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"I have promised three works to Treves, my publisher, for this year. One will be a modern drama called 'La Pietà.' It will have four personages only, a mother, her daughter-in-law, and two brothers. It develops rapidly, and is full of violent emotion. I took my inspiration for this from Michelangelo's 'La Pietà' in St. Peter's. While writing I must have always before me something which personifies my idea and gives me inspiration. I shall work fifteen days without stopping, and hope in that time to finish it. I have also to produce 'Amaranta' and romance called Forse, si; forse, no.' (Perhaps, yes; perhaps, no.) Besides these three, I have a drama called 'San Francesco.'"

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Macquoid.—Mrs. Katharine S. Macquoid, aged eighty-five years, has just finished a novel which is awaiting publication, and is half-way through another.

She has been writing stories for nearly fifty years indeed, she will celebrate her jubilee as an author in October - but her later works show no sign of failing power.

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"I did not begin to write until I was thirty-five," she told an Express representative, and then it was only because my husband urged me to do so. I had no confidence in my ability to write a book, and though I have written more than fifty books, the feeling of doubt and uncertainty was long in leaving me.

"I began by sending contributions - short stories, afterward published in book form under the title Piccalilli'-to the Welcome Guest and Once a Week. Then my husband persuaded me to write a novel. I called it 'A Bad Beginning,' literally because I thought that it began badly."

Mrs. Macquoid has written many books of travel, her husband as a rule supplying the illustrations. She has always been, and still is, much given to continental travel. A year ago she and her husband re-visited Normandy, of which they are very fond. Next year, so this vigorous old lady says, she may re-visit Yorkshire, and travel in the East Riding, which will be almost new ground to her.

"I plan out all my books before setting a word of them down," she said. "For the

most part I work with a typewriter, except in the more emotional passages. You can't be emotional with a typewriter; and I confess that I put a good deal of sentiment into my books. For such an old woman I write really very frivolous books, I believe.

"I work quite in a methodical way, and though I cannot always do eight hours a day as I used, I get through a great deal in the course of a day, particularly in the winter, when it is too cold to go out much.

"In the course of my long period of authorship I have noticed the change that has taken place in the popular taste for novels. I think the people of to-day are more superficial than those of the generation for which I first wrote, and their characteristics are reflected in their taste."

Mrs. Macquoid is particularly fond of historical novels — of which she has written not a few and confesses to a passion for the writings of Dumas.

"Of my own books, I suppose 'Patty,' my best known, is my favorite, though she is so old now that I'm afraid she must be quite out of date. I think she first came out in '70 or '71. But I am very fond of 'At the Red Glove,' too. I received more money for that than for any other book that I have written."

Of the two books still to appear, "Molly" is a romance of the eighteenth century; and Suzanne's Marriage" is a story of French life the history of a mariage de convenance. London Express.

Stedman. Linda Stedman's eight pages of biographical introduction to "The Poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman" (Houghton Mifflin Company) are full of interest. Stedman's mother penned some memoirs, from the unpublished pages of which this passage is given: "He was a remarkably precocious child from birth, and a very strange one. As soon as he could speak he lisped in rhyme, and as soon as he could write, which was at the age of six years, he gave shape and measure to his dreams. When he was between five and six years old, on being put to bed, he would get on his knees, bury his head in a pillow, and if told to lie down and go to sleep, would answer: Let me alone, please, the poetry is coming.'" Almost to

the last day of his life Stedman continued that service of advice and guidance which no young writer sought in vain. "Those who loved him best loved best of all the cordial gravity with which he took every manuscript thrust at him and set himself to see what could be done about it."

CURRENT LITERARY TOPICS.

What Is Poetry?-Magazine editors are favorite butts for the men and women whose masterpieces they have rejected. So there will be joy in the ranks of the unaccepted over the Westchester County Magazine's reprint (with editorial comment) of Professor William Herbert Carruth's popular poem, "Each in His Own Tongue." The poem, we are told, "was promptly rejected by such prominent magazines as the Century Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the Cosmopolitan, Harper's Magazine, Lippincott's Magazine, the Arena, and McClure's Magazine." It was accepted by the New England Magazine, and printed in November, 1895. "It has been reprinted hundreds of times in America, Europe, and Asia. So much for the wisdom of those magazine editors." Here are three stanzas from this masterpiece :

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Now it is quite impossible for any cultivated ear to accept this as poetry. Attempt to scan the lines, and you must give up in despair. Metrically the "poem" presents a hideous jog-trot of cacophonous consonants. Nor has it any inner beauty of meaning to redeem its metrical imperfections. It may have been reprinted "hundreds of times," but never, I will venture to affirm, in any magazine, either here or abroad, which aims to maintain a high standard of literary value. 66 So much for the wisdom of those magazine editors!" New York Herald.

