notoriously poor correspondents on the matter of submitted MSS.

Then they must learn that it is a paper's first business to distribute the news. Its second business is to comment upon that news, in the form of editorials, art, literary, and dramatic criticisms, and the like.

After a long period of experimentation newspapers have developed certain fashions of news writing, and though these fashions change from time to time, anyone writing for a paper must be well acquainted with the prevailing fashion. But regardless of changing fashions two things remain fixed. News writing must tell the truth, and tell it in such a way as to catch the attention of the hurried reader, interest him, and acquaint him with the facts as quickly as possible.

News writing must leave for the editorial pages any comments or critical judgments upon the facts. The novice is forever making this mistake; he insists upon attaching adjectives to his nouns which convey the personal opinion of the reporter. "The famous orator, George W. Jones, addressed the Knights of Columbus yesterday." Famous may be entirely a matter of opinion. It should come out of a news-story. This is perhaps the most elementary rule about news writing, but it is the most fundamental. The average secretary of the Civic Association, who wants to get a bit of propaganda into the papers, fills his account of last night's meeting with these editorial phrases and makes his copy unusable. On the other hand, the propagandist intentionally slips in adjectives that distort and discolor the news, trusting that the incompetent editor will overlook them.

The practice of writing news-stories with all editorial adjectives eliminated, and with the arousing facts thrown forward, is the best possible training for a certain type of fiction writing, and it has produced some of the best of our modern fiction writers from Richard Harding Davis to J. M. Barrie and a host of others.

Free-lance writing of news-stories for the newspapers in general is not an inviting field

for the writer who must earn money by his pen. In the first place a good newspaper must so far as possible know its reporters of news facts. Its reputation depends upon their accuracy. In the second place it cannot afford to pay high rates per word to all chance writers who may send in items of news. It pays a low rate compared to other markets, but gives its staff writers an opportunity to supply enough copy for each issue to make the work pay.

So much for general news writing. The newspaper special, the signed article which is a news feature, must of course be written by somebody not only well known to the newspaper employer, but recognized by newspaper readers as accurate, discerning, and interesting.

Once away from the news pages, which the good newspaper should guard as any spring of clear water is guarded, and turning to those columns which might be classed as editorial, and that increasing number of columns which are purely for entertainment's sake, one finds at once a market for a great variety of literary wares. In generalizing it is fair to say, first, that prices are low but that the newspaper compensates by buying a great deal of material if it is of the right sort. For the writer who thinks of an amusing skit or anecdote or shrewd comment only once in a while, and sends it to the paper, the return must be so slight as to make this a poor market. It would be far better to polish these things up and strive for space in the weekly or monthly journals of humor or belle lettres. But for the man who writes easily with ideas that are forever flowing the press makes a good market.

Any writer who wishes to fight his way past the restrictions must remember that a newspaper comes out every day, and the writing of one day is forgotten in the interest of the next. That idea is best for newspaper use which can be spread out into a series of short articles. The newspaper values most highly the man whose name becomes known to a multitude of readers. Newspapers are highly

competitive, and they value all the more that writer who can bring readers regularly to the newsstand in search of next day's contribution to a series, even though each installment be but a paragraph long, or only a sentence under a picture.

It is this characteristic of the press as a literary market that has led to the growth of syndicates. Here and there these organizations have sprung up, depending upon the newspapers as a market for their wares and upon their own constructive ideas and organizing abilities for their material. They are middle men who have justified themselves by their service. A young man suddenly has the idea that it would be interesting to make a list of the red-headed heroes in history and fiction, so he starts out collecting them and writes a thumb-nail sketch of each one. Set in newspaper type each might occupy one-tenth of a column, and bring in a dollar from the newspaper that bought it. But offered as a series by one of these newspaper syndicates to a thousand newspapers, it might bring in $1,000 a paragraph. The syndicate supplies a market

ing machinery. It sends samples out in the form of proof or of mats or boiler plate; also it is known to the newspaper editor as the individual author may not be and its promise to deliver 365 paragraphs during the year can be relied upon, even though the syndicate has to get several authors to work to complete the contract on time.

As a market for fugitive stories and verse the individual newspaper is perhaps least satisfactory; more and more it purchases such material through syndicate organizations. It cannot afford to pay rates for such detached contributions, to compete with the rates paid by magazines. The fact that it furnishes a large reading public is balanced by the fact that it furnishes a forgetful public. The newspaper is the last place to send your isolated poems. It is the first place to send your long series of light verses having an interlocking idea and available at the rate of one a day or one a week, and running on like the brook, forever, unless someone remembers to turn them off.

