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William Inglis, writing intimately of the man in Harper's Weekly, says:

"There are so many Arthur Brisbanes that he is difficult to describe. Not one of them will stand still long enough to be weighed and measured. At one moment he is busy with the editorial thirteen-inch shells he hurls against the 'predatory rich'; the next he is all wrapped up in the fate of a nest of helpless little blind mice who must die because their mother has been trapped, or gravely and reverently discussing the character of God, or urging men who criticise others to find out their own faults first, or speculating about the happy future when we shall easily work, and play, and live upon the floor of the ocean. His writings have the power of Niagara's torrent and the delicacy of the radiant bow that hovers over it. Beneath a surface of the utmost simplicity, his prose is possessed of a subtlety and force that captivate every reader. In the Hearst newspapers he addresses daily in every part of the United States an audience of several millions of Americans : entertains them, charms, startles, persuades, fascinates them. He is always urging, exhorting, driving them to THINK for themselves and making them think his way. The crowd believes in him implicitly. The rich and powerful classes whom he bitterly assails hate his doctrine and like the man."

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Mr. Inglis tells how Mr. Brisbane climbed the stairs at his home to a big work-room filled with books. "In the midst of this big room a phonograph with a long brown horn was perched on a plain little table that looked like the stand of a sewing machine. Brisbane threw a switch that set the phonograph cylinder revolving, and he began to dictate an editorial. When he came down stairs an hour later he had three cylinders carefully wrapped in a paper box.

"Ever since his early fame as a reporter Brisbane has been noted for turning out a tremendous lot of copy, so it was with no idle curiosity that I asked him what was the greatest number of editorials he had ever done in one day.

"Once I did thirty-two in a day,' he replied. I began in the afternoon and dic

tated until I was through the last one. It was a case of need.'

"You had your subjects all thought out in advance, of course?'

"No, I had n't,' he answered. 'I had read the papers that day, as usual, and I had been looking around for a few days. It was n't a good way to work, though. I would n't do it again.'

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Consider the amount of labor compressed into that afternoon and evening: thirty-two editorials, averaging 1,000 words apiece! And then this extraordinary man probably worked as hard as ever next day. It is that wonderful resiliency, it seems to me, which chiefly distinguishes him from all other men. Other workers can toil prodigiously on occasion, but this man does a prodigious feat, then calmly proceeds about his business, as usual. Writing editorials is only part of his not daily industry probably one-third of it."

--

FitzGerald. One day in 1859 a certain personage by the name of Whiteley Stokes was walking along the streets of London. He paused in front of a book shop, being a lover of books, to look at the bargains offered in the stalls of the dealer outside his door. Fingering over the booklets in the penny box, he came upon a brown-covered pamphlet which had originally been published at five shillings, but which, apparently, had met with such a poor reception that it had faller to the level of the penny box. The pamphlet contained quatrains from the Persian of Omar Khayyam translated into English by an anonymous writer. Investing a penny, Stokes took the pamphlet home. After reading it, he passed it on to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who in turn read it and passed it on to Swinburne. All seemed to think that the verses were poetry of a high order, and spread the knowledge. It was discovered that the translation was by the well-known recluse, Edward FitzGerald, who two years previously had offered some of the less wicked" of the quatrains to Frazer's Magazine. The editor failing to recognize their merit, they did not appear in that publication, and FitzGerald, tired of scanning the pages for them, gave them to his publisher,

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Mr. Quaritch, who issued them in the fiveshilling pamphlet. FitzGerald was born March 31, 1809, at Bredfield House, near the market town of Woodbridge, in Suffolk. He died June 14, 1883, at Merton Rectory, Norfolk, and was buried at Boulge. - New York Tribune.

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CURRENT LITERARY TOPICS.

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The Plot of a Sardou Play. - Sardou working at a scenic adaptation of Voltaire's 'Candide," and it hung fire, not because there was no prospect of a dinner, but because his pipe was empty and he had not a penny wherewith to buy tobacco. Suddenly, on opening a drawer of his table, he uttered a cry of joy at the sight of five or six tickets of a "wine company" which gave its customers a voucher for twenty centimes for every bottle purchased. A quarter of an hour afterward he was the happy possessor of a silver franc piece and some sous, besides. Picking up a scrap of paper off the sanded floor of the tobacco shop, he was about to light his weed, when the words "Marie Laurent" caught his eye. The "unconsidered trifle" turned out to be the fragment of a letter from the well-known actress to her son Charles. Sardou put his find in his pocket, but on his way home his plot-weaving faculties, stimulated by the fumes of the tobacco, at once reasserted themselves.