Writing for Writing's Sake. When the "best seller" can't do anything else to make himself interesting to a gaping world, he can at least talk about his earnings." One of the tribe has recently been telling what these were in his early days, and, looking back upon them from the apex of a career which has long been richly upholstered, he shudders at the "stiff struggle" which he had to make on a beggarly $1,500 a year. Whereupon the London Bookman asks a number of popular novelists to describe the agonies of their apprenticeship to letters. They retort, in general, that they did n't agonize so prodigiously, and, in any case, they can't understand why an author should n't consider himself "on velvet" with an annual income of $1,500. What is most interesting, however, about these confessions is that they are nearly all marked by the right feeling disclosed in this note of John Oxenham's:

"I took to writing of a night as an alterative (please do not let your proofreader make it alternative) to the dull grind of business life, and I wrote for the sheer pleasure of escape into a new world of my own invention, where I could, to some extent, at all events, have things a little bit my own way. I was not writing for bread and cheese, but for the pleasure of writing."

Is there any other rational spirit in which to embark upon the literary career? Fell circumstance may sometimes inexorably complicate the situation. The late George Gissing, for example, had hardships fairly forced upon him. But these only deepened his sense of the danger of mixing thoughts of writing with thoughts of bread and cheese. Here is his warning: "With a lifetime of dread experience behind me, I say that he

who encourages any young man or woman to look for his living to literature' commits no less than a crime." New York Tribune.

Writing as a Profession. -John O'Hara Cosgrove, editor of Everybody's Magazine, looks at the profession of story-writing in America through very rose-colored spectacles when he says, in the New England Magazine:

"A good story is worth from $10 to $1,000, determined by its length, its value, and the reputation of the writer. The authors who have made a public of their own through their books are paid a higher rate than those whose reputation has not extended beyond the magazine field. The writers of whom this is true average from $10,000 to $250,000 a year. The less successful average from $4,000 to $8,000. But there are other compensations than mere dollars and cents for the writer. He is his own master; he labors when and where he pleases; and he has the satisfaction of the artist in his work. As to fame he has the recognition of his craft rather than that of society at large; for art has not yet attained rank in America."

Pretentious Writing." The straining and preciosity that infect so much of our current literary production" are vigorously attacked by the Chicago Dial- thus :

"From the use of words for the concealment of thought to their use for the concealment of its absence is an easy step, and one that seems to be taken by extraordinary numbers of writers at the present time. How else should the voracious printing presses be fed with 'copy,' or the artless public get its intellectual breakfast food? The appetite of the masses may, of course, be served with commonplace thoughts and sentiments garnished with the tissue-paper ornaments of commonplace rhetoric, and their case has thus been disposed of in all ages. But just above the level of the masses there is a stratum of readers who demand some touch of distinction in the product set before them. Fortunately, a sham distinction is sufficient for their needs, and they think brummagem quite as good as gold. These give to the pretentious writer, who has nothing to say, but many ingenious ways of saying it, the opportunity for which he has been seeking, and he sets bravely out to win with his pen the plaudits that may be thus cheaply got."

The fashion in which this writer arranges his "thoughts" is thus set forth by the Dial:

"Among his methods are the employment of tortuous constructions that have to be puzzled out, and bold ellipses that permit several guesses for each meaning. Sometimes he acquires a reputation for great subtlety of thought by the use of qualifying clauses, and puts so many of them into a sentence that when it is ended one wonders what it started out to say. Sometimes he indulges in reckless figurative language, that he may be credited with great powers of imagination. Still again, he darkly hints that his writing is symbolical, and will reveal a precious inner significance to those who penetrate its verbal veil. This is a particularly fetching trick, because anybody can find symbols in anything by looking hard enough, so each investigator may feel sure that he has discovered the right ones, and admire his own acumen with all the naïve satisfaction of an intellectual Jack Horner. Finally, if all these devices fail to bring the writer a following, he may resort to paradox, for paradox, if only startling enough, is unfailingly effective. Let him deny all self-evident propositions as a matter of principle, declare the wildest of absurdities to be the most obvious of truths, turn all current ideas topsyturvy, posing throughout as the one normal thinker in a mad world, and he will soon enjoy a very pretty reputation as a philosopher. Examples of how the thing has been done will come to the mind of every reader of current fashionable literature."

