Father: "Well, did you enjoy yourselves?" Mother: "Yes, we had a much needed respite from the heat of the sweltering city." Father: "What time did you get in?" Mother: "We arrived with the returning hordes that poured into the city by every incoming train and boat."

Little Oswald: "The trains, taxed to their utmost, disgorged us at about 5 o'clock, daddy."

Father: "You came home at the peak of travel."

Mother: "Yes, we were engulfed in the tanned and sunburned throngs that fought their way, tired but happy, through the crowded railroad station."

Little Oswald: "At times, daddy, the vast multitude strained the patience of railroad attendants and special police detailed to handle them with the least confusion, but there was no panic and little disorder."

Mother: "Bad as was the influx, the exodus was worse."

Little Oswald: "Oh, it was an awful exodus, daddy."

Father: "I'm always afraid of exoduses." Little Oswald: "This exodus was a preholiday exodus. It began twenty-four hours ahead of time and lasted well into the small hours of the holiday itself."

Father: "Had n't the railroad officials made ample provision to handle the traffic?"

Mother: "Oh, yes; the service had been greatly augmented. Practically every train was run in three sections. They left the station at short intervals on an intricate schedule prepared under an unprecedented strain by a tireless traffic department under Superintendent Eagan."

Little Oswald: "You should have seen the railroad station when we went away. It was black with pleasure seekers."

Mother: "Hours before each train departed there was a long line of eager vacationists before each ticket window."

Little Oswald: "Station Master Pluvius F. Mohonk stated that within his thirty-five years' service he had never seen such a precipitate retreat from the city's heat."

Father: "It was a record outpouring." Mother: "At times it took on the aspect of a hejira."

Father: "Still, the seaside was nice when you reached it, was it not?"

Mother: "Yes, indeed. The skies smiled down upon the merry hordes disporting themselves in the briny and on the sands. Over 50,000 pleasure seekers visited the resort during the holiday, and merchants reported their biggest business in many years."

Little Oswald: "The weather man did himself proud and won the thanks of the delighted public." The Sun Dial.

Editor, The Forum:

The letter from Helen E. Waite in your April number was very interesting. Some of your readers may care to have a few details about the office arrangement of a British free-lance.

I should perhaps prefix these notes with the qualification that I have a fairly large business connection in this country and one that is slowly but steadily growing in the United States: therefore my office system is rather more elaborate. But I think I have proved it to be both efficient and simple.

All my work is done straight onto the typewriter and I keep carbon copies of everything, including letters and contributions. The post-office is not infallible and I have known editors themselves to lose a MS.

I have just one large box-file, fitted with index and foolscap folders. These are labelled according to name of publication (not contribution, as in your correspondent's case) and letters, MS. duplicates and in fact everything connected with any particular publication goes into the folder labelled with its name. As each story appears in print, it is carefully compared with my file copy (an excellent corrective, by the way!) and then the file copy is put away for three months, after which it is destroyed. A copy of every paper containing anything written by me is also filed and when a sufficient number has been collected, it is parcelled off to the bookbinders. I have a whole shelf of my own stuff bound in this way, in cheap cloth covers, for handy reference.

A strict account of the travels of every MS. is kept: first by means of a simple card-index, bearing title of MS. at top, and then through the Postage Book, which also, of course, keeps a record of cash spent on stamps, etc.

Editor, The Forum:

I have a small set of rubber stamps: One, bearing name and address, prefixed with the words "With Compliments from," is used on the covers of all outgoing MS.; another bearing the words "Press Matter: Immediate" is used on envelopes when sending out serial or other important commissioned stuff; and a third is a date stamp.

Finally, I have a loose-leaf file, sectioned off, by means of tab-cards, into five days of the week (Monday to Friday). This contains all papers (synopses of plots, editorial letters, etc.) connected with my week's work, filed under each day, and is, of course, changed weekly.

