Whether for this reason or for others more permanent, really excellent humorous writing, Mr. Shepard states, is hard to find in the magazines of the year. "Rightly understood," he says, "it is an interesting commentary upon the American magazines of 1925 that the familiar essay, at its best perhaps the most purely delightful and the most highly civilized of literary forms, is very slightly represented in them. Just here lies one of the most important distinctions to be made between the periodical literature of America and that of England. Our deficiency is not due, I think, to any lack of the requisite skill and taste in our writers. We have, to be sure, no Lucas, no Milne, no Lynde or Chesterton or Belloc, but we have a score of writers now working at the short-story and the article who would ask nothing better than an opportunity to devote themselves to the essay, not to mention half a dozen veteran essayists who have been too little heard from of late. The fault for fault it is would seem to lie farther back, either with editors or else with the public they serve. However this may be, I may as well record that one man, at least, while

reading his way through the non-fictional prose of recent magazines, has often sighed for more frequent cases of urbane and civilized laughter, little zones of leisure remote from the drum-fire of argument and the rattle of statistics in which one might remember that literature is after all an art."

Nevertheless, it is an extremely entertaining and worthwhile collection that Mr. Shepard presents from such magazines as Harper's, American Mercury, Vanity Fair, Scribner's, Century, New Republic, Yale Review, The Forum, etc. The variety of subjects is wide; but Duncan Aikman's "American Fascism," Arthur Livingston's "The Myth of Good English," John Jay Chapman's "The Disappearance of the Educated Man," Washington Pezet's "Common-Censorship," Robert Haven Schauffler's "Timesquarese," Heywood Broun's "Dying for Dear Old-," and Bruce Bliven's "Flapper Jane" are perhaps most representative of the modern trend. Senator James A. Reed, Ernest Boyd, Edgar Lee Masters, E. S. Martin, and Alexander Black are among the other contributors.

ON PAGE 229, COLUMN 2:

Call' no more' across' the

si'lent wa'ter.

ON PAGE 230, COLUMN 2:

And down' the hill' we walk'ed

to ge'ther.

ON PAGE 231, COLUMN 2:

But' doth suf'fer/a sea change
In' to some' thing rich' and strange'
Sea nymphs hour' ly ring' his knell'
Hark now' I hear' them ding dong
bell'.

The family of Joel Chandler Harris have given to Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, the original manuscripts of the "Uncle Remus" stories.

The United States Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that Guy Bolton's play, "Polly Preferred," is not an "unconscious plagiarism" of " Personality," by the Russian playwright, Ossif Dymow.

A fraud order has been issued by Postmaster General New against the Equitable Music Corporation, 1658 Broadway, New York, H. B. Kohler, owner and proprietor. The New York Melody Corporation, the Broadway Composing Studios, and the World Music Publishing Company, operated by Albion S. Keller and George Graff, Jr., and the Manhattan Music Company, operated by A. Rossi, were stopped by fraud order last fall. A fraud order has also been issued against the Paragon Music Company.

"The Magnificent Idler," by Cameron. Rogers (Doubleday, Page, & Co.), is a biography of Walt Whitman.

"Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius," by Joseph Wood Krutch, is published by Alfred A. Knopf.

"The Days of Dickens," by Arthur L. Hayward (E. P. Dutton & Co.), gives glimpses of early Victorian life in London.

"Arthur Christopher Benson," As seen by some Friends, is published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"Havelock Ellis; A Critical and Biographical Survey," by Dr. Isaac Goldberg, is published by Simon & Schuster.

"Madame de Staël," by David Glass Larg, translated by Veronica Lucas, is published by Alfred A. Knopf.

"The Life of Racine," by Mary Duclaux (A. Mary R. Robinson), is published by Harper & Bros.

The Yale University Press has published "Fielding, the Novelist," by Frederic T. Blanchard, Professor of English in the Southern Branch of the University of California.

"Voltaire," by Robert Aldington (E. P. Dutton & Co.), is the first volume in the Republic of Letters Series, edited by William Rose.

The Houghton Mifflin Company publishes "The Letters of Bret Harte," edited by his grandson, Geoffrey Bret Harte.

The Macmillan Company publishes "The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh, 1879-1922," edited by Lady Raleigh, with the preface by David Nichol Smith.

"Women in Journalism," by Genevieve Jackson Boughner (D. Appleton & Co.), covers the field of woman's work on newspapers and magazines.

Michael Joseph, one of the best known literary agents in England, is the author of "How to Write a Short Story," published by Henry Holt & Co., and of "The Commercial Side of Literature," published by Harper & Bros.