Getting a Good Literary Style. - The elements of a good literary style are said by rhetoricians to be clearness, force, and beauty. Many attain the first; some the first two; but few show all the graces of a charming English style. No doubt there is much difference in natural aptitude; but many cases prove that often the grace of a good style is not a gift, but something which has been gained by care and well-directed effort. The style of Frank T. Bullen, the author of "The Cruise of the Cachelot," is remarkable, in view of the fact that he was without the advantages of a good education. But the secret of it is that when he ran away and became a sailor, on the ship was a small library of standard books. No one read them but he; but in the long days of the voyage he read and re-read the volumes of Scott, and other standard writers, and, as

he says: "That was all the English style I knew." He was steeped in correct English. The Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln will always be a classic of English style, and the method in which he attained the ability to write it was forced upon him by his early poverty. He had few books, and used to walk long distances to borrow a good book when he heard of one. At home he had but little money to buy writing paper, and he was accustomed to put the contents of the books he read into propositions. These he would write out on the wooden shovel, and then erase every unnecessary word in order to get them in the shortest form. He then transferred them to paper for safe keeping, and in this way gained his wonderful power of literary clearness and condensation. It is told of Phillips Brooks, that when he was a student in Harvard College, his chum tried to get him interested in athletics, but it was his custom, when his chum went out to the games, to spend the time writing essays in words of one syllable. To this practice he owed his clear and forceful style as a preacher and writer. We happen to know that President George E. Horr, of the Newton Theological Institution, when a student in Brown University, wrote out the kind of words used by Macaulay in his celebrated paragraph on the Roman Catholic church, and then practiced writing paragraphs on various subjects, with the words in corresponding order, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and so on. No doubt the elegant and impressive style for which he is admired is largely due to this practice. Things dashed off on the spur of the moment are not those which live, but those wrought out with toil. - The Watchman.

English as She Is Wrote.-An amateur historian is responsible for this : "All along the ever-flowing stream of history you can discern the silent footprints of the crowned heads of Europe !" The village reporter, on the death of the village poet: "That dauntless pen shall write no more, for its eyes are closed forever." From the speech of a rising young politician: "The fierce light of public opinion shall dog their footsteps until it strangles them. Then shall they swallow

the bitter pill and drink its very dregs." Advice and warning from a successful man of business to a gathering of young people : “Every rung in the ladder of success is paved with slippery stones, on which only the clear head and the steady hand can retain their footing." The fearless suffragette was addressing a meeting of mere men. She had graphically related to them the fascinating story of the strenuous struggle the ladies had made for that most priceless of possessions, a vote - how every obstacle had been conquered, and victory was at last in sight. "We have now," she shrieked, "almost crossed the trackless desert, and the harbor lights are stretching out their arms to greet us!"-T. P.'s Weekly.

Financial Beginnings of Authors. Hall Caine's statement that he received only $855 for the first novel he wrote was received with some amusement among English novelists, who straightway volunteered confidences as to their receipts for first works.

Edgar Jepson, whose "Lady Noggs" has run into many editions, made just $10.40 on his first two books. John Oxenham's first efforts brought him $125.

Cutcliffe Hyne tells that he worked for six years before he made $750 a year, and the general opinion is that, compared with his brother novelists, Hall Caine's "stiff struggle" for glory was really a primrose path of affluence. New York Sun.

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS.

[ For the convenience of readers THE WRITER will send a copy of any magazine mentioned in the following reference list on receipt of the amount given in parenthesis following the name the amount 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. ]

SHAKSPERE'S "HENRY VIII." Illustrated. J. Churton Collins. Harper's Magazine (38 c.) for March.

LEIPSIC, THE HOME OF FAUST. Robert H. Schauffler. Century (38 c.) for March.

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F. B. Sanborn, of Concord, will publish next month his Recollections of Seventy Years." As the last of the founders of the famous Concord School of Philosophy, and as the friend, often the literary executor, of such men as Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and John Brown, Mr. Sanborn has at his command a wealth of hitherto unknown material. The work is divided into two volumes, one devoted to his political and the other to his literary life.

"Henrik Ibsen: The Man and His Plays," by Montrose Moses, is published by Mitchell Kennerley, New York.

Edgar Allan Poe matriculated at the University of Virginia February 14, 1826, and in commemoration of the centenary of his birth, the university has issued a sumptuous volume, edited by Professor James A. Harrison, and published by the Putnams, giving full and ungarbled copies of the last letters written by Poe to Mrs. Sarah Helen Whit

man.

"The Raven," by George Hazelton, published by D. Appleton & Co., is the love story of Edgar Allan Poe, told in novel form.

For several years one of the standard textbooks in college courses on versification has been "Specimens of English Verse," by Professor Raymond M. Alden, of Leland Stanford University. Now a new book by Professor Alden, "Introduction to Poetry," is announced by Henry Holt & Co. This will be a discussion of the theory of poetry, more comprehensive in treatment than the author's previous volume, and will deal not only with the technical metric sub-divisions, but also with the various classes of poems, and with the problems of the inner nature of poetry.

Theodore Watts-Dunton is preparing not only a volume of "Reminiscences of D. G. Rossetti and William Morris at Kelmscott," but a volume which, under the title of "The Renascence of Wonder," will give a critical account of the romantic movement, and a book discussing "Shakespeare's Adequacy to the Coming Century."

A study of Walt Whitman by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of Columbia, is to be added to the English Men of Letters Series.

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