parts into three chapters, naming the chapters in advance. This serves me for a chart, which I carry with me constantly. I also keep a small ledger, in which I enter the name of every new character as soon as I create him. I have found this necessary, for I never think of my story until Friday night of each week, and am apt, therefore, to forget the name of one of my characters after I have sent my former week's instalment to the printers. Experience has taught me that this chart and ledger system is very useful. On Friday night I take out my chart, look up the situation, and see what is to be told next; then I set to work making my characters talk and act as naturally as I know how until I have nearly completed my instalment. Then I devise some little incident that will carry the interest over to my next instalment, and split the incident in half with a 'To be continued.' Then I send my matter to the printers, and think no more about it until the following week. In this way I carry sometimes three serials, devoting an evening a week to each until finished."

"Of all that you have written, what have you taken the most enjoyment in?" I asked.

"The words I have taken the most pleasure in writing are those constituting the brief sentence, 'To be continued,' which ends my instalments," answered the author, with a quiet smile. - Edward W. Bok, in the Philadelphia Times.

TYPEWRITER OR PEN?

Quite a good deal of excitement has been caused of late in the literary and journalistic worlds by the decree sent forth from one of the largest receivers of manuscripts in the metropolis, to the effect that only typewritten copy would be read, all other to be returned without inspection.

A band of editors who make up the big daily papers recently gathered together to discuss the matter, but from varying opinions were not able to come to any definite conclusion as to the general adoption of this rule.

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'Typewritten copy is much the easier to edit," said Mr. George Spinney, of the New York Times. "There is always more room between the lines and more space between the letters. Besides, one can get a better idea of how a piece of news is going to look in a newspaper by seeing it in type, for faults never look so prominent in writing."

Ballard Smith, the managing editor of the World, is known to be much in favor of typewritten copy. "Why," said he, "typewritten copy is the only per

fect copy to have, but, at the same time, no paper can afford to deal with this alone, especially a daily. The weeklies and monthlies can cling to this idea of accepting only typewritten copy with more tena ciousness than can the dailies from the lack of time given for the preparation of the news and wide diversification and scope of the subjects."

"All our gilt-edged copy comes to us it the author's own handwriting," said Mr. Richard Watson Gilder of the Century Magazine, “but I much prefer the typewritten, for my part. It is better for the eyes and more pacifying to the nerves. Many of our contributors are heroes in the work, and it would never do for us to demand their manuscripts in type. Most young writers send typewritten contributions. They seem to have caught the right idea about the troubles and trials of the manuscript readers in deciphering the illegible chirography of the modern author."

"I like the copy from the typewriter," said Editor Bowers, of the Tribune," on account of its plainness, but, unfortunately, I do not handle much of it. I wish I did, as it saves time for the editor and compositor as well. If the typewriter had been in. vented in Horace Greeley's time, no doubt it would have prolonged the lives of a good many compositors on this sheet."

"I have used the typewritten copy for a good many years now. I guess I was one of the pioneers in this movement of progress," said Joe Howard, Jr., the ubiquitous and omnipresent Gotham cor respondent. "It saves time, and time is money."

Mr. Carrington, one of the editors of Scribner's Magazine, was asked the question, "If the author wrote a thoroughly legible hand and made clean copy, would it not be just as acceptable to the editorial eye as a typewritten manuscript?"

"No," he replied. "Typewritten manuscript is by far the most acceptable. Still there is nothing prettier to me than the fine old Italian hand in vogue among the old authors. It is getting to be more and more the custom of literary people to either typewrite their own manuscript or dictate to a secretary."

"Well, you know the difference," said John C. Reed, managing editor of the Recorder, "that exists between an article written and the same article in cold, hard type. There are some harsh things that get into papers now-a-days which would never get there if all the copy was typewritten instead of penned."

S. W. Foss, editor of the Yankee Blade and the New England Magazine, prefers the manuscript written. He says any manuscript dictated to, or

composed on, the typewriter comes out more or less incomplete in phraseology, thought, and action. Professional writers are not noted as speakers, therefore they cannot interpret their thoughts and ideas to a second party to the best advantage."

