The Contributors' Club

I MUST take issue with that contributor in the Club for March who wishes to replace the distinction between prose and poetry with the much more limited and, as I think, inadequate one between prose and verse. “ The question is not,” so Coleridge says, “ whether there may not occur in prose an order of words which would be equally proper in a poem, nor whether there are not beautiful lines and sentences of frequent occurrence in good poems which would be equally becoming, as well as beautiful, in good prose; for neither the one nor the other has ever been denied or doubted by any one.” But he goes on to say that the true question must be whether there are not modes of expression, and especially a construction and an order of sentences, fitting in prose, out of place in poetry; and vice versa.

I find Coleridge sound and practical on this point, and he might have greatly cleared up the distinction we are talking of if he had not run off into long sentences and scattered his dicta in different places. Beautiful thoughts may be found conveyed in words measurable as verse, yet closely resembling prose when taken alone. “ And now my tongue’s use is no more to me than an unstringed viol or a harp.” These are two lines from Shakespeare that might have stood in Jeremy Taylor’s sermons. Yet they are verse. Does that distinguish them from imaginative prose? No; it is the way they rise out of the preceding verses, their position in the play, their keeping, in fine, which places them within the domain of poetry. Prose may be detached from its context without altering its character; but what we call poetry is so much more subtle that you often seriously maim it when you disjoin it from its succession. This violence does not alter it, though; if conceived as poetry, it remains poetry even when maltreated. Likewise beautiful prose, if conceived as such and evolved in a consistent prose surrounding, retains its own nature, however much in sympathy with that of poetry.

Mr. Stedman and the contributor might say that the two verses just given happen not to be preëminently musical. Is musicalness, then, the one missing element which would turn a beautiful thought, already measured off as a verse, into poetry? I doubt it; for there are hundreds of pages of “musical” prose which cannot be made into poetry, although the thoughts are beautiful. You might cut them up and rearrange them in verses, retaining the music and only slightly altering them, yet the theme and the whole progress of the thought about it will not admit of rendering such compositions into anything but prose. As instances, take some of Daniel Webster’s cadenced periods, or the “impassioned prose ” of De Quincey, which loses its peculiar glory the moment you try to consider it as poetry. Then, on the other hand, let us consider descriptive poems, the simplest love songs, or a composition like The Cotter’s Saturday Night of Burns, — pieces in which there is not always distinct beauty of thought, but which constitute one kind of poetry purely because of their grouping of words and pictures, combined with metre and rhyme, or rhythm and rhyme. In these the element of beautiful or grand thought may be absent, while the music is present. And here is a passage from Webster’s Duchess of Malfy, —

which might be paralleled in others of the old dramatists and in parts of Samson Agonistes, — a passage so free from restraint of metre that it may be read as prose. Yet it is poetic; and so is Milton’s prose often splendidly poetic without ever confusing itself with his poetry, properly so called. Mr. Stedman’s definition, “ beautiful thought expressed in musical words,”will not do, because it describes poetic prose as well as pure poetry. Hazlitt has furnished the best definition, though it needs qualification. Poetry, he says, is “ the natural impression of any object or event which excites an involuntary movement of imagination or passion, producing by sympathy a certain modulation ” of the sounds expressing it. He neglects to describe this modulation, but Coleridge has explained what it is. He reasons that a poem has for its immediate object pleasure, and is distinguished from other modes of composition by giving a delight in the whole at the same time that each and every part supplies a distinct gratification. Hence, in a poem one continually excites emotion for the sake of the pleasure it gives; but, while doing so, a spontaneous effort to check the play of emotion comes in, which results in forming metre. The rush of emotion is interrupted, and the pleasure prolonged, by this device. Now in prose there is comparatively little of this. Even in poetic prose there are many connecting portions put in for the sake of clearness, which would not be tolerated in poetry. And in poetry, the cheek which the mind puts upon itself for the sake of heightening the pleasure necessitates forms of expression and figures of speech which are utterly out of place in prose. No writer in the Club needs to be reminded how painful is composition in the prose form which affects the phraseology belonging peculiarly to poems. Equally unpleasant is the occurrence in prose of clauses or sentences too closely resembling verse. Dickens begins the last chapter of the Old Curiosity Shop with a line of blank verse:—

