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THE WRITER is published the first day of every month. It will be sent, postpaid, ONE YEAR for ONE DOLLAR.

All drafts and money orders should be made payable to The Writer Publishing Co. Stamps, or local checks, should not be sent in payment for subscriptions.

THE WRITER will be sent only to those who have paid for it in advance. Accounts cannot be opened for subscriptions, and names will not be entered on the list unless the subscription order is accompanied by a remittance.

*The American News Company, of New York, and the New England News Company, of Boston, and their branches, are wholesale agents for THE WRITER. It may be ordered from any newsdealer, or direct, by mail, from the publishers.

Not one line of paid advertisement will be printed in THE WRITER outside of the advertising pages.

Dis

Advertising in THE WRITER costs fifteen cents a line, or $2.10 an inch; seven dollars a quarter page; twelve dollars a half page; or twenty dollars a page, for one insertion, remittance with the order. counts are five, ten, and fifteen per cent. for three, six, and twelve months. For continued advertising payments must be made quarterly in advance.

Contributions not used will be returned, if a stamped and addressed envelope is enclosed. THE WRITER PUBLISHING CO., 88 Broad street, Room 414, BOSTON, MASS.

P. O. Box 1905.

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North Pole trip, and with the Frederick A. Stokes Company for its subsequent publication in book form. A representative of the Stokes Company says that the royalty rate agreed upon is the highest ever paid by his firm, and that the advance payments to be made on account of royalty are also unusually large. The publishers of Hampton's Magazine say that they are to pay $50,000 for the serial rights of the Peary manuscript. The story will appear in the magazine in ten instalments, beginning with the issue for January. To protect themselves, the magazine publishers have taken out insurance on Mr. Peary's life. The insurance policy is for $50,000, and it will decrease in value $5,000 each month, as the parts of Mr. Peary's story appear. Obviously the explorer is to get large return for his literary work. Nevertheless Arctic exploration can hardly be regarded as a royal road to financial success in authorship.

While women engaged in other occupations are generally paid less than men doing the same work, it is pointed out that women writers are not handicapped in this way. For magazine articles and for books women get the same pay as men, and the number of women who are doing successful literary work is constantly increasing. In newspaper work the same rule does not apply, possibly because there the woman comes in direct contact with her employer, while the publisher and the magazine editor deal only with the impersonal manuscript, as a rule.

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is said to be on a hunt for authors
as if
there were not authors enough on this side
of the Atlantic!

W. H. H.

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT AUTHORS.

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Frank G. Carpenter, in an interview with Mr. Gilder, one time drew from the editor characteristic opinion of the average editor's attitude toward the young writer :

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Has the young, untried writer any chance in the editorial rooms of the modern magazine?" asked Mr. Carpenter. "Many people believe that only the writings of men of established reputations are considered by your magazine editors."

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and proud before the elevator boy! He accepted a manuscript by a special messenger that night, and he remained ever after a willing adviser and helper of that writer. To the writer the whole matter grew to seem a comic incident, a joke, a good story to tell, Gilder. He was but Mr. Gilder never liked it. small, slightly-built "Don't tell man, with the same mingling of the femithat story," he would say. "Don't remind nine and the seraph that we imagine in me of it. One may have done it so often Shelley; his eyes bespoke the poet — large, when they were not obliging enough to cry, dark, far-seeing, melancholy always, even and so one never knew." For even when it when he smiled. Not hurting" was allay a decade .or more in the past, he could most a religion to him. There is a writer not bear the pain of having inflicted pain. — who remembers going to him with a letter L. C. W., in Harper's Weekly. from the late Charles Dudley Warner and some manuscripts for sale. She was nursing what seemed a forlorn hope; she was very tired, and rather hungry, and inordinately afraid, and it was a dreadful day. The rain was falling in a blunt, steady, uncompromising pour. The would-be author's feet were wet and her black gloves thoroughly damp, and Mr. Gilder came out from his office far-eyed, pre-occupied, forbidding. He stood up and let the lady stand; he listened with impatience, and dismissed her cursorily. Nothing could have been more icy than the atmosphere of that office. Finally the poor writer escaped, choking down sobs, but the tears rained before she reached the elevator. She faced the outer door, to find the rain still uncompromising, and she had left her umbrella on the fifth floor of the Century building. There was a grain of practical common sense at the bottom of the writer's soul, and she realized that more than ever, because she was an utter failure, must she take care of her umbrellas; so, bravely she faced the elevator boy, the line of clerks in the outer office, the two stenographers in the ante-room, and, to her horror, Mr. Gilder himself. But in the interim he had somehow shed the formidable editor; he was Richard Watson Gilder, poet and man, with a soul magnificently free. He made the writer sit down, he apologized for the weather, and said he had ample time to talk. He promistd to read the manuscripts carefully himself, and if he could not take them to tell candidly why. And he sent her, the second time, beaming past the long line of clerks