Edgar Saltus, the well-known novelist, dictates to a secretary, who has become so thoroughly conversant with his mannerisms that there is perfect harmony between them, and he finds it fully as satisfactory as manufacturing his own copy.

Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of St. Nicholas, refuses to accept anything but typewritten copy. She claims that the rule is proving so satisfactory that she has no desire to go back to the old system.

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‘Jennie June” ( Mrs. Croly ), editor of the Homemaker, writes a fine, legible hand, and is a great admirer of personalities in chirography. She tried a typewriter once, but the mechanical noise created by the machine intruded upon her thoughts to such an extent that she immediately rejoined the ranks of the good old-fashioned persons who indite their own thoughts.

Robert Louis Stevenson writes his own copy and corrects it himself. He thinks he can color his own

thoughts beter by pen and ink. He says that by dictation an expression loses its forcibleness.

An English correspondent says: "I ran across young Kipling early in the afternoon at the Savage Club; he was scribbling away like mad. I watched his fingers vibrate, and the veins grow larger and fuller as his pen ran quickly across the page. He seemed to infuse some of the physical exhilaration into the expressions he was consigning to paper. I asked him if he always wrote so quickly. He replied in the affirmative. 'I write when the idea comes. I cannot dictate. I must have the aid of pen and paper to express my thoughts.""

Amélie Rives writes all her own manuscript. The sheets of "The Quick or the Dead" were hardly dry when they were handed in at Lippin

cott's.

Tom Masson, a well-known writer of humorous verse, asked the editors of Life, Sun, Harper's Bazar, and Judge whether they would prefer his copy typewritten. They each assured him that his work was just as acceptable in his own writing.

A. Schade Van Westrum, the editor of Book Chat, thinks that composing one's thoughts on the typewriter promotes correctness of spelling, terseness in phraseology, and impedes tautological statements, which mar artistic writing.

Kate Field has so much to do in the editorial direction of her own weekly, much of whose pages

emanate from her own active mind, that she is obliged to adopt an ingenious device to utilize every moment of her time. Some time ago she inspected Edison's phonograph for the first time and became interested in its workings. Finding that she had not time enough to do all her writing and to attend to her executive duties, she hired a phonograph, and now, when she feels in the mood, she talks into it. In this way her private secretary is kept busy transferring the words of the phonograph to the machine while Miss Field is engaged in her other duties, thus reducing her lost time to a minimum.

Mrs. John Sherwood dictates to her stenographer a syndicate letter in an hour. She prefers the typewriter for swiftness and clearness, and deems it necessary for the saving of labor that editors or receivers of manuscripts should oblige contributors to send in typewritten manuscripts.

The typewriter is purely an American invention, and since its birth has secured a strong hold in the business and professional world. Its uses, once devoted to the merchant, the broker, and the lawyer, are widened to a larger scope, so that it has now become almost indispensable to the majority of the workers in the literary world. Its sterling merits have not yet crept across the ocean, and in European literary circles it is look upon with disfavor, and is very seldom used. — Margaret Hamm, in the Syracuse Herald.

FICTION AND DOMESTIC MISERY.

The novel of to-day, compared with its predecessor of even a decade, shows what great changes have taken place in thought and practice. Greater changes still are indicated, the tendency of which is to develop in woman hitherto unknown or unused powers of mind; but judging from representative fiction, these new endowments do not increase her happiness. The modern heroine may be compared to Joan of Arc. She sees visions and dreams dreams, and listens to strange and sometimes heavenly voices, and is more successful as leader, saint, and martyr than in the commonplace avocation of a wife.

As we read, we ask two questions: first, does the novel of to-day fairly represent the great number of loyal, happy wives who "thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's love," and are not afraid of wasted affection, realizing that no one can attain to anything greater than love? We wonder, too, how much literature of a certain class is responsible for the very evils it now, in some instances, lashes so

vigorously? Charles Lamb says that "the next thing to making a child an infidel is letting him know that there are infidels at all."