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"The Prisoner of Zenda" school of novel has lost interest, also problem novels. "All the signs of a declining epoch are here," he maintained.

And this view is borne out by what men say who know the book trade in New York. According to one of them, the ultraromantic novel is quite dead. Only a few years ago books dealing with occurrences in mediaeval times were among the most popular with the public. Now, according to the above-mentioned publisher, the public will have none of them.

"Our firm," he remarked, "had a couple of very unfortunate experiences recently with novels of this sort."

When he was asked whether he noted any particular tendency in the books being published and read just now, he said that he saw a great glut of books which "attempt to make a novel out of a political tract." Novels of this sort, he pointed out, were originally called into being by the success of The Honorable Peter Stirling" some years ago. But, whereas that success was due primarily to the great interest attaching to the character of Peter Stirling himself as a man, aside from anything in the political side of the book, the new books - or many of them - make the political side their principal fea

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Another man connected with one of the largest publishing and book-selling houses in the city was inclined decidedly to apply what the London publisher said about the coming of a new literary era to this country, as well as to England.

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Readers of books," he said, are becoming interested more and more in what is good, and losing interest in what is merely trivial. Although the 'best sellers' of to-day sell just as widely, even more widely, in some cases, than a few years ago, when they first began to command immense sales, there is much less chance nowadays for the obscure novel. This is due to over-production. Novels which a few years ago were sure to sell a few thousand copies, enough to justify publishers for putting them on the market, now fall flat. Hence there are signs that during the coming year this over-production

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A Higher Standard Needed in Fiction.. is the plain truth that about ten times too many novels are now offered to the public. Even if they were all good, there would be danger of a surfeit. But since they are nearly all bad and the public has no "poison squad" except harrassed and good-natured reviewers, who would rather praise books than read them, it is not surprising that the impression has got abroad that fiction is exhausted. A more critical attitude on the part of publishers would work wonders for the reIvival of the art. To refuse to print any novels because so many bad ones are being written would be the height of absurdity. But a publisher who would insist upon real merit as a condition of publication would find that the problem of over-supply would miraculously disappear.

There are not, as a matter of fact, enough writers in the United States capable of really good work to give us a plethora. Let us put the people who write novels into five grades: (1) Geniuses; (2) conscientious artists; (3) hurried professionals; (4) talented amateurs; (5) the incompetent. Now if a country has one genius at work in fiction, it is lucky; two geniuses make a "period." As for the skilled and careful artists who refuse to be hurried and hold themselves up to the highest level of which they are capable, one might almost count them on the ten fingers. Nor can they flood the market, since they steadfastly refuse to do facile slipshod work. The bulk of contemporary fiction is necessarily produced by the remaining classes the industrious professional who has acquired a fluent technique, and

makes a comfortable living by turning out two or three well-padded novels every year; the talented amateur, who is formidable by his and her numbers; and the incompetent, whose other name is legion.

The result of insisting upon a high standard would be to shut out the flagrantly incompetent at once, and the sooner they turn their attention to something else, the better. It would compel the talented amateur to learn his art, and perhaps three years instead of three months would be required to produce a book that would pass muster. Real enthusiasts would give the needed time, without regard to compensation; the others would do better to take up some less laborious form of literary trifling society verse,

say, or limericks. The hard-trotting professional hacks would find themselves obliged to consider quality as well as quantity, and perhaps to spend a year on a novel to bring it up to the mark, instead of scribbling at the rate of a chapter a day. And the way would be left clear for the occasional genius and the few and fit among the artists. If there were less literary rubbish there would be more demand for the best new books; the literary-minded find them in any case, but it is otherwise with the larger public. - Springfield Republican.

The Possibilities of Poetry. Madison J. Cawein has permitted the New York Times Saturday Review of Books to print a letter written to him by T. B. Aldrich in 1902, in which Mr. Aldrich says:—

'As I once said among some notes in the Century Magazine: There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.' At the present moment dialectic inanities with a pleasant jingle to them find a ready market. Purely meditative poetry, poems of landscape, without figures or human action, never had a large sale in this country or any other country.