"How to Describe and Narrate Visually," by L. A. Sherman, Professor of English and Literature in the University of Nebraska, is published by the George H. Doran Company.

"Story-Writing," by F. M. Perry (Henry Holt & Co.), consists of a series of texts from the Masters, and is intended for advanced students.

"The Fine Art of Writing," by Professor H. Robinson Shipherd, of Boston University (The Macmillan Company), is a book for the use of teachers of English composition.

"The Modern Novel," by Elizabeth A. Drew (Harcourt, Brace, & Co.), has chapters on John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and Joseph Conrad.

"Bruce Rogers, Designer of Books," by Frederic Warde, is published by the Harvard University Press.

"Studies of English Poets," by Professor J. W. Mackail, is published by Longmans, Green, & Co.

"A Dictionary of European Literature," by Laurie Magnus (E. P. Dutton & Co.), covers the period from the twelfth century to the present time.

"British Drama: An Historical Survey from the Beginnings to the Present Time," by Allardyce Nicoll, is published by the Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

"A New Survey of English Literature," by Benjamin Brawley, is published by Alfred A. Knopf.

A petition in involuntary bankruptcy has been filed against the Police Publishing Company, publishers of Police Stories, of which Richard E. Enright is editor.

William E. Jones has resigned as editor of the Granite Monthly (Concord, N. H.), and the former editor, Miss Helen McMillin, has again assumed editorship of the magazine.

The Hawthornden prize of £100, given annually in England for the best work of imaginative literature published during the previous year, has been awarded to Sean O'Casey, for his play, "Juno the Paycock." This is the first time that the prize has been awarded to a dramatist.

Richard J. Walsh, Trell W. Yocum and Guy Holt are the officers of the new publishing firm, the John Day Company, with offices at 25 West Forty-fifth street, New York.

Anatole le Braz died at Mentone, France, March 21, aged sixty-seven.

Mrs. Elizabeth B. Grannis died in New York March 22, aged eighty-five.

Benjamin B. Vallentine ("Lord Fitznoodle") died in New York March 31, aged eighty-three.

DOROTHY BLACK, who had a story, "What Dreams Are Worth," in Good Housekeeping for April, and a story, "Salvage," in the Ladies' Home Journal for March, says she has written stories since her earliest childhood, for the sheer love of it. She thinks that story writing is born in a person like a feeling. Certain remarks, or happenings, or ideas, she says, arouse the story feeling in her, and she can't be happy until the story is written. She was born in England, but spent her youth in wandering about Europe, living in Bonn, Germany, for two years, and in Dinard, France, for another two, and so on. She says that as she never understood the language in which she was being taught her education never got very far, and she obtained most of it from books. When she was eighteen she went back to England and started writing in

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earnest. Mrs. Black now lives in Rangoon, Burma, but goes home to England about once. every eighteen months, because she has three children there. She works three hours a day wherever she is in the dining saloon of ships, in funny river flats, in hotels, both in India and in England, and in her own house in Rangoon, with choruses of bull frogs going on in the garden, and she says she meets every kind of people "white people, black people, pleasant human people, pompous comical people. People one hopes to meet again. People one hopes one never may! People who think the British Empire can't get on without them. People who don't care whether it does or not. And, any moment, one of them may make a charming, or a cruel, or a comic, or a nasty remark, that will give birth to a story that will pay for the whole

of one's holiday for a year. So that life is not unamusing over here, although the climate is deadly."

JESSE F. GELDERS, whose story, "The Mild West," was published in McClure's for December, was born in Atlanta, but grew up in Oklahoma, the scene of his story. Mr. Gelders says that he generally takes real places for the settings for his stories and real people for his characters, making such changes as plot and the libel laws require. He adds that his two fixed rules are to study the best short stories and to accept and consider all the advice he can get. With this last purpose in mind, he has spent the past year in New York. Previously, he has been engaged in newspaper work, principally in the Southwest.

EVA GRIFFITH HARRINGTON, who had a story, "Indian Summer," in the December Sunset, grew up in Sydenham, Ontario, went to the Ontario Ladies' College, and then to the Emerson College of Oratory in Boston. There she finished preparation for a career as a dramatic reader, her ambition since childhood. However, in addition to her diploma, she acquired the definite prospect of a husband, and, after two years of teaching and concert work in Ontario and in North Carolina, she married and went to Oregon. A small daughter thoroughly domesticated her and left little time for her profession, although she is still more of a reader than a writer. Mrs. Harrington has been writing fiction for about five years, and she says that she has found the suggestions contained in the published letters of Robert Louis Stevenson of the greatest value to her. Of necessity, her work is subject to periods of rest between attempts at revision, but this is also a matter of policy with her, as she says, "such odd things come to the top when the brew is allowed to cool!"