Is not much domestic unhappiness the result of suggestion on the part of some writers of fiction? The passionate love story; the deification of sudden romantic attachment; the advocating of unequal, improvident marriages; the bringing forward of the hysterical, selfish woman as an attractive type of character; and the insidious justification of the wrong-doer, be it husband or wife,- may not these have formed part of the first cause, the effect of which is the danger which threatens the home?

Jules Simon in the Revue de Famille makes a strong appeal to dramatists and novelists to assist in promoting sound and sensible ideas regarding the relations of the sexes. He would have them turn from the psychology of the passions to the study of moral obligation.

An appeal might also be made to women, the readers of the world, to suffer no book to cross the threshold of the home which is not clean and wholesome in its teaching. Helen Jay, in Harper's Bazar.

BREVITY IN FICTION.

ages less Our ances

The interminable novel belongs to crowded and more leisurely than ours. tors of two hundred years ago could enjoy those impossible folio romances, as unreadable now as the Bodies of Divinity, with which they shared the field; and after a less monstrous bulk superseded the folios, "Clarissa Harlowe " could lure weeping admirers through eight volumes, and "Evelina" enchain attention through five. But when stage coaches gave way to steam, the mind learned to travel as rapidly as the body. The three-volume novel still lingers in England, a sad survival, by grace of Mudie. When the circulating library gives forth its long-delayed fiat, this cumbrous form will give way to American compactness. Half a century back, all our fiction, alike the reprints of Scott and Bulwer, and the originals of Cooper, Paulding, and Simms, appeared in two thinnish volumes; but for a generation or more the demand has been for that which can be held complete in the hand, if not carried in the pocket. Even the double-columned octavo practically ended with the war. The thin paper quarto, which can be rolled up in transit and tossed aside after perusal, has lost its pre-eminence of ten or fifteen years ago. For preservation, or even for sale at book stalls and on

the cars, the notable class of "12mo et infra" carries all before it. A solitary house, which deals solely in translations, still affects the two-volume form in careful moderation; but two volumes are usually held one too many for contemporary fiction.

now.

In the first place, life no longer lazily drags one foot after the other, but moves on wheels at from five to fifty miles an hour. To a dozen books worth reading in Scott's time there are a hundred Where a few topics demanded attention, a multitude are now knocking at our doors. Before this flood of inventions, and improvements, and contrivances came in, a single pursuit might engross one's energies; but the modern man must be Argus-eyed, — his brain is no longer a private house, but a hotel. The new order may not be wholly welcome or beneficent, but it has arrived, and apparently to stay. We are driven at this breakneck pace, whether we will or no; and whoever has anything to say to us by way of instruction or entertainment must know how to say it in compact and business-like fashion, for we can give him only a modicum of our precious time. Even if it be Meredith or Stevenson, other men and other books also must have their chance. - Frederic M. Bird, in Lippincott's Magazine.

LITERARY CRITICISM.

If literary criticism may be said to flourish among us at all, it certainly flourishes immensely, for it flows through the periodical press like a river that has burst its dykes. The quantity of it is prodigious, and it is a commodity of which, however the demand may be estimated, the supply will be sure to be, in any supposable extremity, the last thing to fail us. What strikes the observer above all, in such an affluence, is the unexpected proportion the discourse uttered bears to the objects discoursed of-the paucity of examples, of illustrations and productions, and the deluge of doctrine, suspended in the void, the profusion of talk, and the poverty of experiment, of what one may call literary conduct.

