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The American School Peace League offers two sets of three prizes of seventy-five, fifty, and twenty-five dollars for the three best essays on subjects connected with the peace movement. One set of prizes is open to seniors in the normal schools of the United States, the other to seniors in the preparatory schools. The contest will close March 1, 1910. Further information will be given by Mrs. Fannie Fern Andrews, 405 Marlboro street, Boston.

Sir Henry M. Stanley's autobiography is announced for publication in September by Sampson, Low, Marston, & Co.

The American Home Economics Association, which is to be incorporated in New York, will publish a magazine called the Journal of Home Economics.

The Progress Magazine, published in Columbus, O., has taken over and consolidated with it the Ohio Magazine.

The name of the American Historical Magazine is changed to Americana with the July issue. Mrs. Florence Hull Winterburn is the new editor.

The receivers of the bankrupt Outing Publishing Company have sold the Outing Magazine to Thomas H. Blodgett, the Chicago advertising agent of the magazine, for $30,000. This magazine was considered to be the chief asset of the Outing Publishing Company. It was appraised by the receivers at $50,000. Mr. Blodgett will continue the publication of the magazine.

Forrest Crissey has become editorial director of the Currier Publishing Company, of Chicago, which issues the Woman's World. In carrying out his editorial policies he will have the assistance of Byron Williams, now editor of the publication, which claims more than 2,000,000 circulation.

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Miss Lilian Dynevor Rice will be the editor of the Housewife, beginning with the September issue. Miss Rice was the editor of the Designer for ten years, and later succeeded Charles Dwyer as editor of the Delineator.

Judge Ray, of the United States court, has given the Outing Publishing Company receivers permission to sell the Bohemian Magazine to Theodore Dresser, of New York, for $1,000 after the August number has been published.

Uncle Sam's Magazine (New York) wants "stories of the plains, of the hills, of the woods, of the sea; stories that breathe true masculinity and true femininity; stories of man's courage and woman's tenderness; of sublime sacrifice and primal passions." It is also in the market for humor, verses, and short poems.

The home of Joel Chandler Harris, fifteen minutes' ride from the heart of Atlanta, to which he gave the name "The Sign of the Wren's Nest," and the four or five acres connected with it, which he called "Snap Bean Farm," are to be made a public park and playground, as a memorial to the author of "Uncle Remus." For this purpose $30,000 will be required, and contributions are solicited by the Uncle Remus Memorial Association of Atlanta.

Colonel Alexander K. McClure died at Wallingford, Penn., June 6, aged eighty-one. Miss Adeline Knapp died in San Francisco June 7, aged forty-nine.

Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D. D., died in Roxbury, Mass., June 10, aged eighty

seven.

Jacob M. Gordin, "the Jewish Shakspere," died in Brooklyn June 11, aged fortysix.

Mrs. Frances Boyd Calhoun died at Covington, Tenn., June 12, aged forty-two. Louis Prang died at Los Angeles, Calif., June 15, aged eighty-five.

Dana Estes died in Brookline, Mass., June 16, aged sixty-nine..

Sarah Orne Jewett died at South Berwick, Me., June 24, aged fifty-nine.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS.

VOL. XXI.

BOSTON, AUGUST, 1909.

No. 8.

ENTERED AT THE BOSTON POST-OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MAIL MATTER.

But the poet who sings of love

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"My dream of life, from morn till night,
Was love, still love "-

and the novelist who tells us about love — its blissful beginning, its crosses, and its final triumph or despair, sound the same string in very different ways.

In general, the poet treats of love in the abstract. Love, in the poet's uses, is a spiritual experience, an inward passion, a mighty emotional throb of the human heart. The novelist treats of love in the concrete. With him love is not the divine element that lights the poet's verse. It is rather a curious compound, fit for minutely scientific analysis. With the novelist, environment, circumstance, character, and passing incidents act upon the nature of love and change its color and intensity.

In a poem which, like Tennyson's "Lady Clare," has almost as much plot as a novel, the treatment of the love-theme is so simple and ingenuous that it is only because the music of the verse and the daring of the conception bewitch us that we accept the recital as probable at all. Again, in a ba lad like "Young Lochinvar," the mainspring of action is a love that dares almost beyond probability. Love has a vauntingness in poetry which it scarcely attains to in a novelist's treatment of the theme. Witness the Bedouin lover's vaunt of

"A love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold !"

Perhaps the psychological manifestation of love is best brought out in a sonnet series like Shakspere's or the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," presenting, as they do, first one and then another phase of love as it reveals itself in the human heart. But the cir

cumstances of Shakspere's course of love and the nature of the persons to whom the sonnets are addressed-the dark lady and the fair young man -are very much open to conjecture. In the case of the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," we are helped by knowledge from other sources as to circumstances and characters. If we had only internal evidence to go by, these sonnets, too, might be interpreted to have other than their actual meaning, with reference to some wrongly-guessed state of affairs. The deeper and stronger a love-poem is, the less of a story it is apt to tell.

Turning from the poem to the novel, we find that the novelist's effect of power is produced in a manner contrarywise. The strength of the novel depends on the proper presentation of the characters, their setting, and the sequence of events by which the story reaches its culmination.

The love-theme as treated in the novel admits of various inter-relations between hero and heroine. This inter-relation, except in narrative poems like "Locksley Hall," "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," and "The Statue and the Bust," is seldom expressed in poetry.. In the love story we also find described the places of action, the personal appearance of the chief characters, the style of clothes they wear, their manner of behaving and talking. Certain types of love story are repeated over and over again, the author's mode of looking at life, his wealth of subsidiary material, and his verve of treatment serving to give each story new scope and individuality.