MARGHARITA FISHER MCLEAN, whose story, "West of Romance," was published in Scribner's Magazine for December, lives in

Lewistown, Montana, and says that the descriptions of Montana scenery in the story "were jotted down while still warm," and were taken from her notebook when she wrote the story in New York while she was attending Dr. Blanche Colton Williams's short-story class at Columbia University. It had never occurred to her to blend these scenes into a story until she was away from them. Mrs. McLean is a firm believer in office hours for writing - if possible, an office outside of one's home and in rewriting until every sentence says just what one wants it to say. She thinks, too, that poetry, the reading of it and the writing of it — even if the waste paper basket is the only audiencehelps in expressing one's self more vividly in prose.

FRANCESCA FALK MILLER, who wrote the poem, "Her Kiss," which came out in the February number of Good Housekeeping, is Mrs. Franklin Mason Miller, of Chicago, daughter of the late Dr. Louis Falk, the famous organist and musical theorist. Mrs. Miller was first a student in the Art Institute at Chicago, then, turning to music, she became a graduate in five studies of the Chicago Musical College, and spent the next ten years in concert and church work. She first took up the writing of poetry through the desire to produce both the lyrics and the music of her songs. The lyrics proved such an instant success that she has almost given up music, although she is now giving "Musical Readings"-combining the singing of her own compositions with the reading of original poems. She never writes down her songs, playing and singing them from memory. Hyman, McGee, & Co., of Chicago, have recently published Mrs. Miller's second book of poetry, containing about ninety poems. The book is entitled "The Prodigal," and Ernest Ball, composer of "Mother Machree," set the title poem (which first appeared in the Cosmopolitan in September, 1923) to music, under the name of "Mother, Oh My Mother." This song, in turn, was made into

a record by Mario Chamlee, the tenor of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Mrs. Miller is an active club woman and is one of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Woman's Press Association.

LAWRENCE W. PEDROSE, who wrote the story, "On the Wings of the Storm," which was printed in Sunset for February, has been a professional writer for six years. His first short story appeared in the Black Cat in 1915, and since 1919 he has given all his time to writing. Fiction writing, however, is not his principal work. He represents in Seattle more than a score of business journals and writes many feature articles, which appear regularly in popular type magazines in this country and abroad. Mr. Pedrose finds feature writing more profitable than fiction and writes fiction because of the pleasure derived from this type of creative work. Having lived most of his life in the Pacific Northwest, and being fond of fishing and hunting, a lover of the outdoors, and of dogs, he uses as a background for most of his stories the logging industry, picturesque Puget Sound, and the fishing industry of the North Pacific. Mr. Pedrose is one of the founders and a past president of the Free Lances, a Seattle organization of professional writers, having a membership of nearly forty men and women whose work appears regularly in national publications. National advertising has stimulated interest in the Pacific Northwest in recent years, and a large number of fiction writers have made Seattle and vicinity their home, finding in the Puget Sound district a wealth of material for stories. Mr. Pedrose says he has no definite method of writing fiction or feature articles. His business paper writing, correspondence for a score of trade

journals, he says, requires a definite program of work, but he keeps a week each month free for the purpose of creative writing. He uses great care in every story, often rewriting several times. He adds that he can't turn out a fiction story in less than a week, while a feature article is a matter of a few hours.

LOIS SEYSTER MONTROSS, whose story, "Andy and the Rouged Ear Tips," came out in College Humor for April, is writing for Good Housekeeping, the Pictorial Review, the Ladies' Home Journal, and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as College Humor. She is also the author of a book of verse, entitled "The Crimson Cloak," published by Boni & Liveright in 1924. Mrs. Montross and her husband, Lynn Montross, author of "Half Gods" and "East of Eden," are fond of collaborating, and their first book, "Town and Gown," was published in 1923 by the George H. Doran Company. They are now at work on a similar book, to be called "Fraternity Row," and on a novel which will appear as a serial before book publication. They have no profession but writing and plan to write at least three stories a month. Mrs. Montross believes that anyone who takes up writing as a profession should be able to write at least two stories a month steadily without fail, and should also have a good literary agent, one who is established in the field, and is reliable, critical, and unwilling to handle anything but the most conscientious work. Mrs. Montross was born in Illinois, and was graduated from the University of Illinois. Most of her fictional material is taken from the middlewest. Mr. and Mrs. Montross usually live in New York during the winter, but spend their summers in Woodstock, Vermont.