This, indeed, ceases to be an anomaly as soon as we look at the conditions of contemporary journalism. Then we see that these conditions have

engendered the practice of "reviewing”- -a practice that, in general, has nothing in common with the art of criticism. Periodical literature is a huge open mouth which has to be fed-a vessel of immense capacity which has to be filled. It is like a regular train which starts at an advertised hour,

but which is free to start only if every seat be occupied. The seats are many, the train is ponderously long, and hence the manufacture of dummies for the seasons when there are not passengers enough. A stuffed manikin is thrust into the empty seat, where it makes a creditable figure till the end of the journey. It looks sufficiently like a passenger, and you know it is not only when you perceive that it neither says anything nor gets out. The guard attends to it when the train is shunted, blows the cinders from its wooden face, and gives a different crook to its elbow, so that it may serve for another run.

In this way, in a well-conducted periodical, the blocks of remplissage are the dummies of criticism

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the recurrent, regulated billows in the ocean of talk. They have a reason for being, and the situation is simpler when we perceive it. It helps to explain the disproportion I just mentioned, as well, in many a case, as the quality of the particular discourse. It helps us to understand that the organs of public opinion" must be no less copious than punctual, that publicity must maintain its high standard, that ladies and gentlemen may turn an honest penny by the free expenditure of ink. It gives us a glimpse of the high figure presumably reached by all the honest pennies accumulated in the cause, and throws us quite into a glow over the march of civilization and the way we have organized our conveniences. From this point of view, it might indeed go far toward making us enthusiastic about our age. What is more calculated to inspire us with a just complacency than the sight of a new and flourishing industry, a fine economy of production? The great business of reviewing has, in its roaring routine, many of the signs of blooming health, many of the features which beguile one into rendering an involuntary homage to successful enterprise.

Yet it is not to be denied that certain captious persons are to be met who are not carried away by the spectacle, who look at it much askance, who see but dimly whither it tends, and who find no aid to vision even in the great light (about itself, its spirit, and its purposes, among other things) that it might have been expected to diffuse. "Is there any such great light at all?" we may imagine the most restless of the sceptics to inquire, "and is n't the effect rather one of a certain kind of pretentious and unprofitable gloom?" The vulgarity, the crudity, the stupidity, which this cherished combination of the off-hand review and of our wonderful system of publicity have put into circulation on so vast a scale may be represented in such a mood as

an unprecedented invention for darkening counsel. The bewildered spirit may ask itself, without speedy answer: What is the function in the life of a man of such a reverberation of platitude and irrelevance? Such a spirit will wonder how the life of man survives it, and above all, what is much more important, how literature resists it; whether, indeed, literature does resist it, and is not speedily going down beneath it. The signs of this catastrophe will not, in the case we suppose, be found too subtle to be pointed out the failure of distinction, the failure of style, the failure of knowledge, the failure of thought. The case is, therefore, one for recognizing with dismay that we are paying a tremendous price for the diffusion of penmanship and opportunity, that the multiplication of endowments for chatter may be as fatal as an infectious disease, that literature lives essentially, in the sacred depths of its being, upon example, upon perfection wrought, that, like other sensitive organisms, it is highly susceptible of demoralization, and that nothing is better addressed than irresponsible pedagogy to making it lose faith in itself. To talk about it clumsily is to poison the air it breathes, and the consequence of that sort of taint is that it dwindles and dies. We may, of course, continue to talk about it long after it is dead, and there is every appearance that this is mainly the way in which our descendants will hear of it; not perhaps that they will much regret its departure, with our report to go by.

This, I am aware, is a dismal impression, and I do not pretend to state the case gaily. The most I can say is that there are times and places in which it strikes one as less desperate than at others. One of the places is Paris, and one of the times is some comfortable occasion of being there. The custom of rough and ready reviewing is, among the French, much less rooted than with us, and the dignity of criticism is, to my perception, in consequence much higher. The art is felt to be one of the most difficult, the most delicate, the most occasional, and the material on which it is exercised is subject to selection, to restriction. That is, whether or no the French are always right as to what they do notice, they strike me as infallible as to what they don't. They publish hundreds of books which are never noticed at all, and yet they are much neater bookmakers than we. It is recognized that such volumes have nothing to say to the critical sense, that they do not belong to literature, and the possession of the critical sense is exactly what makes it impossible to read them and dreary to discuss them places them, as part of critical experience,

out of the question. The critical sense, in France, ne se derange pas, as the phrase is, for so little.

