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write yarns for the younger generation as long as we want to publish them."- New York Sun.

Eleanor Abbott's Style. --Were it not for Miss Abbott's brilliancy, her charm, her graphic fervor, her originality, her dashing impressionism, a Clerk would hesitate to point interrogation at certain passages, in her story, "Woman's Only Business," which appears in the March issue of Everybody's.. Having acquired the habit of winning prizes and admirers and deserved renown, she is on the point of raising up a school of imitators, who will do themselves harm unless they distinguish between the bull'seye shots of her genius and those that fly wild. Searching the outlying districts, so to speak, I have picked up the following misguided arrows:

"The May-blossoms smelt altogether too white."

"The young girl's contralto voice was lipping its magic way."

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His eyelids came scrunching down." "The questions that crumbled from his lips."

"The glass test-tube went brittling out of Sagner's fingers."

"Began talking messily."

"She hurled her flaming, irrevocable answer crash-bang into Sagner's astonished, impertinent face."

The Clerk is not for urging Miss Eleanor Abbott to withdraw these astonishing phrases. However erroneous, they become immensely interesting as revealing the ardor of a mind working at white heat. If you ever saw a trip-hammer coming down on glowing steel, you recall that not all the sparks flew in conventional curves. Some hit you, perhaps, and hurt. But it was a glorious festival of fury, for all that, and a sight vivid beyond words. Let Miss Abbott keep to her ways. She is no more fantastic than Blake, no more daring than Stephen Crane. Nor should we be wise to ask her to hold up her sentences to the test of realism after she has written them. It is an odd, though not a novel, trick of sensibility that when an impressionist has missed interpreting an impression, the false

impression seems to him the only legitimate one. Rodin defends his Balzac, calls it his masterpiece. Besides, the moment you bid an impressionist have a care lest he admit untruths, that moment you dull his perceptiveness. The right course, I conclude, is to take our impressionists as we find them, faults and all. Only, let not their disciples imagine that the errors of genius explain its triumphs, or that, by similar crimes against the verities, minds of mediocre talents may pass for inspired. "The Clerk of the Day," in the Boston Transcript.

The Story of a Plot. Casting bread upon the waters is exemplified, in a curious way, in the case of "The Girl and the Bill." The author, Bannister Merwin, was formerly on the editorial staff of the Frank A. Munsey Company. In his capacity as editor he frequently suggested plots to those who were fortunate enough to be regular contributors of fiction to the Munsey publications, but were unfortunate enough to be temporarily without ideas. Among the plots given out in this way was the outline of "The Girl and the Bill." The would-be author who received it dallied with it a while, but at last returned the plot to Mr. Merwin, who put it away in his desk. When he resigned from the editorial staff to make a business of writing fiction, he lost little time in writing "The Girl and the Bill." As a contributor he sent "The Girl and the Bill" to the very office where, as an editor, he had suggested the story, and it was immediately accepted. - Publishers' Weekly.

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Parody. "No parodist is successful," writes Professor Raleigh in his Introduction to The Heroine," by Eaton Stannard Barrett, "who has not at some time fallen deeply under the spell of the literature that he parodies. Parody is, for the most part, a weak and clinging kind of tribute to the force of its original. Very perfect parodies, which catch the soul, as well as the form, of the models that they imitate, almost lose their identity and become a part of that which they were meant to ridicule. Feeble parodies, where poor matter, not strong enough to speak for itself, claims notice by the aid of a notorious tune, are even more

conspicuously dependent on the vogue of their original. The art of a tailor is seen in the cut of a coat; to make a mechanical copy of it, substituting tartan or fustian for velvet, is what any Chinese slave can do. It is form in literature which is difficult to invent. . . . The famous parodies (so to call them) are not parodies at all; their freedom from the servility of parody is what has given them their place in literature. Cervantes may have thought that he could criticise and banter the romances of chivalry by telling the adventures of a poor and highminded gentleman traveling on the roads of Spain; but once the new situation was created it called for a new treatment. Fielding doubtless intended to parody Richardson by a tale of the chastity of a serving-man; and it is easy to see how a mere wit would have carried out the design. But Fielding, like Cervantes, was too rich in ideas and too brave in purpose to be another man's mocking servitor."

