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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.

*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. Discounts 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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delphia Inquirer, noting the death of Miss Martha Finley, says: "Drop a tear over the death of the author of the 'Elsie books." How many hundreds of thousands of girls have made their lives better and happier by these simple, wholesome narratives !" On the other hand, the New York Times Saturday Review says: "With the Elsie books' the pious child of fiction, whose chief part in life was to admonish her elders, seems likely to make a final exit from the stage, clearing it for the wholesome, human, unmanageable youngsters who make glad our days," and the New York Evening Post declares that Miss Finley created “the most odious child in fiction," and adds: "The 'Elsie books' are destitute of humor, and are slushily sentimental; Elsie herself is an impossible little prig who divides her time between snivelling and preaching."

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"Or, to put the fact in four words, the fleet sailed Saturday. Gray-brown rocks, like those of other colors, usually cast shadows; our warships are great and white; smoke is supposed to be black - that's one of the nasty things about it- and funnels are made to be belched from. How sharp the commands of officers are and how loud they ring, as also whether the bands moan, depend on the amount of trimming that a prose poem will carry in proportion to its waist measure.'

"

This is not altogether just, although it is warranted to some extent. If all descriptive writing were reduced to bare statements of fact, it would tend to approach the baldness of a geometrical theorem or an algebraic solution. The descriptive writer should aim to be picturesque, but he should, of course, avoid trite phrases and worn-out epithets, striving always to put original dashes in his word-picture that will produce the effect in a

distinctive way. Common sense should go hand in hand with inspiration, as it did not when some sentimental writer on the Independence (Kan.) Reporter was moved by the romance of a moonlight night to this effusion:

"Last night was a symphony in silver; a fairy world asleep in the white moonlight. The gentle. wind of the south stole through the leafless branches of the shade trees and breathed among the grasses with the voice of springtime. At midnight the city lay steeped in the mystery of illimitable spaces, of the wheeling stars and a dead planet, glowing with light. 'Twas a night of romance and unspoken thoughts. Vague, inarticulate whisperings arose from shadowy porches, and the sound of strolling footsteps echoed dreamily in the slumbering streets. Last night was a poppied vision, a perfume from Arcady."

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Easy is the triolet

If you really learn to make it !
Once a neat refrain you get,

Easy is the triolet.

As you see I pay my debt

With another rhyme. Deuce take it!
Easy is the triolet

If you really learn to make it!

-W. E. Henley. That prince of triolet-writers, Austin Dobson, points out that a triolet must consist of eight lines with two rhymes, the first pair of lines being repeated as the seventh and eighth, while the first is repeated as the fourth" and this law," he explains, "is inflexible." How easy it sounds, does it not? The art of the triolet comes to us, like so many forms of old verse, from France. In fact, one Adenèz-le-Roi, who flourished in the thirteenth century, wrote "a" triolet that ran to 20,000 verses! This is the first known triolet.

Of English writers who have "gone in for" this form of verse-making, Mr. Dobson, Edmund Gosse, and Robert Bridges are the most eminent. The former contributed his 'Rose Leaves" series of triolets to the

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Graphic thirty years ago. Of these, the most charming is —

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Aside from his newspaper work, most of his writing has been in the nature of light contributions to Puck, Life, and other humorous publications. He has had numerous contributions in Short Stories, the Associated Sunday Magazines, the People's Magazine, Young's, the National Magazine, the Blue Book, the Scrap Book, the Illustrated Sunday Magazine, the Bohemian, the Gray Goose, and others. The incidents of "An Interrupted Journey" really occurred, practically as outlined. Mr. McElravy prefers to base his stories, whenever possible, upon some fragment of real life, believing that by so doing he is more successful in getting a convincing effect, and at the same time has fresher situations to handle. He says he has found "breaking into" the magazines a very difficult task, but one that grows in its attraction every year. If there is a royal road to authorship, he says, he never struck it, but in looking over some of his first efforts he is convinced that this really was n't altogether the fault of the editors.

Florida Pier, the author of the story, "Your Mother's Moors," in Harper's Magazine for February, is on the staff of the New York Evening Sun, where she conducts "The Woman Who Saw" column, and she also conducts "The Gentler View" column in Harper's Weekly. Apart from these, Miss Pier has written many short stories, some of which have appeared in the Century, Harper's, the Circle, and other magazines.

R. C. Pitzer, whose story, "When Spring Comes," was printed in the People's Magazine for February, was born in Denver of pioneer parentage about thirty years ago, and spent much of his boyhood in the hills with his father, who was one of the old and vanished breed of pioneer gold-hunters. He went to New York after the Spanish war, where, he says, he lived on cornmeal for two years in the studios, and then retired in disorder "to the tall timber" to learn the A, B, C of literary art. He studied at home for four years, putting himself through a university course as well as he could, and then began again. He has now been a short

story and verse writer for four years, selling his contributions to the People's Magazine, the Pacific Monthly, the Delineator, the Bohemian, the Argonaut, Out West, the Gray Goose, and about fifty other magazines, newspapers, and syndicates. Out West will publish Mr. Pitzer's first novel this summer as a serial, and the Pacific Monthly for March will contain one of his more ambitious attempts at story-telling. Mr. Pitzer confines himself for the most part to stories of the hill-folk-prospectors, miners, trappers, summer cottagers, and ranchers, whose lives have been more or less his own. He is spending the winter at Ocean Park, Calif., but he regards Denver as his home, and he hopes to spend next summer with pack burros and a friendly artist (if he can persuade one to accompany him) among the Arizona deserts and New Mexican Pueblos.