Believing that laziness is the inborn curse of every writer, I have all along endeavoured to check its insidious advance by the sternest discipline. I work from 9.30 A. M. to 4.30 P. M. (with an hour for luncheon at midday) on five days of the week, whether I feel like it or not. My work is planned, as a rule, about a month in advance, and I allow nothing to interfere with its clockwork precision. Being only human, I often feel like letting things slide, but the fear of loss, artistically and financially, urges me on. It has always seemed to me that Discipline is the only saving-grace in this class of work: without it failure is almost inevitable, and with it success should surely be equally inevitable. I also believe in studying the great writers, not only of prose but of poetry. I have the good fortune to possess a library of some 3,000 volumes and hardly a day goes by without a dip into one or other of my favorites, Hazlitt, Emerson, Galsworthy - to quote a rather mixed trio. Earle Danesford. Southampton, England.

One of my most exciting experiences occurred more years ago than I like to remember. I was barely out of my teens although I had been writing from the age of eight. My first novel had been published by a New York firm. but I had realized nothing from it. I had had verse accepted and printed by New York and Brooklyn papers - but without remuneration. Still I spent the greater part of those days at my desk and soon had a goodly supply of plays, novelettes and short stories.

A brilliant young Frenchwoman whom I prized as a close friend told me of an unique experience which came to her as she sang to some patients in a hospital. As I exclaimed at it, she said, "Use it in a story. It is dramatic and will find a market." At that time Munsey's Magazine was at the high tide of its popularity. Its primary demand was for storiettes and the magazine set the pace when it came to price.

I therefore wrote a storiette, called "A Dozen Roses," which did not exceed a thousand words,

Eleven months later, in turning over some papers, I came across the "Roses."

"That is good," I said upon re-reading, "it has the ring of sincerity and is better than most things they print."

I did not stop to make a fresh copy, sealed it in a long envelope and mailed it to the Storiette Department of Munsey's.

In six days I received a check for fifty dollars. My excitement had to have an outlet. I threw on hat and coat and sped to the New York Stock Exchange to call my father from the floor so that I might wave my check before his astonished eyes astonished, I may add, because I had called him

from a business transaction meaning a good deal more than fifty dollars.

A short time afterwards I took the manuscript of my second novel to Munsey's with an eye to serial publication. They would have published it if I had changed the ending, but as I felt that the ending was the only stroke of genius which the novel possessed, I declined. But I told them my previous experience with my storiette. I had made sure beforehand that the magazine had the same staff of readers when my storiettes was sent the second time.

I shall never forget the look the editor gave me as I related the thing. Said he, "Don't you ever do that again. You could be blacklisted forever with a publisher for that."

Things may be different today. But who will deny, that the publishing firm which will refuse a MSS. one day and accept it a year later with no change in the staff of readers, and paying well for it, is not open to criticism?

Montgomery, Ala.

Olive Muir Barbour.

Editor, The Forum:

In a recent issue of THE WRITER, there was a letter by Rose Wilder Lane which had to do with inspiration and technique.

Primarily, Mrs. Lane's disquisition set out to refute the somewhat oblique attitudes assumed by Nalbro Bartley and Mrs. Hughes that inspiration was incapable of being coaxed by the Muses, and that it hailed only the indefatigable worker. It strikes me as peculiar that all the professional writers with whom I am acquainted are the sincerest of posers: they would have you believe nothing if not that their output is, and always has been, founded on an insatiable appetite for work. But it is amusing to find how easily most of them are tempted into a game of golf, or inveigled into filling a hand at bridge, - grumbling sweetly, to be sure, but ever willing to "call it a day."

Inspiration cannot always be coaxed. But it so happens that most writers appeal to that insensible store of knowledge, the grossly over-rated and overwritten "subconscious mind," for that ever-elusive something which, for want of classification, must garb its identity as Inspiration. Nor does it come through hard work. Most writers would have their audiences believe that they work eight hours a day, six days per week, adhering to an inflexible and clockpunching schedule, but in the words of that gracious lady, Carrie Nation, it's all applesauce. Some writers, admittedly, do that unpleasant thing, but their efforts obviously show it. Others, working

only when the moods strike hardest, are capable of turning out fairly readable stuff. I imagine that editors, constantly bleating for new writers, would hail with keen delight a fraternal worker who would admit that he was somewhat a drone.