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS.

[For the convenience of readers THE WRITER Will send a copy of any magazine mentioned in the following reference list on receipt of the amount given in parenthesis following the name the amount being in each case the price of the periodical with three cents postage added. Unless a price is given, the periodical must be ordered from the publication office. Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicals indexed for copies containing the articles mentioned in the list will confer a favor if they will mention THE WRITER when they write. ]

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THE ART OF CARAN D'ACHE. Arthur Bartlett Maurice. Bookman (28 c.) for April. PLAGIARISM: REAL AND APPARENT. Bunford Samuel. Bookman (28 c.) for April.

LITERARY ΜΕΝ AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS. Brander Matthews. North American Review (38 c.) for April. STORMFIELD. Mark Twain's new country home. Country Life in America for April.

AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN OF ROUMANIA (“ Carmen Sylva"). Illustrated. Marie Van Vorst. Lelineator (18 c.) for April.

THE NOVELS OF MRS. HUMPHRY WARD. William Lyon Phelps. Forum (28 c.) for April.

THE NATIONAL LIBRARY. Illustrated. Angus McSween. Van Norden's Magazine (18 c.) for April. ANNA KATHARINE GREEN. Hugh C. Weir. Human Life (13 c.) for April.

THE DIARY OF A COUNTRY BOY. With cartoons. Homer Davenport. Human Life (13 c.) for April. THE MESSAGE OF MR. G. K. CHESTERTON. Rev. John A. Hutton, M. A. Hibbert Journal (78 c.) for April.

LITERARY MEN OF BROWN. VI. John Hay. With portraits. Brown Alumni Monthly (13 c.) for April. THE MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER (Topeka State Capital ). Illustrated. National Printer-Journalist (23 c.) for March.

MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

Friends Over the Sea. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Illustrated. William Winter. Saturday Evening Post (8 c.) for March 6.

ROOSEVELT AS CARTOON MATERIAL. Illustrated. John T. McCutcheon. Saturday Evening Post (8 c.) for March 13.

"PLAYING THE DRAMA. The tribulations and perquisites of novel writing and play writing. Richard Harding Davis. Collier's (13 c.) for March 20.

BREAKING INTO VAUDEVILLE. The genial art of writing one-act playlets, full of laughs or weeps. Sewell Collins. Collier's (13 c.) for March 20.

SISTER ARTS. Novel or drama for pathos and comic bits. Booth Tarkington. Collier's (13 c.) for March 20.

ELINOR MACARTNEY LANE AND HER NEW NOVEL "KATRINE." Ripley Hitchcock. Harper's Weekly (13 c.) for March 27.

EDWARD FITZGERALD AND HIS POET OF DESPAIR. With portrait. Rev. E. C. E. Dorion. Zion's Herald for March 31.

NEWS AND NOTES.

Jack London writes from Sydney, Australia, that his health has broken down, and that he has abandoned his trip in his yacht around the world.

John Davidson, the poet, disappeared from his home in Penzance, Eng., on the evening of March 23, and it is feared that he is dead.

Not Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, but Mrs. Francis Alexander, the friend of Ruskin, and the mother of Miss Francesca Alexander, artist and author, is the oldest among American women who write books, for she is now ninety-four. Almost sixty years ago her husband, a Boston portrait painter, took her and their daughter to Florence, where they still live.

Laura Stedman is preparing "The Life and Letters" of her grandfather, E. C. Stedman, and would be pleased to have the loan of any of his letters now in the possession of his friends. Miss Stedman's address is 206 West 106th street, New York City.

