hotels under this name, gave certain publicity to my work, and even delivered two lectures before women's clubs on the subject: "What an Author's Wife Can Do for an Author."

Unfortunately for herself, she did n't know that "Holworthy Hall" is a pseudonym, nor did she know that my father lives in Pasadena, where the comedy ended rather abruptly. I am sorry that she disappeared before my father could ascertain her real name. But I have always been thankful that she paid her bills, and did n't attempt to borrow money.

About ten years ago, when I was really submerging my identity, a member of my own university succeeded in persuading his friends - and for a period of nearly a year — that he was "Holworthy Hall." It was plausible enough because at that time I was writing chiefly stories of college life, and the pen

name was obviously appropriate to any man from that particular university.

My double became engaged, and his fiancée wrote to a cousin that she was about to marry "Holworthy Hall." The cousin, who happened to live across the street from me in White Plains, and happened to know my pen-name, answered to the effect that this would be bigamy, inasmuch as I was already married and had two children.

During the next six months I received at least fifty letters from people who had been deceived by the double. Incidentally, I had two from the fiancée. She broke the engagement. The man is actually a fairly well-known writer in a specialized field, and I suppose that it is only prejudice which makes me dislike his stuff. But what would you?

Harold E. Porter.

Editor, Authors' League Bulletin Dear Sir:

My double nearly cost me a week in hospital.

I was lecturing in Detroit. After the lecture, a young man accosted me. I remembered afterward that he was accompanied by a dozen other young men, who stood around during our conversation in expectant attitudes.

"Are you Will Irwin?" he asked.

Naturally, I was irritated.

"My name," said I, "is Will Irwin. It's the only name I have. It's the only name I ever had.

"Did n't you cover the Smathers murder case in Cropopolis?"

"I remember the Smathers case. Every one does. But I did n't report it."

"Well, that's funny!" said he.

"Very funny," said I. "To sum up. My sole and only name is Will Irwin. I never saw

"Were you ever in Cropopolis, Ohio?" (For reasons which will become obvious, I am going to disguise all the proper nouns except my own name.)

"I lectured there once."

"Were n't you there in 1913?”

"No. Why?"

To my surprise, he changed the subject. "What is your real name?" he asked. "Will Irwin," said I.

"Is n't your name McCaleb?"

the Smathers case." With this, I turned away. I got the answer next morning.

Smathers was one of the most notorious American murderers. As the time approached for his execution, he became a Roman Catholic. Thereupon a yellow newspaper sent this McCaleb, a crook who had once studied theology, to impersonate a priest, to get Smathers' confession, and to give it out for publication.

The plot failed.

While he was hanging 'round the jail, Mc

Caleb told the other reporters that he wrote for the magazines under the "nom de plume" of Will Irwin.

The young man who accosted me after the lecture was a cousin of Smathers. He had been brought up to believe that his kinsman got a raw deal in every way. And he had sworn that if ever he met this McCaleb, alias Will Irwin, he'd beat him to a jelly.

My lecture was his opportunity. He had

brought along his gang to insure him a free hand. As he was a fine young heavyweight and I am past my Fighting Prime, there would have been nothing to it. Only the frank innocence of my denial stayed his hand and saved me from an awful beating.

I challenge any other member of the League to produce a dirtier double! Will Irwin.

The January Bulletin has just reached me with its inquiry of Richard Connell's, "Have You a Double?"

One! Mr. Connell is lucky! I have three legitimate doubles, so to speak, and at least one illegitimate one.

A few years after I first took my typewriter in hand, I came across my first legitimate double in another Helen Bennett, who was then on the Record-Herald of Chicago. On one of my trips there, Katherine Leckie gave us a Helen Bennett dinner at which we sat side by side.

A year later, when visiting in Alabama, I met another Helen Bennett, who was also a writer, who came from somewhere in Texas. She informed me that a fourth Helen Bennett lived somewhere in the Carolinas and also wrote. I believe that the fourth Helen is a poet. This accounts for the three legitimates.

The two Helen Bennetts I know are charming, cultivated women, which helps matters greatly. For, as I travel, I occasionally meet their friends, who view me with puzzled suspicion, melting to amusement as I explain matters. Only a few weeks ago Mr. William Chenery, Editor of Collier's, came forth to greet an old acquaintance when my name was sent in to him, and looked at me in absolute bewilderment when I assured him that I was I.

But this is n't so bad. To be sure, I have many times re-routed mail intended for Helen Bennett of Chicago, whose middle initial is

E, while mine is C. At least I suppose it was mail intended for her. One gentleman writing a sweetly sentimental letter full of references to times when we had played in each other's back yards in Oregon or Montana or some Western state, was not recognized by either of us. I had never been in the vicinity of the back yards mentioned and Helen E. Bennett, while admitting that she had, said she had never known the man in question; or if she had, she had quite forgotten him.

Once I received a delightful letter from the president of a western railroad who also claimed to be a childhood playmate and who was so happy over finding me that I wrote back in real sorrow at not being able to be his old friend. No Helen Bennett I knew corresponded to his description, so there must be more of us to discover.

But the climax of my tale comes! Several years ago, I took a trip to Pittsburgh to obtain material for an article for the American Magazine.

I remained there about five days. As I was tired and it was hot, I spent every evening save one cooling off in my hotel room, and that one evening I spent with a cousin who lived in the suburbs.