This has always jarred upon me, because it comes after a pathetic passage on the death of Nell’s grandfather, conceived and carried out in tender, vibrating prose; and the whole (to please my ear, at least) should be conceived as poetry and executed in verse, or else in prose, not admitting even a line of verse. In his Aristoteles and Callisthenes, Landor makes the second speaker refer to Aristotle’s care in avoiding the dactyl, which he calls “ the bind-weed of prose; ” and the two have some quiet fun over the difficulty there would be if Plato’s proposed banishment of the poets were carried out ; for even Aristotle, it is said, wrote no period in which there was not an iambic (that is, one iambus following another). But in the same conversation Aristotle declares: “ Among the writers of luxuriant and florid prose, however rich and fanciful, there never was one that wrote good poetry. . . . If ever a good poet should excel in prose, we who know how distinct are the qualities, and how great must be the comprehension and the vigor that unites them, shall contemplate him as an object of wonder and almost of worship.” Certainly ; if prose and poetry are the same, is n’t it strange that so few good poets have excelled in prose?

Although the two forms graze each other, and although Isaiah, Ossian, or Walt Whitman are poetic in their unversified language, the one form is just as distinct from the other as written prose is from colloquial, — the prose of Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme, who had talked it all his life without being conscious thereof. Both have truth for their object, but prose has it primarily and more directly; in poetry, pleasure arising from emotion and harmony is the first consideration,— with truth, of course, to support and ennoble the pleasure. Prose becomes poetic when it is passionate, resonant, rich in imagery; in short, when the pleasure to be given by its warmth of feeling and its style approaches that which poetry has in view. But it never becomes poetry. Scraps of verse occurring in it do not make it poetry, but simply bad prose. Poetry, on the other side, may at moments drop into strains resembling eloquent and poetic prose; but if it is good poetry this does not alter the total poetic effect; for a poem consists also in the mood that originates, underlies it, and in the relation of its parts and its union of qualities. It must have pleasing thought, feeling, or images, canorous words, verses, and an ensemble which holds the passages that border on prose in the poetic atmosphere still. Poetry is the “ music of language answering to the music of the mind.” Prose answers to the intonations of the mind, which fall just short of actual music.

— Some of our leading journals seem disposed to set down Lord Beaconsfield as a political charlatan, and to judge him from a jocular point of view.

I do not by any means feel sure that this is a correct diagnosis of the man, or of his possibilities as a power in both national and international statesmanship. It seems to me that if I were an Englishman I should watch him with alarm rather than with contempt or amusement, and that if I were a Russian I should hate him as a far-sighted and dangerous enemy of universal Slavic empire.

No doubt he is much guided by his imagination, and is disposed to move men by means of theatrical measures. But some of the greatest schemers and doers in history, such as Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon, have been men of unbridled and almost insane imagination. These same men, too, and other distinguished wielders of power, as for instance the Roman Catholic Church, have largely used the spectacular element in government. Has the world forgotten Napoleon’s order to gild the dome of the Invalides? Well, when Beaconsfield changed the queen into an empress, he gilded the dome of the British state; and I have little doubt that in so doing he pleased the fancy and the pride of the great majority of commonplace English people; I have scarcely less doubt that by this piece of so-called charlatanism he gave a longer lease to monarchical rule.

As for the transfer of Indian troops to Europe, a movement so widely ridiculed by civilians of liberal tendencies, and so generally stigmatized as a military idea worthy of the Grand Duchy of Gerolstein, I am inclined to regard it in a very serious light. The ultimate object of England in this Eastern Question, remember, is to prevent Russia from reaching India with either arms or intrigue, and so overthrowing the Indian empire. Hindostan may be considered as a fortress, or defensive position, which Britons are to hold against Muscovites. Now it is an established military maxim that a commandant who relies solely upon defensive warfare, and never uses sorties or other aggressive tactics, will in the end surrender his stronghold. This rule applies, in a certain measure at least, to the defense of an outlying province. Every one acquainted with history will recollect scores of cases in point. No great soldier doubts that Hannibal covered Spain and Africa best while he was able to keep an army of Spaniards and Numidians in Italy.