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The Houghton Mifflin Company has published "The Life of Edgar Allan Poe," by George E. Woodberry, in two volumesan extension of the author's work written for the American Men of Letters Series, which he has now augmented with fresh material, while at the same time revising many of his former judgments and criticisms.

The journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his only unpublished writings, are soon to be issued in book form, probably in four volumes, by his son, Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, who is indexing and cross-indexing them to make clearer his father's theories.

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The Houghton Mifflin Company announces a new edition of The Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor " the fourteenth edition to appear since the work was first brought out, nearly forty years ago. Many portraits and an introduction by Ferris Greenslet have been added.

The "Essay on Shelley," by the late Francis Thompson, which appeared in the Dublin Review, is about to be republished in book form. In the course of a preface to the essay, George Wyndham describes it "the most important contribution to pure letters written in English during the last twenty years."

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Professor George McLean Harper's biography of Sainte-Beuve will be published this month by the Lippincotts, as the fourth volume of their French Men of Letters Series.

The literary reminiscences of William Winter are to appear in book form under the title of "Old Friends." Moffat, Yard & Co. will publish this volume.

Harper & Brothers have published a life of Thomas Nast, by Albert Bigelow Paine. The book is additionally valuable as a history of the cartoon and its development, along with the changes in processes of engraving and reproduction.

A life of Laurence Sterne has been completed by Professor Wilbur L. Cross, of Yale, and will be published soon.

A new publishing house, the Sturgis & Walton Company, has been established in New York. The senior partner is Lyman Sturgis, a former vice-president of the Macmillan Company. The junior member, Lawton L. Walton, was formerly secretary of the Macmillan Company. The firm will do a general publishing business.

A prize of $5,000 for the best essay on the progress of aerial navigation has been offered by King Leopold of Belgium. That the students of aeronautics from all over the world may have a chance to compete for the prize, King Leopold has provided that the work may be written in French, English, Flemish, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese. The jury which will award the prize will consist of three Belgians and four foreigners.

The third competition for the Paderewski prize is announced for this year, the prizes offered being as follows: (I.) One thousand dollars for a symphony or symphonic poem for full orchestra. (2.) Five hundred dollars for a concert piece for chorus and orchestra, solo voice parts optional. (3.) Five hundred dollars for a string quartette, quintette, or sextette, for any combination of instruments. The competition is open to any American-born composer. The compositions are to be sent to John A. Loud, 6 Newbury street, Boston, on or before September 1. No work that has been performed in public or in private is eligible. Compositions must be sent anonymously, accompanied by the composer's name in a sealed envelope.

Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, of the University of Chicago, has announced the conditions for the sixth annual competition for the best papers on topics of commerce and industry for prizes offered by Hart, Schaffner, & Marx. Prizes amounting to $1,500 will be given to successful competitors of three classes-persons who have received their bachelor's degree from an American college in 1896 or thereafter, college undergraduates, and persons without academic training. Manuscripts must be received by Professor Laughlin by June 1, 1910.

The Cassells have begun in London the publication of their new monthly, the New Magazine. The first number contains 112 pages of fiction, including fourteen short stories.

The Optimist Publishing Company, New York, which is connected with the Optimist Club of America, is to publish the Optimists' Magazine, which will be edited by Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Slicer. Dr. Slicer says: "Our editorial group will have distinction as writers, but we shall proclaim optimism, which is the best any man can wish for his fellowmen, and we shall not admit a writer to our pages who sings false when he sings, or sneers when he speaks."

America is to be the name of a new Catholic weekly review which is to be issued near Easter under the auspices of the Jesuits. Its title indicates its broad scope, for it is to represent the Catholic point of view in North and South America. In tone America will resemble the Tablet of London, and it will retain some of the features of the Messenger, which it will absorb. The chief

editor will be Rev. Fr. John J. Wynne.