The

'That is not true," replied the editor of the Century. "The new writer has every chance. The competition for good matter is too great to allow an editor to pass over any manuscript without consideration. hope of every editor is that he may be able to secure some new light in the literary sky. He is so anxious to do this that he often exaggerates the discovery of some slight talent. He is always discovering that he has made mistakes in the past, and I have said that an editor's hell is paved with the manuscripts which he has rejected but which he wishes he had accepted. He has turned them down only to find that some other editor has discovered genius in them. The result is that he is afraid that he may miss finding the spark of genius in the new manuscripts before him, and he often gives the new writers too much chance."

A writer in the New York Evening Post says of Mr. Gilder's interest in new

authors:

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"So far as I know, the Century was the only magazine which asked contributors whose manuscripts had been accepted for the first time to come and call. It was, no

doubt, Mr. Gilder's idea. He not only observed that friendly attitude toward visitors himself, but saw to it that others in his office did likewise.

"Nothing annoyed him more than to receive a manuscript which struck his fancy, but which had been handed up to him by one of the Readers with only a perfunctory commendation. I have heard that he was inclined to be severe with Readers who did not keep a sharp eye out for originality, no matter how slight it might have been.

Mr. Gilder had his own tastes and ideas,. of course, and he was always striving to bring up the rest of the office to his way of thinking. And he did have a great influence upon the editorial staff.

"Whenever he found among the manuscripts on his desk one which struck his fancy, he was unable to conceal his rejoicing. In fact, he went about the office advertising his discovery to every one present."

His She

Oppenheim. A few years ago James Oppenheim, author of the "Doctor Rast" stories, believed two things very strongly, first, that he could n't write short stories; second, that he would n't if he could. wife, however, thought otherwise. alone had faith in his power. One morning she set paper and pen before him, and said: Now, write!" He groaned, lamented his luck, but finally he wrote. A week later he tried again. After a while it became a habit. Mrs. Oppenheim, in spite of protests, kept sending these efforts to the magazines, and after a while came the surprise. Editors began to take them and ask for more. This led finally to the writing of the "Doctor Rast" stories, which have appeared in the American, Everybody's, and Pearson's, and are now published in book form.

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would modestly have called them — and stated what I already knew to be a fact, that he was in the habit of receiving $50 apiece for such metrical affairs. They 'were each four or five stanzas in length, and twenty years ago would have brought from $3 to $5 apiece in the literary market. Recently one of the most prominent writers of light verse in England sent word to me that he should be glad to furnish me with a short 'poem,' the subject to be of his own choosing, for $150, the understanding being that he was to reserve all of his 'rights' that is to say, he was to have the privilege of publishing his verses in England, selling them over again there, and also that he was to use them in his next book. I know one gentleman author who receives $1,200 each for his short stories, and even at that price I am informed that he cannot supply the demand.