This, in turn, brought on the subject of technique with Mrs. Lane. Just what is technique. I've witnessed the sorry aspect of five college professors, three professional critics and eight editors, at various and touching times, endeavoring vainly to enlighten me on the subject. But invariably their verbosity exhausted itself in a maze of bewildered adjectives and a futile tugging at purple-rimmed collars. Mrs. Lane sums it up rather adroitly when she claims that "to try to write fiction while thinking of objective technique is as absurd as to try to write a letter while repeating the alphabet aloud." It amounts to just that.

Technique is, because it is, and consequently explains itself away. It is doubtless a matter of many things: Goethe claimed that the smallest hair threw its shadow. And the poorest technique, creeping decrepitly through its story, inexplainably asserts its presence. There is no reasoning the why or wherefore; it may be a phrase, or a collation of phrases; it may encompass those subtle steps of building up to a climax; it may reserve its presence until the climax itself rarely but it's there as a matter of importance. My own opinion matter how feeble and infinitesimal it may be - is that technique, wholly forgotten, will take care of

no

itself. It is the irredeemable quality which haunts any writing, just as the subconscious mind haunts the more conscionable thoughts, where, if the writer sits down, begins his story, and marches through to an unlabored conclusion, it gleams through the network of narrative construction like waters that the night cannot cover.

For technique is not a material thing; it is an idealism, a soul and spirit of the composition not to be striven for. It is present in the worst of writings; it shines more brilliantly in the better of prose; poetry, too, has demanded much of its attention, but when Tennyson strove for the effect of finished technique, critics disparaged his verse as pedantic. Technique, therefore unconsciously becomes a fixed purpose; it becomes a subconscious interweaving throughout the tale; all in all, it becomes nothing so imperative to the writer as it is in the manner of telling one's story. Yet, in the mouths of our more captious critics, it seems to be omnipotent, a dreadful and all-conquering god of the story, a matter of creation that is at once formless, and a blight to curse and hinder the writer.

For one thing, critics, editors and instructors make

literature more difficult than it really is; they become so impressed with illogical shop-talks that, ere long, they regard writing as a task for the gods. This, of course, pertains only to the new writer, for the established professional doubtless knows more than his editor, and the latter gentleman exhibits rare intelligence by leaving his theories unspoken. But literature is not a task for the gods. It is a profession wherein imagery and dreaming are the patterns of life, and where the writer must learn to harness his imagination and drive it to words which some folks call Style. It is a cruel and heartbreaking profession; it comes to none over night. But if the young writer's heart is in his task, there is no denying him the ultimate results. Horace said: "Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least" for the new writer usually shows but little promise in the beginning. However, the results of years of slow and unappreciated labor among the greater of our contemporary writers should be lesson enough to ward off any despair. Personally, I think Carrie Nation was a remarkable woman, Walt House. Washington, Pennsylvania.

Editor, The Forum.

Writers who like old books will find a small field of remuneration in writing about such rare books as have furnished them a broad field for pleasure. There are all kinds and conditions. The Old Farmer's Almanac is the epitome of other times and other manners. Old City Directories give ideas about queer street names and queerer customs. A handful of colored cards, printed in England almost one hundred years ago, was the germ of a story of old-time books for children. After I had searched the various libraries of various cities in which I happened to be stopping, I had given so much time to the subject that the seventeen dollars that the story brought me did not pay as much as ten cents a day for my time and labour. The joy I had, however, in making the search, and the light it gave me on the reading of the poor little children of bygone days, was worth much more than

any check from any publisher, and seventeen dollars buys an immense number of postage stamps for more important manuscripts.

A story of rare old Bibles, begun because I was fascinated by the name "The Bugge Bible," took more than eight weeks to write, but opened avenues of information that were limitless, and netted me about seventy-five dollars for three stories, - the first story sold to a newspaper, and two others, one of the Old Testament to a Jewish paper, one of the New Testament, to a protestant paper, for young people.

So, if you joy in discovering odd things in old books, pass on your joy to others. An occasional check will be your reward which, while in no way compensating for the time employed, is sufficient as a by-product to the wealth of knowledge you have gleaned. Louise Hubert Guyol.

Boston, Mass.