Now, merely as a menace, merely to give warning of what England may do in the future, Beaconsfield has done wisely in sending a few thousand Sepoys to Malta. The world of civilians laughs, and perhaps Russian lieutenants laugh; but I do not believe that Todleben is hilarious over the demonstration. Let us suppose that a year ago England had forwarded to Bulgaria, not even a single native British regiment, but fifty or sixty Hindoo regiments, led and directed by British officers and strategists. One does not imagine, it is true, that Sepoys are as solid as Slavs, or that, even with Turkish help, they could always beat Ghourko and Skobeleff. But, considering the desperate nature of Osmanli resistance, it is probable that such a reinforcement would have turned a wavering balance against the invaders. Sixty thousand fair troops, backed by a sufficiency of money and supplies, might have enabled Osman Pasha to hold Plevna, and even have sent Russia north of the Danube.

We may be sure that the long heads of the Russian army have considered all this, and that they are capable of meditating upon the chances of the future as well as of the past. The calling of Sepoys to Malta is really a noticeable menace to the often hard-driven powers of continental Europe. It will not reëstablish Turkey, and probably was not meant to do that; but it is saying to Russia, in a language which every good soldier can understand: “ Keep away from the Indus, or we will pour India upon the Danube and the Baltic.” Everybody knows that England could do this, and that only the will to do it is lacking. There is not a warlike race in all the hundred millions of Hindostan which is not glad and proud to serve under the red-cross banner. It requires only a fiat from the people and Parliament of Great Britain to raise the Sepoy army to a million of men, and to send it in hordes wherever a keel can plow. That something of this sort has not occurred already only shows the good sense of the great nation which holds such a power latent. But drive that nation to extremities, and let it be guided, as now, by an imaginative adventurer of singular influence, and the world may yet see Rohillas and Rajpoots helping to dictate peace in Europe, and possibly to influence debates in London.

In short, to return to Lord Beaconsfield, I am disposed to consider him a man of real ability and honest audacity, all the more likely to do remarkable things because of his passion for the spectacular in statesmanship, and because of the fervid imagination which lies at the bottom of this passion.

— Having a desire to read Victor Hugo’s History of a Crime, and at the same time doubting whether I should care to preserve the book, I bought the ten-cent edition of the Franklin Square Library. Since thus committing myself as an accessary after the fact in the " shabby piracy " attacked by a writer in the Contributors’ Club for November last, I have turned back to The Atlantic of that date, to consider again the nature and enormity of my crime. The “ New York literary tramp ” who publishes the Riverside Library is accused of inflicting great wrong on four parties: the English author, whose work he steals; the American author, who cannot afford to sell his wares at a price which is remunerative to a man dealing in stolen property; the American publisher, who pays copyright to English authors; and the general reader, who has eyes to be ruined by a poor-faced, fine type set in unleaded columns. The first charge is not a very serious one, after all, in the absence of any international copyright, and in view of the almost unvarying custom of American and English publishers to issue such reprints as they please, with little or no regard to the foreign author. The second charge derives all its force from the third, which has none to spare because many American publishers do not pay copyright to English authors, — though they are proportionally more numerous than English publishers who pay American authors. There is absolutely nothing to be said, however, in extenuation of the outrageously small type, poor paper, and discreditable press-work of the library named by the writer in the Contributors’ Club. But there are now four of the cheap libraries of standard fiction in the field, all of which —except the one just referred to — are printed from fair-sized type, in a reasonably clear, careful manner (one of them having just been forced to a wholesome reformation by the action of Messrs. Harper and Brothers), and two of them on paper of quite satisfactory quality and appearance.