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Perhaps it is highly immoral on my part to quote these prices, as they are, in a sense, misleading, and serve as undue encouragement to a host of minor writers, who have come to believe that there is nothing so easy as the business of writing. They are misleading because they convey the impression of easy money,' and more particularly because the quality of the material that commands such extremely high prices is ephemeral and seems so easy to write.

"The ephemeral quality, however, is in many ways the most difficult to attain; and then it entails certain sacrifices on the part of an author; it really means that he voluntarily relinquishes all hope of posterity. He becomes the creature of the hour, and in proportion to his facility in 'hitting off' the present atmosphere does his material command the highest prices. He is also constantly confronted by that grim spectre, a public's fickleness. His audience may tire of him at almost any moment, and he be left high and dry on the sands of obscurity, his reputation nothing but a memory.

"It is unquestionably true, however, that the average price for literary material is much higher than it was twenty years ago. It has advanced much more in proportion than the scale of literary work. I believe it

was about eighteen years ago that Bill Nye, one of the most famous of our American humorists, was at the height of his literary 'output,' as the vernacular has it. At that time I happened to be the editor of his 'copy.' He wrote, as a rule, about two and a half columns a week, and received $200 for each letter. Two or three years ago another equally popular humorist, who occupies the same relative position in the public eye that Bill Nye did, received $1,000 a week for an equal amount of work.

"About ten years ago the highest price paid by the majority of first-class periodicals for regular material that is, for material not specially ordered was two cents a word. One or two magazines paid four cents per word for stories, and this was spoken of with awe by the paid writer. Since then one of our weeklies has offered five cents a word for all stories accepted in the regular course of events. Of course, much higher prices are paid in special instances. . . . On the other hand, it is quite true that a lot of excellent prose as prose goes nowadays is being written and sold at much lower prices. One or two of the highest-class periodicals from a literary standpoint do not pretend to pay such high rates. . . . As a rule, the periodical that pays the highest rates is making a bid for popular and -in a certain sense ephemeral favor."

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Literary Borrowing. There is no apparent reason why a real literary genius should be under the necessity of copying from the writings of others, and yet considerable evidence may be adduced to show that authors of acknowledged creative ability have been guilty of plagiarism.

One explanation offered is that the copying may have been unconscious. A still better one accounts largely for the similarities of expression by tracing them to a common source of inspiration, such as love, the moon, or, as some claim, a state of the liver. Surprise has also been manifested that there is not a greater evidence of literary appropriation, in view of the fact that there are but seventeen original situations in the world upon which to build all the themes

of tragedy and adventure, and that the entire super-structure of humor rests upon seven jokes of great antiquity, that of the mother-in-law, for example, being clearly traceable to the closing verses of Genesis xxvi., which gave to William Black the title of "A Daughter of Heth" for one of his stories.

Whatever may be responsible, these literary likenesses are to be found, and the charge of plagiarism quickly follows. Longfellow's "Hiawatha," it appears, was taken from the Norse sagas, the theme being slightly altered, but the metrical form unchanged. Holmes's "Last Leaf," it is alleged, is but a paraphrase of an old Japanese poem, and The Raven" had a worthy Italian predecessor in "The Parrot." But if Poe borrowed, he also lent, for Lever incorporated with slight alterations the story of "Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather" in one of his works. Doyle is likewise indebted to Poe for both plot and character, since "The Cask of Amontillado" is but thinly disguised in one of his tales, while the methods of Sherlock Holmes savor not a little of those employed by Monsieur Dupin.

Doyle has also been a great borrower in other fields; "Micah Clarke" is strikingly like big John Rudd in "Lorna Doone," and Sir Nigel, of "The White Company," is scarcely more than a faint echo of Cervantes' famous character. And yet Doyle, as a writer, is both great and popular-two adjectives not necessarily conjoined, as the respective efforts of Plato and Miss Laura Jean Libbey may serve to prove.