No one would deny, on the other hand, that when it does set itself in motion, it goes further than with us. It handles the subject, in general, with finer finger tips. The bluntness of ours, as tactile implements addressed to an exquisite process, is still sometimes surprising, even after frequent exhibition. For an exquisite process, in literature, it surely is the critical; and that is precisely why the rough commercial appraisement into which we have vulgarized it raises such injurious presumptions. It is impossible not to be suspicious of criticism that is administered stertorously, and with bucket and currycomb, like the grooming of a horse; or with a consciousness of the rarity of the critical sense, to accept the miracle of its being crumbed up and dealt all around. We blunder in and out of the affair as if it were a railway station - the easiest and most public of the arts. It is in reality the most complicated and the most particular. The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and that the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions. It is a gift inestimably precious and beautiful; therefore, so far from thinking that it passes overmuch from hand to hand, one knows that one has only to stand by the counter an hour to see that business is done with baser coin.

We have too many small school matters, yet not only do I not question in literature the high utility of criticism, but I should be tempted to say that the part it plays may be the supremely beneficent one when it proceeds from deep sources, from the efficient combination of experience and perception. In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of mankind, a torch-bearing outrider, the interpreter par excellence. The more we have of such the better, though there will surely always be obstacles enough to our having many. When one thinks of the outfit required for fine work in this spirit, one is ready to pay almost any homage to the intelligence that has put it on; and when one considers the noble figure completely equipped, armed cap-à-pie in curiosity and sympathy, one falls in love with one's conception. It certainly represents the knight who has knelt through his long vigil and who has the piety of his office. For there is something sacrificial in his function, inasmuch as he offers himself as a general touchstone. To lend himself, to pro. ject himself and steep himself, to feel and feel till he understands, and to understand so well that he can say, to have perception at the pitch of passion ..and expression in the form of talent, to be infinitely

curious and incorrigibly patient, with the intensely fixed idea of turning character, and genius, and history inside out, — these are ideas to give an active mind a high programme, and to add the element of artistic beauty to the conception of success. Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he vibrates with intellectual experience, is the critic a valuable instrument; for in literature, assuredly, criticism is the critic, just as art is the artist; it being assuredly the artist who invented art and the critic who invented criticism, and not the other way round.

And it is with the kinds of criticism exactly as it is with the kinds of art-the best kind, the only kind worth speaking of, is the kind that the most living spirit gives us. There are a hundred labels and tickets, in all this matter, that have been pasted on from the outside, and appear to exist for the convenience of passers-by; but the critic who lives in the house, ranging through its innumerable chambers, knows nothing about the bills on the front. He only knows that the more impressions he has, the more he is able to record, and that the more he is saturated, poor fellow, the more he can give out. His life, at this rate, is heroic, for it is immensely vicarious. He has to understand for others and to interpret, and he is always under arms. He knows that the whole honor of the matter, for him, besides the success in his own eyes, depends upon his being indefatigably supple, and that is a formidable order.

Let me not speak, however, as if his work were a conscious grind, for the sense of effort is easily lost in the enthusiasm of curiosity. Any vocation has its hours of intensity that is so closely connected with life. That of the critic, in literature, is connected doubly, for he deals with life at second-hand as well as at first; that is, he deals with the experience of others, which he resolves into his own, and not of those invented and selected others with whom the novelist makes comfortable terms, but with the uncompromising swarm of authors, the clamorous children of history. He has to make them as vivid and as free as the novelist makes his puppets, and yet he has, as the phrase is, to take them as they come. We must be easy with him if the picture, even when the aim has really been to penetrate, is sometimes confused, for there are baffling and there are thankless subjects; and we compensate him, in the peculiar purity of our esteem, when the portrait is really, as it were, like the happy portraits of the other art, a translation into style. Henry James, in the Philadelphia Press.