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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

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.

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"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. 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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Just as soon," for just "as lief."

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"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 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.

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Frederic Harrison has Clarity in Poetry. 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.

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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.

"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.

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Tietjens. Paul Tietjens. I've come from St. Louis to do this work with you,' he explained.

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The "I thought it over for a moment. idea seemed good, and I wondered I had Doubtless I never thought of it myself. could dramatize my book if I set about it, and the extravaganza suggestion caught my fancy at once. But my visitor was wholly unknown to me, and I hazarded a question as to his musical accomplishments. For answer he sat down at the piano and began to play. It was a minuet, a delicate, dreamy morceau, so dainty in conception, so rippling with melody that I drew a long breath when It the last sweet notes died away. afterward the famous Poppy Chorus' in 'The Wizard of Oz.'"-New York Herald. · Punctuation Origin of Punctuation. by means of stops and points is ascribed to Aristophanes, a grammarian of Alexandria, Egypt, who lived in the third century, B. C. Whatever his system may have been, it was subsequently neglected and forgotten, but was re-introduced by Charlemagne, the various stops and symbols being designed by Warnefried and Alcuin. The present system of punctuation was introduced in the latter part of the fifteenth century by Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer, who invented our marks full stop, colon, semi-colon, comma, of interrogation and exclamation, parenthesis and dash, hyphen, apostrophe and quotation marks. - New York World.

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Use and Punctuation of “O” and “Oh.”. "0" and "oh" should be distinguished. "O" is used before a noun or pronoun denoting the person spoken to, and is not directly followed by any mark of punctuation; "oh" is an interjection denoting pleasure, pain, surprise, or fear; as: —

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD SHAW. Henderson. Atlantic (38 c.) for February. WHERE THE FAERIE QUEENE WAS WRITTEN. Alice Meynell. Atlantic (38 c.) for February.

ARTHUR UPSON. With portrait. Putnam's Magazine (28 c.) for February.

MY STORY. VI. - - Rossetti's Last Days. Hall Caine. Appleton's Magazine (18 c.) for February. "IK MARVEL," MAN AND WRITER. With portrait. Joseph B. Gilder. American Monthly Review of Reviews (28 c.) for February.

MAJOR ORLANDO JAY SMITH. With portrait. Albert Shaw. American Monthly Review of Reviews (28 c.) for February.

FRENCH POETRY AND ENGLISH READERS. Matthews. Forum for February.

Brander

LINCOLN'S ENGLISH. Montgomery Schuyler. Forum for February.

DRAMATIC LITERATURE AND THEATRIC JOURNALISM. Clayton Hamilton. Forum for February.

THE HACK AND HIS PITTANCE. John Walcott. Bookman (28 c.) for February.

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON AND HER LONDON FRIENDSHIPS. Rittenhouse. Bookman Jessie B.

(28 c.) for February. When, O my countrymen, will you resent this treachery?"

"Oh, what a fearful plunge!"

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"O" is the interjection used with a noun in direct address. The point of exclamation always follows the whole expression; as, "To Thee, O God!" "Oh!" is used in the expression of joy, pain, and other emotions, and the point may follow it, as, "Oh! I have hurt my finger." Or the whole expression

WHY ENGLISH DOES NOT SIMPLIFY HER SPELLING. Max Eastman. North American Review (38 c.) for February.

AL

THE LOVE LETTERS OF GEORGE SAND AND III. Illustrated. Metropolitan FRED DE MUSSET. (18 c.) for February. POE, THE WEIRD GENIUS. Elisabeth E. Poe. Cosmopolitan for February.

HIS HOME AT ST. Alvan F. Sanborn. Munsey's for Feb

MAURICE MAETERLINCK AND WANDRILLE.

ruary.

How I WROTE MY GREATEST PLAY ("The Witching Hour"). With portrait. Augustus Thomas. Delineator (18 c.) for February.

CELEBRITIES AT HOME. - Arthur Brisbane. Illustrated. Harper's Weekly (13 c.) or January 9. EDGAR ALLAN POE. Illustrated. W. D. Howells. Harper's Weekly (13 c.) for January 16.

A FEW WORDS ON A MASTER MECHANICIAN ( Edgar Allan Poe ). Edith M. Thomas. Harper's Weekly 13 c.) for January 16.

EDGAR ALLAN POE. Illustrated. Collier's (13 c.) for January 16.

POE A PIONEER OF POETRY. With portrait. Wirt W. Barnitz. Christian Endeavor World for January 14. WILLIAM HAYES WARD EDITOR AND SCHOLAR. Howard Allen Bridgman. Congregationalist (13 c.) for January 16.

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Richard Walton Tully, who, in company with David Belasco, wrote The Rose of the Rancho," and his wife, Eleanor Gates Tully, author of "The Autobiography of a Prairie Girl" and "The Plow-woman," have bought a ranch near Alma, Calif., in the Santa Cruz mountains, and are engaged in the raising of horses from pure-bred Arab stock.