F. Roney Weir, author of the complete novel, The Shingle Weavers," in the People's Magazine for January, is a Seattle writer. Her novel, "A Romance of Rabbit Run," appeared in the July number of the same magazine. A serial by her, "The Hired Man," which ran through Farm, Stock, and Home, has been published in book form. She also has a story in "Tillicum Tales," a volume of short stories written by members of the Seattle Writers' Club, and has published a book called "Britomart, the Socialist."

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT AUTHORS.

Caine. -Hall Caine tells, in Appleton's Magazine for March, of his early literary struggles, and especially of the composition of his first novel, "The Shadow of a Crime." He says:

"When I began to think of a theme, I found four or five subjects clamoring for acceptance. There was the story of the prodigal son, which afterward became The Deemster'; the story of Jacob and Esau, which in the same way turned into 'The Bondman'; the story of Samuel and Eli, which after a fashion moulded itself finally into The Scapegoat,' as well as half a dozen other stories, chiefly Biblical, which have

since been written, or are still on the forehead of the time to come. But my first favorite at that moment was a Cumberland legend.

ter.

Shall I ever forget the agony of the first efforts? There was the ground to clear with necessary explanations. This I did in the way of Scott, in a long prefatory chapHaving written the chapter, I read it aloud, and found it unutterably slow and dead. Twenty pages were gone, and the interest was not touched. Throwing the chapter aside, I began with an ale-house scene, intending to work back to the history in a piece of retrospective writing. The ale house was better, but to try its quality I read it aloud, after the rainbow scene in Silas Marner,' and then cast it aside in despair. A third time I began, and when the ale house looked tolerable, the retrospective chapter that followed it seemed flat and poor. to begin by gripping the interest, how to tell all and yet never stop the action-these were agonizing difficulties.

How

"It took me nearly a fortnight to start that novel, sweating drops of blood at every fresh attempt. I must have written the first half-volume four times, at the least. After that I saw the way clearer, and got on faster. At the end of three months I had written nearly two volumes, and then, in good spirits, I went up to London.

"My first visit was to the editor of the Academy. His rapid mind saw a new opportunity that was just the thing I wanted for my hero, and I was in rapture. But I was also in despair. To work this fresh interest into my theme, half of what I had written would need to be destroyed!

"It was destroyed, and for two months more I labored over it. Then I took my work down to Liverpool, and showed it to my friend, John Lovell. After he had read it, he said:

"I suppose you want my candid opinion?'

"Well, ye-s,' I said.

"It's crude,' he said. 'But it only wants sub-editing.'

"I took it back to London, began again at the first line, and wrote every page over again. At the end of another month the

was

story had been reconstructed, and shorter by some fifty pages of manuscript. It had drawn my heart's blood to cut out my 'best' passages, but they were gone, and I knew the book was better. After that I went on to the end and finished with a tragedy. Then the story was sent back to Lovell, and I waited for his verdict.

"He offered one unfavorable criticism. "The death of your hero will never do,' he said. If you kill that man Ralph, you'll kill your book. What's the good? Take no more than the public will give you to begin with, and by and by they'll take what you give them.'

"It was practical advice, but it went sorely against the grain. The death of the hero was the natural sequel to the story; the only end that gave meaning, and intention, and logic to its motif. I had a strong predisposition toward a tragic climax to a serious story. But all arguments went down before my friend's practical assurance, Kill that man, and you kill your book.'

"With much diffidence I altered the catastrophe and made my hero happy. Then, thinking my work complete, I asked WattsDunton (the friend to whose wise counsel I owed so much in those days) to read some 'galley' slips of it. He thought the rustic scenes good, but advised me to moderate the dialect, and he propounded to me his wellknown views on the use of patois in fiction. "It gives a sense of reality,' he said, and also has the effect of wit, but it must not stand in the way.'

"The advice was sound. A man may know overmuch of his subject to write on it properly. So once again I ran over my story, taking out some of the 'nobbuts,' and thedustas,' and the 'wiltas.'

"My first novel was now written, but I had still to get it published."

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tignano, near which lies the poet's villa. 'Cave canem et dominum” was the inscription he found on the gate; and hardly had he got in, when some thirty greyhounds surrounded him, barking and howling; but he safely got into the house. The host showed him all his rooms, each of them more or less of a library. Tea was served, with chocolate bonbons and cigarettes. "I never touch anything alcoholic," said the poet; and when the professor asked if he did not think that Italy would be ruined if everybody abjured wine, he answered: "Yes - and I do not wish to convert any one to my practice." He complained about the many absurd rumors printed in the newspapers about his sybaritic habits. "I get up at seven, take a bath and gymnastics, and a horseback ride. From ten till nine in the evening I work; my meals I take at my writing table. It is owing to this way of living that I feel so young." His novel, "Innocente," he wrote in three months and a half, buried in a deserted monastery. "A peasant daily brought me bread, eggs, and fruit, and if any one approached I scared him away by firing my rifle." After finishing a book, he mingles for a time with the most frivolous circles, where the only talk is of sports, thus securing complete brain rest. New York Evening Post.

"Fedra,"

I

Speaking of his new tragedy, D'Annunzio said recently to a correspondent of the New York Times: "It took just seventeen days from the first word to the finish seventeen days of intense work, in which I could not once leave the house. slept during the day, rising at five P. M., dining, exercising, etc., and at nine was at my desk, where I stayed until nine the next morning, with at midnight and at two A. M. a short interruption for a cup of bouillon. I have found this system to work so well that I shall pursue it with all other works.

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