to a little brown chrysanthemum, "October roses, the darkies at home call them," was the phrase. The author did not know that the newspaper using the essay objected to the use of the word darky. She would have been only too glad to change it. But she was not asked to do so. Therefore, the story appeared, "October roses, we, at home, call them." And that, under her signature.

What was the result of that? Contempt, and jeers, from everybody in her own home town. Who had ever heard anybody call a chrysanthemum an October rose? "Nobody," patiently, the poor author tried to explain, "nobody but me" (she neglected grammar this time), “I heard the darkies on one plantatation say that."

Years passed and the same author, working upward, produced a set of stories, that were accepted, partly because of the subject matter but principally, according to one of the consulting editors, "because they are written in such perfect and beautiful English." The author had labored to make each word as important as a note in a musical composition, so it was agreed that any changes suggested should be made by the author. Suggestions were courteously offered and immediately followed. The manuscript, corrected and changed by the author, was finally accepted as being quite perfect, and gratitude expressed for the changes.

The book appeared, containing the stories, among a group. Eagerly again the author turned to see her work. She read the first four or five lines, and shut the book, her teeth on edge. "That's what comes of having corrected that manuscript in a hurry," said