Sienkiewicz's "Pan Zagloba" has been called the Russian Falstaff. Marryatt, in his "Pasha of Many Tales," lifts whole sections from Voltaire's "Candide," and there is a queer phrase about the friar's garb of black and white and gray" that is repeated word for word in the writings of Voltaire, Bryant, and Ingersoll.

Emerson seems to have borrowed largely from two strangely diverse sources, Montaigne and the Bible. He indirectly acknowledged his indebtedness to the former by including him in his "Representative Men." As to the latter, it is not so evident

that he recognized the rock from which he was hewn. Yet it is not difficult to see in his transcendental essay on the "Oversoul" an abstraction of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. His saying, "The true poet gets drunk on water," is but a paraphrase of Paul's "Drink not wine, but be filled with the spirit," while akin to both is Pope's "Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." Ingersoll wrote: "Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave," but long before that old Isaac Watts sang of death's serenity, "And not a wave of trouble rolls across my peaceful breast.". Washington Post.

Concordance Making. - Annie E. Trimble, who has been making a concordance of Walt Whitman, says that the poet had a "prodigious vocabulary." In gathering index sheets into bundles she made a curious discovery. While A is an average size, as also B, C, E, F, L, and as many others, it takes J, K, G, V, Y all together to make a bundle the size of A, and C is twice and S three times the size of A. This was surprising until one noticed how many of the most musical and sweet-sounding words - poets' words begin with a sibilant. Zeus, zinc, zones, and Zuyder Zee are the only z's in "Leaves of Grass."

Miss Trimble says: "To those wishing to become thoroughly acquainted with the work of an author my advice is simple, 'concord him.' There is no surer method. At once you get his innermost meaning, and test his best worth."

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- The word Words Commonly Misused. "necessity" is habitually used as the equivalent of "necessary," instead of being its direct opposite. A man says: "I do not care for the luxuries of life if I have the necessities," when probably he has the "necessities" in calamitous abundance. Quite as common a blunder is the confusion between the words "expect" and "suspect." A man says: "There is a knock at the door. I He 'expect' that is the tax collector." should say: "I have been expecting the tax collector, and suspect that is he." Germane to this subject and furnishing perhaps the most amusing form of popular error is the

common notion that the word "ye" in archaic. English - the definite article is to be pronounced like the personal pronoun"Ye olde curiosity shop," and the like. A slight investigation of the older English literature will show that the "th" is written with a "y" in other combinations of letters. Take the Shakespeare inscription at Stratford, and you will find the word "that" written "yt" in two instances. The "y" is phonetic, and there is not the slightest evidence that "th" was ever pronounced differently from what it is to-day. Boston Transcript.

Why should the society editor insist that a wedding "occurred," instead of taking place? But this abuse of the word seems venial when we turn to the sporting page and find that every event recorded, from a dog fight to a running race, is "classy." Probably the word is a slangy equivalent of "high class." At any rate, it is as illegitimate and offensive as "brainy." To go through the catalogue of misused words would far exceed the limits of any editorial article. Yet one can hardly leave the subject without recording a solemn protest against the phrase "armed with a warrant," or the aeronaut who "negotiates a trip' around the aerodrome. And one would like to add that "inaugurate," which means to induct in office, does not happily characterize the running of a new railroad train or the opening sale of autumn millinery. — Buffalo Commercial.

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LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERODICALS.

[ For the convenience of readers THE WRITER Will send a copy of any magazine mentioned in the following reference list on receipt o the amount given name- the amount in parenthesis following the being in each case the price of the periodical with three cents postage added. Unless a price is given, the periodical must be ordered from the publication office. Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicals indexed for copies containing the articles mentioned in the list will confer a favor if they will mention THE WRITER when they write. ]

SOME REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES DARWIN. James Bryce. Harper's Magazine (38 c.) for December. LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN. Elizabeth Bisland. Atlantic (38 c.) for December.

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