Six months later I returned from another trip, to find on top of the accumulated mail on my desk a letter. This letter had been opened by my husband, as all my mail except obviously personal letters is opened by my husband during my absence from home

and from this you may judge the exact terms upon which Friend Husband and I stand. The letter mentioned was seemingly a business letter, inasmuch as it was addressed in care of the magazine and had been forwarded. I opened to read. The writer was the president of a manufacturing company in a middle western state.

He began by chaffing me gently about an article of mine which was printed in the current number of the magazine, and then to my horrified amazement referred to meeting me in Pittsburgh and to a period of some days we had evidently spent there together! He warned me he was coming to look me up in New York, asked me to wire reply to an assumed name at a special address, and closed with a little chaffing.

A tight band closed around my throat as I realized that the time he referred to in Pittsburgh coincided exactly with that I had spent there!

I stood with the letter in my hand thinking dully:

"This is one of the things that can't happen!"

Then it occurred to me that ladies had been shot for less, and I hurried to find my husband. When I reached him, I wildly waved the letter in his face and inquired. "What does this mean?"

"That," he replied calmly, "is just what I want to know."

Well in the end he believed me.

I hastened to write the head of the manufacturing company that whatever Helen Bennett he had met she was not I, and to assure the editor in New York that if any manufacturer from the Middle West inquired for me at the magazine office, I was a respectable female, a chaste wife and mother, etc., and knew no such person. Mr. Siddall dismissed the situation with a cheerful smile.

"You ought to feel complimented," he said, "to think that you are so famous that any one wishes to impersonate you."

I did n't. I never got over it. I received an "apology" from the head of the manufacturing company, in which he said he had met the lady at a "party," and had no reason to doubt her statements. He had forgotten entirely, it seemed, the implications of the remainder of the letter.

I affirm, Richard Connell, that the delivery of a circus at your door is a small thing to be apprehended compared with the fear under which I labor. Suppose, when I am away on a trip, some illegitimate double of mine goes man-hunting again, and I receive a second letter. Could I ever prevail upon a perfectly good, reliable, long-suffering husband to believe me, twice? Helen Christine Bennett.

Editor, Authors' League Bulletin
Dear Editor:

Richard Connell's letter about the man who impersonated him amused me, because I have had so many similar experiences. It might be a good, wholesome, rib-tickling jape to carry this thing a bit farther, and make it a feature in your Bulletin.

Here, for instance, are some of my own items, and I am not, or ever have been, important enough to be worthwhile as a sucker.

A namesake of mine, traveling from China to California, met a lady, who gushed over him as being the author of sundry sea stories in the Saturday Evening Post. On arrival, he temporarily settled, and was soon billed for many hundred dollars' worth of the lady's purchases. She claimed wifeship with him, and fame for him.

Adventure magazine wrote me last year enclosing a letter from a Mr. Leyton, or Leyland (I forget which), saying that a man who said he was Captain Dingle of sea-story

notoriety had tried to buy a ship without money, and would Adventure vouch for him? Last year, also, broadcasting station WEAF wrote me saying that somebody had claimed my name, and was going to speak over the radio on a certain night; but something about him caused them to try to identify him through Adventure which turned him over to my agent. I arranged to be at my radio, with a telephone at my elbow when the man broadcasted. He did not broadcast.

Recently I received this accompanying letter:

The address appended was not that of the letterhead. This letter was sent to the Saturday Evening Post, addressed to "Captain Dingle," care of the editors, with an underlined message on the envelope, Please forward to Cap'n Tarrant.

Naturally, anything addressed to Captain Dingle was sent on to me, since I have no other name. I may as well say here that I have never eaten raw steak, nor have I been in Athens, or Charlotte Harbor, or owned a ketch, or sported any other name but my

own.

It is a fair sporting chance that if all members of the League who have had similar experiences would blurt 'em out through the Bulletin, something might be done, if only through sheer word-of-mouth broadcasting, to make the stunt more hazardous for future personality bandits. Yours very truly,

A. E. Dingle.

R. PERRITON MAXWELL, editor at various times of The Metropolitan, Nash's Magazine, Judge, Leslie's Weekly, and Arts and Decorations, writes in vigorous protest against the republication by Street and Smith in the May Sea Stories Magazine of one of his short stories which was first published in The Popular Magazine (belonging to the Street and Smith group) back in 1908. It appears that this second printing was made without his permission and without any notice to the readers that the story had previously been published. Moreover, the editor of Sea Stories refused a request from Mr. Maxwell for additional compensation.

MR. PERITON MAX The Metropolitan,

Of course, Mr. Maxwell has no legal standing whatever in protesting against this act of the publishers' since he admits that he signed away "all rights" when he endorsed his original check. Most writers will agree, however, that he has a justifiable complaint on moral grounds. He says that this eighteen

year-old story, "Mishaps Amain," is "an exceedingly poor thing" written early in his career. Is n't it a bit tough on Mr. Maxwell to publish it without explanation, leaving the reader to believe that it represents the author's present ability as a fiction writer?

Moreover, if this is not an isolated case, but the beginning of a settled policy, should not the publishers announce the policy so that writers may have some basis for gauging the size of the market for original stories offered by the Street and Smith group? Sea Stories is probably not going to become a Golden Book or a Famous Stories Magazine, but how far is it going in that direction? Mr. Maxwell ends his letter, "I would like to know what some of the seasoned old war horses think of this sort of thing."

Sinclair Lewis refuses the Pulitzer Prize, given each year for the novel which in the opinion of the judges best presents "the