Why the happy-ending? Why must a writer stultify himself and make his stories come out happily in order to sell them? Is not this a wrong condition? Does it not militate against Art?

These questions are common, especially among "young writers." It is no reproach to be "young." Experience sometimes tends to defeat those advantages it is supposed to lend to its possessors. Nevertheless, unless the reason for the general demand for happy-endings is grasped, the viewpoint expressed in these sample questions which are typical, may remain to cloud the career of a writer otherwise happy and contented in his work. The output of the typewriter is not, of course, like that widely-advertized milk that comes from "contented cows." Some of the world's greatest art, in writing as well as in the sister arts, has been wrung from aching hearts; distilled out of complex anguishes, pain, grief, and care. Nevertheless, the serene artist is the normal artist. There is no prima facie merit in a state of "artistic discontent," and anything which makes for such a condition is a hindrance. The questions may as well, therefore, be answered, as authoritatively as possible.

1. Why the Happy-Ending? Because anything else leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the reader. Read, e.g., Kuprin's "The Duel." If you are anything like a normal person you you will be depressed. There are enough unavoidable reasons for depression without paying for any. This fact is well-known to magazine and book-publishers who have oftentimes great businesses to keep going. Commercial? Yes, quite so. Unless you can publish your book, or story, or play, it dies stillborn, and you derive from it none of the multifarious satisfactions of our craft except

that of reading the manuscript to yourself and the benefit of the practice it has given you, - of which matter, more anon! One of the chief reasons for producing any work of art, is that the same shall have an audience. 2. Why must a writer stultify himself, etc.? Well, he need not. He is not obliged to write "weepers." That we all have the right to produce what form of art we please (granted the skill), is a commonplace. But if we produce sad art, we are inevitably limited to the sad audience which likes it. To serve that audience we cannot compete with the Russians. 3. Is not this a wrong condition? I, for one, do not think so. "All art is one," said Torrigiano, and he was right. But art, however manifested, has its limitations, some of them natural, others arbitrarily imposed. These may be summed up under the category of "taste." And taste is a variable, a current thing. Present taste in writing runs counter to the sad ending, and most of us are glad that it does. There are, of course, certain exceptions, which need not hinder us here. But it should be noted that Torrigiano, the greatest architect of his day, built something lovely and pleasing to the trained or untrained eye, when he produced Magdalen Tower. It is even possible that high artistic talent, perverts or stultifies itself when it deliberately produces something ugly, unless out of that ugliness it has transmuted something which is beautiful.

The fourth question, "does it not militate against Art?" is possibly already answered in the foregoing. It must be remembered that art is exercised within its natural and acquired limitations, which are as real as any of the natural limitations that can be known or cited.

Editor, THE WRITER:

"If you can discover a successful way of conducting a manuscript club, THE WRITER'S fame is made for aye," declares J. L. in the April number of your magazine. With such in the balance for what is fast becoming one of the most valuable magazines ever published for literary artisans, I hasten to lend my aid.

J. L. presents very vividly in his article the reasons why five attempts to conduct manuscript clubs successfully in his city has failed. J. L. may realize what these fatal mistakes are or he may not (is it proper to refer to J. L. in the masculine gender- I'll chance it). His article does not indicate whether or not he is aware of the errors that have been made or the seriousness of their nature with respect to club organization.

In one of the five clubs mentioned there were assembled writers of fiction, writers of feature articles, writers of poetry, an advertising man, and a Browning fan. If the club had been intended merely for the discussion of things of a literary nature it might have functioned - it was an impressive forum. But if the club was intended to aid in developing or guiding literary genius in any one or all of the several lines mentioned, no wonder it failed!

A poet cannot properly advise a novelist as

to the technique of his productions any more than could a novelist advise a poet as to the structure of his verse. An advertising man could no more advise a short story writer as to the development of his production than could a short story writer advise an advertising man as to the preparation of his copy for an advertising campaign. A feature writer could not properly criticise the works of any of these any more than he could advise a composer of music upon the preparation of an opera. Each of the several lines of literary art are distinctive. Each has its individual technique and its separate set of rules.

There's where the rub begins.

Manuscript clubs, as well as any other club, should be formed with a definite object in view and members should be accepted or rejected with that object in mind.

Meetings should be conducted, perhaps informally, but in a regular order and nothing of an extraneous nature should be permitted to creep into the sessions of the organization. It should be the duty of the presiding officer to squelch anything which does not bear directly on the business in hand or which conflicts with the stated purpose of the club. "All very fine," you may say, "but how do you know even that will work?"

I believe it will work because it is logical.