Let us note here several recurrent forms and well-known types of love story:

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kett in Meredith's novel, "Beauchamp's Career," is an example of this type. She recovers from her unreasoning love and from her complete absorption in Beauchamp to marry dispassionately, after all. Not so Hardy's heroines, who are carried away by their passion, to their detriment.

3. The story of a heroine who loves secretly, the object of her love being pledged to another-a Jane Eyre sort of heroine.

4. The story of a hero who saves the heroine's life. Upon this, they fall in love as a matter of course.

5. The story of a young man in love with a woman older than himself a favorite theme of Thackeray's.

6. The story of a serious man in love with a flippant young girl who is hard to catch and subdue. This is the theme, very crudely stated, of "Lady Rose's Daughter" and of The Honorable Peter Sterling."

7. The story of illicit love, a theme of George Moore's, and sometimes of Meredith's or Hardy's.

8. The story of a heroine who stands by the hero through thick and thin, like Esther in "Felix Holt" and. Bettina in "The Shuttle."

A list of such themes might be greatly extended. The theme already popularized by one author may be effectively used by another who brings a fresh point of view and a new style of workmanship to his consideration of the subject. But is there any reason why these themes should belong wholly to the novelist? Are they unfit for poet-uses? So much depending as it does on treatment, why should they not be given poetic treatment?

There is compressed in the four stanzas of 'Auld Robin Gray" as much of the tragedy of human life as would keep keyed up the interest of a good-sized novel. Few poems tell so plainly the details of a love story or relate so explicitly the reasons for an anguished state of heart.

It is not, however, a compressed treatment of the novelist's themes which is here recommended to the poet, but rather their

extended elaboration in metrical form. To ask the poet to use his art in telling love stories is, in fact, to advocate the poetical novel, something in the "Aurora Leigh," the "Lucille," or the "Evangeline" style. The poet's powers of description and analysis, and his expression of impassioned feeling may all find excellent scope in the poetical novel. His deftness in the use of figures and fanciful illustration will give grace and adornment to his tale. He may use his poet's insight to treat of love in its most secret manifestation; but he will give

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A LAPSE OF MARK TWAIN'S.

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In Mark Twain's "Private History of the Jumping Frog' Story" occurs a curious error, which I venture to speak of only after carefully re-reading the article, lest my own understanding prove at fault. It seems to have escaped the attention of other readers and of the author himself, who, in this instance, appears to afford an example of the not uncommon forgetfulness of writers regarding their own creations.

To quote: "To him and to his fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature - for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is always ready to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They were hearty in their admiration of them. . . ."

Now in Mr. Clemens' delightful tale it was the Stranger - not Jim Smiley - who

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loaded the famous frog with shot. It was the Stranger who "took in" Jim Smiley with a "loaded frog," not Jim Smiley who deceived the Stranger. Nothing is said of Smiley's knowledge of a frog's taste for shot; on the contrary, he is depicted as greatly surprised at Dan'l's condition, and as discovering it only after the Stranger has departed with the stakes. Mark Twain himself says, in conclusion: "In both the ancient and the modern cases the strangers departed with the money. The Boeotian and the Californian wonder what is the matter with their frogs; they lift them and examine; they turn them upside down and out spills the informing ballast."

How can one reconcile this with "the smartness of Jim Smiley in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog," etc.?

Charles Reade once forgot the name of his hero. Has Mark Twain confused the identities of those two immortals - Jim Smiley and the Stranger?

PACIFIC GROVE, Calif.

Julia Lawrence Shafter.

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Short, practical articles on topics connected with literary work are always wanted for THE WRITER. Readers of the magazine are invited to join in making it a medium of mutual help, and to contribute to it any ideas that may occur to them. The pages of THE WRITER are always open for any one who has anything helpful and practical to say. Articles should be closely condensed; the ideal length is about 1,000 words.

Four granddaughters of Charles Dickens have been awarded from the English civil

list a pension of $2.50 a week each, “in recognition of the literary eminence of their grandfather, and in consideration of their straitened circumstances." It is justly pointed out that if literary works in England had the same protection as other property, Dickens's granddaughters would not be in want. It is true that Dickens left an estate valued at $500,000.

The statement that in the July number of the Atlantic Monthly there are short stories by three young writers who had never before contributed to the magazine should encourage young writers. And they should not be discouraged by the statement that it was not until George Meredith was an old man that he began to reap any reward from his books. It is true, however, that he was at least sixty years old, if not more, before he was able to leave the offices of Chapman & Hall, the publishers, where he acted as Reader.

The New York Herald received manuscripts from nearly 5,000 contestants in its $10,700 short-story competition. There were, it says, exactly 4,878 in all, divided as follows: School teachers, 847; amateurs and other writers, 4,031. The manuscripts came from all parts of the country and from almost every place in the world where Americans have taken up their residence and where the English language is spoken. Among the contestants there were a few professional writers, but the vast majority, including, of course, the school teachers, are engaged in earning their livelihood in various vocations not directly or even indirectly connected with literature. There were lawyers, doctors, typewriters, clerks, salesmen, and saleswomen. Many of these had never before attempted fiction. "A few would-be contributors," says the Herald, 66 were detected in plagiarisms. Stories translated from the French, and badly translated at that, were traced to their origin and summarily rejected. Worse remains behind. Some of the fraudulent competitors actually

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