To be sure, they are in quarto form, three columns to the page, and are not likely to prove very durable; but one must not expect all the refinements of the art preservative for ten cents. They present many of the masterpieces of English literature, and good translations from the French and German, at such prices that anybody can buy them, and in such shape that they can be safely and easily read. They come into no competition with bound books: the persons who buy them certainly would not buy cloth editions. The most notable and pleasing fact in connection with them is that they are so largely bought by former habitual readers of the Texas Jack stripe of dime novel. The newsdealer who sold me the History of a Crime made one very suggestive remark. “ The oddest thing about the whole business,” said he, “is the number of calls I have for the best novels, in this shape, from men whom I used to think of as wanting only the worst class of publications I had on my counters.” Such men — women and children, too — can be won from the degrading reading to which they are accustomed only by the substitution for it of good literature, equally attractive and equally cheap. Public and circulating libraries accomplish a little; only a little. Bound books, or even the ordinary paper novels at fifty cents or seventy-five cents a copy, are absolutely beyond the means of these readers. Whatever is done at present must be done by such cheap agencies as the Franklin Square Library. The wide extent of their influence it is easy to see. Scarcely a news-stand or periodical store can be found which does not carry a large stock of them, and the numbers sold are enormous. On the other hand, the dime novels of a dozen years ago, and all the kindred novelettes, are now comparatively rare; the circulation of the weekly story papers, like the New York Weekly, too, is said to be much smaller.

To be sure, there is still an appalling amount of vicious reading matter sold at these same news-stands and periodical stores,—but Rome was not built in a day. I am disposed to rejoice over one rift in the clouds, rather than to lament because there are not two. In that millennial future when Philanthropy shall become a book publisher, doubtless there will be no need of such agencies as these cheap pamphlets; but in the present era of only half-enlightened selfishness, they are almost a sine qua non.

— Have you ever seen a negro hymnbook? I have had in my hands two such collections; no travesties, mind you, but the simon pure spiritual pabulum which ministers to the needs of many thousands of American citizens. Both bear abundant internal evidence of having been taken down from the lips of traditional depositaries, as Sir Walter Scott preserved the rough-riding metrical chronicles of the border. One is by a Rev. Somebody or other, whether black or white I know not. But no clew is given to the author of any of the pieces, nor is it likely that the compilers are wiser on that point than ourselves.

These real “ negro minstrels ” are as fond of refrains as any poet of the modern mediæval school, and even more ingenious in their misapplication. For instance, how would it be possible to show a loftier indifference to the logical connection of ideas than is found in that first poem of collection No. 1: —

So it goes on, alternating a kind of recitative of the archangelic conflict, with personal appeals to the dear ones left behind. Perhaps a credulous metaphysician may find some relationship between the dissimilar sets of ideas above indicated; but I think the explanation is simply this : the refrain, expressing a real touching human thought, is first evolved or composed, and it then becomes necessary to have material for filling up the body of the song or chant. This some Biblical narrative or tradition founded thereon most readily supplies, and, as the negroes have some natural notion of rhythm, the poem becomes complete.

They are mightily fond of these recitatives, and will run on for the hour about Joseph and his brethren, or Abraham and the ram in the bushes, or the adventures of Daniel, with the incongruous refrain chiming in not unmelodiously after every line or so. And to say the truth you lose all sense of the ludicrous yourself as (for instance) you he back in the shadow of the sail and listen lazily, with half-shut eyes, to the lulling sounds that sweep over you out on the ripples of the Chesapeake. And all the while the jolly, half-chanting, half-crooning darkey, all bronze and tatters, keeps time with head and hands and feet on the summit of a great pile of grain bags, or listens with a roguish, bird-like slant of the head to the burden taken up by his unseen comrades below.

Then, I say, it is music and poetry. But in a book it is—well! You are told, with a terrible disregard of rhyme and all other conventionalities, how Jonah went to sea, and the storm began to blow so that they had to shut de do’. It seems that Jonah (suspiciously like a gentleman of color trying to steal a passage on a Bay steamboat) hid himself in the hold and pretended to be asleep. But the captain was too sharp for that. He takes him roughly by the shoulder, policeman fashion, and remarks, —

So Jonah has to go to the whale, and his further adventures are given with all the realism of a darkey who has taken ipecac in his time.

There is another which has an odd refrain. I wish I could remember it. No matter; the first two couplets of the poem proper are treasures in themselves, and they stick by me: —

The familiarity with which they speak of Christ is apt to produce an unpleasant sensation on first reading. Sometimes the lines look blasphemous. For instance,—

It requires some careful study to discover that the first line is addressed to Satan, and the other is merely a refrain, which would please them just as well at the end of a line of auctioneer’s catalogue as anywhere else.