Miss Miriam Michelson, author of the successful novel, "In the Bishop's Carriage," and a sister of Professor Michelson, of the University of Chicago, who, because of his brilliant discoveries in physics, was recently

POE AND THE POETS OF HIS TIME. A. W. Jackson, awarded the Nobel prize, is associate editor

D. D. Christian Register (9 c.) for January 28.

NEWS AND NOTES.

George Du Maurier made an unexpected fortune, from "Trilby." Now his son, Major Guy Du Maurier, has produced the play, "An Englishman's Home," which is England's greatest theatrical success for years.

Jack London is ill in Sydney, and has given up the idea of continuing his journey around the world in his yacht, the Snark. Mr. London planned that it would take him five years or more to sail the Snark about the globe. He left Oakland Creek a year ago last April, and consequently has spent eighteen months on the first portion of the journey.

Myrtle Reed is spending the winter traveling for her health with her husband, James S. McCulloch. In spite of her travels, however, Mrs. Reed is busy on a new novel which her publishers, the Putnams, expect to receive punctually on April 2, the date of George Haven Putnam's birthday. For the last nine or ten years Mrs. Reed has celebrated this particular day by making it the occasion for sending in her latest novel, beautifully typewritten, as a special token of remembrance to her publishers. During this time they have sold more than 500,000 copies of her books.

D. Appleton & Co. have published in book form Hall Caine's autobiography, which has been running serially in Appleton's Magazine under the title of "My Story."

of the Liberator, the new weekly published at San Francisco by the Citizens League of Justice as propaganda for stimulation of public sentiment and the informing of the public mind in the warfare against business and political graft in progress in San Francisco.

George E. Woodberry has re-written his life of Edgar Allan Poe, published twenty years ago, and the result is a two-volume centenary biography, which is practically a new work, and which Houghton Mifflin Company will publish at the end of next month.

The "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," by his nephew, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, published first in 1876, will now be issued by the Harpers in this country in an edition made to include Macaulay's own "Marginalia.” This additional material first appeared in a separate volume, and recently was incorporated into the English edition, but has not before been published in America under one cover with the biography. It comprises the vigorous notes and comments made by Macaulay on the margins of his books illuminating criticisms past writers of antiquity and modern times, and some characteristic reminiscences.

on

The sketch of William Morris by Alfred Noyes brought out by the Macmillan Company in the English Men of Letters series aims to present Morris in the light of a character study, and in so doing it is interesting to note that it is chiefly in an analysis of his poetry that Mr. Noyes endeavors to set "the essential man" before his readers.

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In the first number of La Follette's Weekly Magazine, issued at Madison, Wis., January 9, by Senator Robert La Follette, the fiction department is represented by a strong story of newspaper life by W. J. Neidig, a Stanford University man. J. Herbert Quick is associate editor of the publication.

The Story-Press Corporation, Chicago, publisher of the Blue Book Magazine, has begun the publication of another magazine, called the Green-Book Album, devoted to the more entertaining aspect of the stage.

The Chicago Madrigal Club again offers a prize of $50 for an original poem which shall be used in its musical competition of 1909. Full details of the contest may be obtained from D. A. Clippinger, 410 Kimball Hall, Chicago.

Prizes to the amount of $15,000 are announced by the Woman's Home Journal, Springfield, Mass., for long and short stories, poems, and anecdotes.

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T. C. McClure has retired from the active management of the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. He is succeeded by R. B. McClure, who for a number of years has been associated with him in the management of the business.

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The Uncle Remus Memorial Association asks for funds for the purpose of erecting a suitable memorial to the late Joel Chandler Harris. The association proposes to buy Mr. Harris's old home, the Snap Bean Farm," together with his house, “The Sign of the Wren's Nest," converting the lawn in front of the house into a park, wherein it is proposed to erect a statue of the author and a memorial fountain, "with frieze containing all of the Uncle Remus' animals." Colonel R. J. Lowry, of the Lowry National bank, Atlanta, Ga., is the treasurer of the association.

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Whatever the merit of Marie Corelli's books may be, she must have a larger steady income from her writing than any other English author if it is true, as stated, that she has earned $60,000 a year for the last eighteen

years.

That literary labor is not quite at the pauper level in Germany appears from the fact that a prize of 30,000 marks, or $7,500, has been awarded by a family paper for the best novel submitted in competition. For his latest novel, "Das Hohe Lied," Sudermann is said to have received 60,000 marks, or $15,000. The German press argues on the basis of "such very large amounts" against the common belief that the drama pays better than fiction.

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The Sunday School Times of January 2 a Golden Jubilee number, celebrating fifty years of publication.

Mary Evelyn Moore Davis died in New Orleans January 1, aged fifty-seven.

Arthur William A'Beckett died in London January 14, aged sixty-five.

Hezba Stretton died in London January 21. She wrote first for Charles Dickens in 1859. Rev. Dr. Selah Merrill died at Fruitvale, Calif., January 22, aged seventy-one.

Martha Finley ("Martha Farquharson") died at Elkton, Md., January 30, aged eighty

one.

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