The Metropolitan Magazine (New York), for six years conducted by Robert H. Russell, has passed into the hands of Melville E. Stone, Jr., son of the general manager of the Associated Press. Mr. Stone says that he will try to maintain the same general policy which the magazine has had, and that his only aim is to make it the most interesting and the most readable magazine published.

Charities and the Commons (New York) has changed its name to the Survey.

Noah Webster's "History of the United States" is published as No. 198 of the Old South Leaflets.

Although the past year has been a bad one for playwrights in France, the statistics just issued by the French Society of Authors show that in the last twelve months seven playwrights have earned more than $20,000 each, eight more than $10,000, twenty-seven between $5,000 and $10,000, twenty-eight between $2,500 and $5,000, and of 430 others, none has earned less than $1,000.

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It is said that Rostand's two plays, Cyrano de Bergerac" and "L'Aiglon," have paid him $2,500,000 in royalties.

Trollope rarely received more than $5,000 for a novel, but his remarkably sustained prolificness enabled him to earn a large income. The Bookman estimates his royalties from 1847 to 1879 as amounting to about $340,000. In three years he wrote fourteen books.

The Popular Science Monthly for April is a Darwin number.

George Selwyn Kimball died at Waverley, Mass., March 1, aged sixty-two.

Rev. Daniel March died March 2 at Woburn, Mass., aged ninety-two.

Sara King Wiley Drummond died at East Orange, N. J., March 7, aged thirty-seven. Charles Currier Beale died at West Medford, Mass., March 9, aged forty-four. Hinton Rowan Helper died in Washington March 9, aged eighty years.

Mrs. Elinor Macartney Lane died at Lynchburg, Va., March 15, aged forty-five. George T. Angell died in Boston March 16, aged eighty-two.

Mrs. Sallie Joy White died at Dedham, Mass., March 25, aged sixty-three.

Rev. James E. Gilbert, D. D., died in Washington March 26, aged sixty-nine. Henry Wood died in Brookline March 28, aged seventy-five.

Dr. James H. Canfield died in New York March 29, aged sixty-two.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS.

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An Act to Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person entitled thereto, upon complying with the provisions of this Act, shall have the exclusive right : (a) To print, reprint, publish, copy, and vend the copyrighted work;

(b) To translate the copyrighted work into other languages or dialects, or make any other version thereof, if it be a literary work; to dramatize it if it be a nondramatic work; to convert it into a novel or other non-dramatic work if it be a drama; to arrange or adapt it if it be a musical work; to complete, execute, and finish it if it be a model or design for a work of art;

(c) To deliver or authorize the delivery of the copyrighted work in public for profit if it be a lecture, sermon, address, or similar production;

(d) To perform or represent the copy

No. 5.

righted work publicly if it be a drama, or, if it be a dramatic work and not reproduced in copies for sale, to vend any manuscript or any record whatsoever thereof; to make or to procure the making of any transcription or record thereof by or from which, in whole or in part, it may in any manner or by any method be exhibited, performed, represented, produced, or reproduced; and to exhibit, perform, represent, produce, or reproduce it in any manner or by any method whatsoever;

(e) To perform the copyrighted work publicly for profit if it be a musical composition, and for the purpose of public performance for profit; and for the purposes set forth in sub-section (a) hereof, to make any arrangement or setting of it or of the melody of it in any system of notation or any form of record in which the thought of an author may be recorded and from which it may be read or reproduced: Provided, That the provisions of this Act, so far as they secure copyright controlling the parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically the musical work, shall include only compositions published and copyrighte after this Act goes into effect, and shall not include the works of a foreign author or composer unless the foreign state or nation of which such author or composer is a citizen or subject grants, either by treaty, convention, agreement, or law, to citizens of the United States similar rights: And provided further, and as a condition of extending the copyright control to such mechanical reproductions, That whenever the owner of a musical copyright has used or permitted or knowingly acquiesced in the use of the copyrighted

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