Sometimes the compilers spell in accordance with English, sometimes in accordance with negro usage.

But the hymn which seems to have taken the greatest hold on their imaginations is known as The Gospel Train. It contains some thirty odd stanzas, describing the passengers as consisting of all the “loved ones gone before,” while the Saviour is engineer and brakeman, their ticket is faith, and their sole hope rests in getting on board in time. One of the quaint suggestions is that the engine will have to stop to “ wood up” on the line, which will give everybody a chance. But this is absent from some versions.

In fact, like all traditional songs, these religious melodies are continually undergoing alteration to suit the varying taste of reciters; and by far the greater portion of them pass out of memory soon after they are first improvised.

The negroes have also certain games, in which home-made verses play an important part. One of these is the squirrel game. Four play it. Of these, two stand upright like posts, and the remaining pair peep at one another over their shoulders, while all sing: —

Then the two peepers leave their shelter and begin slowly trotting around the other two, who sing,—

Then the pace grows faster and the song more excited: —

The finale I do not know.

Many negroes have a ludicrous habit of interjecting superfluous syllables between those of ordinary words, so as completely to change their meaning. In this way it came to pass that a negro coachman driving me up from a landing, and wishing to entertain me on the way, pointed out the residence of a gentleman near by, with the information that he had “ done gone investigated all his money in land.” The same man on another occasion complained that the cows were “ romancing all over de branch,” branch being the Eastern Shore term both for a small stream and the woods along its borders. Another in the same household, whose duty it was to sell the surplus dairy products, declared that he “hadn’t no use for Mr. So-and-so; didnlike him no way. He was always a tryin’ to locate de butter.” It turned out that he meant to “ beat down ” the price, to make it low.

— My friend Miriam HavishamBallad of Bricabrac I transcribe in full: —

— When Mark Twain wants another topic somewhat in the line of his Magnanimous-Incident Literature, I would suggest the illustration of a class of cases which come daily under the observation of every man in active life, but to which, I believe, no writer has yet given a categorical title.

A young man named Brown, let us say, having employed his half-holidays in college in reading the biographies of self-made men, sets out on his career with the brave resolve not to despise the day of small things; and accordingly, having applied in vain for various positions of trust in moneyed corporations, condescends at last to take the lowest place in a counting-room, carrying the mails, sweeping out the office o’ mornings, and running of errands, for the sake of getting a footing in the business and a chance to “ work up ” as his merit shall entitle him to promotion. In the mean time he is content to earn the meagre salary of five dollars a week, to be at his post early and late, and to live at an uncommonly cheap boarding-house.

Brown’s classmate Jones, who passed his half-holidays driving a fast livery horse about the country, has no such romantic notions. He is unwilling to stoop to tasks so menial, or to work at all for less pay than twenty dollars a week. So the unhappy youth is compelled to dwell in his father’s elegant mansion, and do nothing but dress himself, ride horseback in the park, read the newspapers, and go to the theatre.

Look on that picture and then on this, and finally witness the sequel.

A vacancy occurs in a twenty-dollar post in the counting-room, and the heads of the firm hold a consultation on the subject. An ingenuous partner urges the advancement of Brown, as a reward for his admirable conduct of the department now under his charge. But a worldly partner demurs, saying: “Not so. It is not every day that we can get so scholarly and well-bred a person to act as errand boy and man-of-all-work at five dollars a week; let us therefore enjoy the luxury as long as we may. Now, I know a young man, quite as well educated and even more prepossessing, who, while he would despise five dollars, can easily be got for twenty. Let us send for him.” Yielding to the worldly partner in this, as is their wont in all matters where hard, practical sense comes in conflict with pretty theory, the other members of the firm send for Jones, His faultless attire and white hands win him favor in their eyes, and he is promptly installed in the vacant place, where, for many years to come, he exercises that authority over Brown which his superior rank entitles him to.

Methinks employers may find food for reflection in this little tale; and moralists may learn from it to temper the severity of their reflections on the multitude of unemployed young men in our large cities, whose seeming disposition to idleness is possibly, after all, but worldly wisdom in disguise.