"But if any one of our poets of to-day were to produce a poem like Evangeline' or 'Snow-Bound,' he would lack neither publisher nor readers. The stagnation of the poetry market is not the fault of the lovers

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of poetry, but of the makers of it. kind that is wanted is not forthcoming. When the right note is struck there will be

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a loud response. Kipling's Recessional' found as many listeners as any poet could desire. Longfellow is the only American poet that ever made an ample yearly income (say ten or fifteen thousand dollars) by his verse. The poetical works of Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, and Emerson have met with only a moderate sale. Whittier's one notable success financially was 'Snow-Bound,' of which 20,000 copies were sold in the year of publication. I am told by Houghton Mifflin Company that the demand for Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, etc., has not fallen off. Small volumes of verse by men less famous are as remunerative as ever they were. During the last five years Houghton Mifflin Company have published (at their own expense) a score of such volumes. Several of them did not pay for the binding, several have been reprinted (in editions of 700 copies) two or three times. This is just the same fortune that would have attended these books had they been published twentyfive or thirty years ago.

"The situation in England is similar to that in the United States. In each case the one poet who had a great following is dead, and no one has come to take his place. Is it the fault of the public, or the poet who does n't come? Perhaps he is with us incognito. When Keats was laid in his grave at Rome, there were not twelve- no, there were not two-men in England who suspected that a great poet had been laid at rest. Leigh Hunt had a strong idea that Keats was a fine poet, but not as fine a poet as Leigh Hunt. Byron, Moore, Rogers, and Southey could not read The Eve of St. Agnes' and Hyperion.' No great poetry (except, possibly, in the case of Tennyson) was ever immediately popular; by immediately I mean in the poet's lifetime. Tennyson was neglected for years.

"I believe in a splendid literary future for this country. After the all-absorbing novelists have run their course, we shall have a generation, not of poets, perhaps, but of dramatists - blank verse fellows. Imagina

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"Nicely," in response to an inquiry. "Healthy," for wholesome." Just "as soon," for just "as lief." "Kind of," to indicate a moderate degree. How a Story Started.-The chance origin of a popular story is amusingly illustrated in the case of Mrs. Montgomery's "Anne of Green Gables." The author was asked to contribute a short serial for young readers to a Sunday school weekly. Looking through an old notebook for an idea, she came upon the following: "Elderly couple decide to adopt a boy from an orphan asylum. By mistake a girl is sent them." Forthwith she proceeded to block out her serial, but as she went on it grew so that she decided to expand it far beyond the limits set by the editor of the Sunday school publication. For him she wrote another tale, then starting to tell the story of "Anne" for its own sake.

Clarity in Poetry. - Frederic Harrison has been fluttering the dove cotes with some observations on poetry. "For my part," he has said, "I have no taste for conundrums, rhymed or unrhymed. I will read no poetry that does not tell me a plain tale in honest words, with easy rhythm and pure music." Whereupon he is praised by some writers for his common sense, and gravely reminded by others that "in the masters there are passages that do not give their ultimate meaning at a first careless reading, and that even in our own time there may be a kind of obscurity that may be described as necessary." Neither of these arguments is precisely to the point. That obscurity of any kind may be a necessity is surely a large assumption, calling for proofs which have not, as yet, been anywhere supplied. Then as to the existence of knotty "passages" in this or that master, it may be said that it leaves the broad justice of Mr. Harrison's contention untouched. You do not indict a poet because of one obscure passage or because of twenty. It is when obscurity is of the

very essence of his style that you rebel. "He has commentators," said Voltaire of Dante, which is one reason why nobody ever reads him." The witty saying is not valid, of course, where the Italian poet is concerned, but it embodies an idea of which the modern writer would do well to take account. Mr. Harrison himself, we dare say, makes no difficulty about reading his Dante with a commentary and struggling manfully with the obscurer passages. But he might do this and still, without any inconsistency, maintain the position he has announced. New York Tribune.

How "The Wizard of Oz" Was Written."It is quite true that some playwrights have success thrust upon them," said L. Frank Baum, the fairy tale author, whose extravaganza, "The Wizard of Oz," is now in its eighth year, and boasts the longest successful run in its class of entertainment.

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The thought of making my fairy tale into a play had never even occurred to me, when one evening my doorbell rang, and I found a spectacled young man standing on the mat. "Mr. Baum?' he inquired.

"Yes,' I said, 'what can I do for you?? "I want to write the music for your opera of "The Wizard of Oz,"' he answered. "There's a mistake,' I said somewhat stiffly, "The Wizard of Oz" is a book.' "But it ought to be a play an opera or extravaganza or something and I ought to write the music,' he insisted. "The young man interested me then. "Come in,' said I more cordially, and he walked into the hallway.

"Have you ever written the score for an opera?' I inquired.

"No,' said he, shifting on his feet uneasily, but I —— '

“Ah, I thought not.

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