— Since the appearance of that powerfully depressing picture of the Second Empire, set forth in Daudet’s Nabob, I have looked in vain over many of the reviews and comments upon the characters therein to see if some one else was impressed as I was by the author’s treatment of Felicia Ruys, the woman artist. But whether they express it or not, I think few women can read the same without a sense of being personally somewhat cheapened and aggrieved. Not, however, that any thinking reader can long nurse a grievance of this sort against the author. If there were a shade of petty malice, a vestige of flippant verbiage, discernible, one might suspect he held the poor, fettered, stormy soul of Felicia upon the point of his pen for the display of his own literary legerdemain, but the respectful pity, the Gothic earnestness, with which he follows his subject leaves no doubt of its truth, nor of the weight of its impression upon him.

The glimpse, or rather full view, he gives of the suspicions which ever dog the steps of Felicia, because she was nurtured amidst all the freedom of her father’s studio, seems strangely inconsistent with that reverence for the art career which most of us are wont to believe flourishes everywhere outside of our own country, — more especially in such a cradle of art as is France.

We do not wonder at the double-distilled hypocrite Jenkins, nor at the hawkeyed man of the world De Mora, but even the virtuous young Paul de Géry, while talking with Felicia, checks himself lest he should desecrate the name of the girl he loves by mentioning it within that studio. Surely some of our own hard-headed Philistines, who think a woman is reaching the last round of degradation when she essays to sketch from the living model, can carry their blind prejudices no further than do some of the people Daudet introduces us to in art-loving Paris.

—A “truthful record” of a literary experience, in the Contributors’ Club for August, induces me to tell my story.

I arrived in New York from the―

just eight years ago. I was forty-two, and without any literary experience. When I was twenty-five I had, in a dilettante way, written some two or three stories, which had appeared in ——. In 1870, with a family of four, without a penny in my pocket, utterly unknown in New York, I had to work with my pen, or starve. My very first article was accepted by the leading magazine in the country. I felt no elation, for I was wise enough to attribute this more to luck than merit. I became a subaltern on the staff of a leading New York daily. I accepted the worst and most badly paid drudgery. I snapped, jackal-like, at anything and everything that was thrown me. Some of the business of that paper required my walking through the streets, winter and summer, for ten hours every day, and writing six hours more. I shivered under thin clothing in winter, having no overcoat. This work I kept up incessantly for eleven months. With all this labor, my board bill was frequently in arrears. I often had no stockings, and my shoes were badly broken. Overwork, scanty food, and exposure brought on a terrible illness, a complication of diseases. I had brain fever, jaundice, and came within an ace of losing my leg. I hobbled on crutches. I went to work when convalescent, and had a relapse. My doctor advised no brain work, but that would have turned my wife and children into the street. When in mental agony, when children were ill (I had a babe born just then), when there was no money to buy medicine, when my wife took my place beside the poor little sufferers’ beds, I had to write as a relief for my mind; otherwise I might have gone mad. The history of my first successful story is worth recording. I had just lost a child, and to forget my sorrows I wrote. I was so poor that I could not buy paper. One of my boys had copy-books supplied by the common schools, one side of the leaf only having been written on. I used the blank pages. When my story was completed, I could barely spare the ten cents necessary for the purchase of fair paper on which to copy it. I sent my story to―. I received very promptly a letter from the editor, requesting me to call upon him. The story might suit, only it was too long for them. Would I curtail it? It might be then considered, the editor said. I took the story home, rewrote it, offered it, and it was declined. I was not a bit dismayed. I felt that my story was better than it had been. I took it in person to―. I remember an amusing talk with the editor, when I presented my story. I dare say I was very untidy. Was my story good, — really good? the editor of―asked, as he examined a broken shoe and the fringed bottoms of my trousers. That editor seemed skeptical as to whether such a shabby-looking man could write anything good. The story was returned, I am inclined to think, unread. I honestly confess that I have a little dodge of my own, which always informs me whether any copy I may have sent in has been read. My only revenge on this editor now is that though he prints a good deal I never read him. I sent my story to―, and it was accepted. I felt a little triumph now, as I had reached a higher literary medium than had the other magazines taken it. But it was two years before the story was published, and then without my name. More work was given me on my newspaper. I believe I originated a new kind of article, which was in demand. Still, my work only half supported me. I started a trade journal, without capital. I was editor, publisher, advertising agent, clerk, office boy, and all. It was a fair venture, for after I had carried it alone for a year there was no loss. But my time was too precious, and I had to give it up. I could not wait for results. With a hundred dollars at my disposal it would have become a valuable property. Somebody else followed out my idea, and today makes a handsome living out of it. For three years I was looking out for a steady place, and at last I found one; a weekly, just starting, wanted a drudge. The salary I asked for my services was so modest that I was taken on trial. I rapidly mastered all the details, and soon became assistant editor. I studied hard to acquire a certain branch of natural history which was requisite for the paper, and I succeeded. As almost every person on the paper was constantly intoxicated, I sometimes wrote that weekly up from beginning to end. I lost my position on the daily paper, though I contributed to it as an outsider whenever the chance permitted. In any interval of time I wrote magazine stories. I always offered them first to the leading magazine in New York, where they were invariably declined, to be accepted by some other magazine. I occasionally made five dollars by writing puffs. I differed with the tipsy editor of the weekly, and left it, after a year of very severe work. I regained my position on the daily. Shortly after this there was a change in the weekly I had helped to start, and I was recalled. I wanted two strings to my bow, and now I had them. To-day I have all the work I can get through. I rise at five, and devote fifteen hours to my literary labors. Every month I have to read all the American and English magazines, the lights and the heavies. Besides this, I read professionally some fifteen English books, with some half dozen French ones, during the month. Occasionally I read manuscripts for publishers. I earn some $2700 a year. The time I spend in the cars, going and coming from my office, must be devoted to reading. I am very tired and jaded at night, but as I sleep soundly I rise fairly fresh next morning. If I had more time I would write more stories; perhaps attempt a novel. Of course I have written my play, which I have not offered. Irrespective of magazines, what I send them now is always accepted. I am fortunate in not having an unsold manuscript in my drawer. I am fifty; am temperate, in one sense, not taking a glass of wine once a month, but am an intemperate smoker. I have not had a real holiday for four years. For five years I have not read six books for my own pleasure. I have no Sabbaths. If I did not work on Sunday I should have to sit up one whole night during the week to make up for lost time. I long for a day of rest. A great deal of work, I am afraid, has taken away my zest for play. If I have not a book in my hand, I am unhappy. I have, thank God, made for myself and family a modest position. The only regret I feel is that I did not begin a literary career sooner; then I might have been something. I am satisfied that story or novel writing alone leads to starvation, unless you are illustrious. A literary man must have the fixed weekly wage which comes from drudgery. This is the nécessaire; storywriting is the superflue. The first gives the bread; the last the caviare. It is very fine to chisel statues and chase caskets, but to cut flagging or stamp out ten-penny nails is a much surer trade. In my experience I have found the judgment of magazine editors to be invariably correct. If my contributions have been declined by one magazine, and accepted by another, I have always fancied that there were good reasons.

To conclude: it is my business now to become weary over much trash and twaddle sent me to read. Yet I never throw aside a stupid crudity without a pang. I have known how life almost depended on the acceptance of a manuscript of mine, which would have brought me three dollars.

I have no fault to find with my profession. If at forty-two I had taken a clerkship, it is doubtful whether in eight years I should have had a better position than the one I now occupy; for notwithstanding my work, which I think is fairly heavy, I am my own master.

—A correspondent in the June Atlantic asks for an explanation of the reason why English and American printers use the circumflex accent in the word chalet. It arises from ignorance on the part of the compositor, who reasons that if the accent is required in the same syllable of the word château, of course it should be retained in chalet; and the proof-reader fails to note the error. The same offending accent is at times found surreptitiously introduced into the first syllable of Chateaubriand. But a far less excusable error is the following, which, while rarer on this side of the Atlantic, is almost universal among English writers, namely, the use of the grave accent in a priori and a posteriori, as though they were of French instead of Latin derivation. Nine out of ten among English authors, including the most learned and scientific, continually make this mistake.