"Why getting things sent back," was the prompt reply. "My first story was entitled 'Kate.' I sent it to every magazine in this country. Nobody would have it until it reached the Southern Literary Messenger. Its editor sent me word that he couldn't afford to pay me anything for it, but that if I would write a second serial story for him he would pay me $30. I wrote him a story of five instalments, and got my money. Then, in addition to my regular editorial duties, I began to write for The Round Table, Clapp's Saturday Press, Punchinello - indeed, everything that would take my work and pay for it." "Tell me the history of 'Rudder Grange.' "The chapters were written as separate sketches. I printed some of them in Srübner's when I was an assistant editor there. They were published four months apart. When collected, I offered them to one publisher after another, without success. Roberts Brothers, for example, were kind enough to send me a long letter explaining why they could not undertake the book. They'did not think the New Englanders would like it.' They had felt the public pulse, and they regretted to remark that it did not beat in warm throbs for me. This was pretty bad, and I asked the Scribners if they would be willing to undertake the book. They didn't wait to feel the public pulse, but they printed the volume, and it made a decided hit." "Was there much character study from life in the book?" 'It was founded largely upon my own experiences with one of the domestics in my own family. The canal boat? Oh! that was real, though we never lived in it. I found a family dwelling in just such a boat up at the Harlem River, near High Bridge. saw. I went up and spent several afternoons with them. The old boat lay high and dry on the flats, though the tide washed its base twice every day. The boat dwellers appeared to be quite comfortable, and the children led as merry a life as any I ever The domestic arrangements of the abandoned boat were excellent. An awning was extemporized over part of the deck, and in the cool of evening what had sheltered the Rudder Grangers' from the heat kept off the falling dew. Theoretically, it was an ideal life. It was such an existence as I imagined Thoreau might have revelled in. The boat was in many respects more commodious than his little cottage at Concord. What a splendid 'Rudder Granger ' he would have made! Possibly Pomona would have vexed him, just as she did us; but if he had essayed the experience, of course, he'd have got along without Pomona." "Tell me all about Pomona, please." "She was real — just as real as the boat and the family who dwelt therein. We lived at Rutherford Park. Mrs. Stockton went into the city one day and brought the young woman out. Before a week, we observed that she was an original character, and I began a careful and systematic study of her peculiarities. I never had seen but one Pomona. She was sui generis. She remained with us as long as we could stand her peculiarities; and yet we parted with her regretfully." "Ah! What became of her?" "There's the mystery - the part I must not tell you. She went on the stage, and you may read her stage name in the largest of letters on a hundred posters in New York during the season. Re. member, I say you may do so. Further than that I will not give you any clue. Pomona believed she was a born actress, and her career no doubt satisfies her mind that her confidence in herself was fully justified. Oh, no, she's not Lillian Russell. But who she is you cannot get from me with the boot or the thumb-screws. There are some temptations that I can resist. Looks to you like the greatest story of all? That's your newspaper instinct. I understand that. But the very qualities that render it attractive as a newspaper sensation destroys its desirability for my use." "What about "The Lady or the Tiger?'" "It had a peculiar origin, I must admit," was the reply. "A lady at Franklin had an evening party. I agreed to tell a story. I hit upon the two-door idea from a place in my house where there are two doors adjoining each other. But I could not write the story to suit me, and after rewriting it five times I was less and less satisfied. In spite of all I could do, apparently, the mystery obtruded itself too early in the story, thus foreshadowing the climax. If the definition sometimes given of a climax as being the point in a story or drama at which the reader ceases to read and begins to think be a good one, The Lady or the Tiger' admirably fills the requirements. Well, years after I got the story out, gave it another dressing up, and offered it to the Century people. They were in doubt, at first, to put it mildly, because it was not a complete story. The Century's editor finally published it, however, and from the public I found out a great deal that I never had known myself about the mystery. The most urgent suggestion? That I had better quit writing stories. The controversy got into the country debating societies, and the story as well as the author were torn into shreds. Mystery is the most desirable element in a story. As long as the mystery can be rationally sustained you are sure of the reader's attention. It must be carefully handled, however, or what the writer believes to be a mystery will be as clear as the noonday sun to everybody." "What is the solution of the mystery in this case?" "I really don't know which door was opened. I don't know how to find out. Every student of the feminine mind is quite as capable of arriving at a conclusion as I am." "How do you go about laying out a story?" "First, I lasso an idea. It may be a startling climax an effect, the causes leading up to which will of themselves develop a narrative. With the main idea fast in my possession, the rest is comparatively easy. I plan the story generally in my head, though I sometimes sketch it out roughly on a sheet or two of paper. I never take the trouble to work out the details. I crowd the interest in characters toward a certain fixed point in the narrative. Occasionally they protest and declare that they would not do what I make them do. Generally I like to see a character. I like a physical type, but I never copy anybody. Yet, strangely, I have to think of some face, of some acquaintance. The moral character is worked up by selecting traits from various men or women known to me. By combining antithetical characteristics I produce some curious varieties, just as the nurseryman succeeds in changing the colors of his flowering plants. The number of varieties that can be conjured up are infinite. Take, for example, the characteristics of any two ladies among your acquaintance, antithetical as to their temperaments; amalgamate them into one personality, and then begin to invent a line of conduct for her. You will be surprised to find how differently from either of the two individual entities the new creature of your handiwork will act. I dislike to rely on reading, because the ideas evolved are offsprings of another mind. I always feel, however new the thought that comes to me may be, that the author I am reading had had it in his mind and rejected it." "Do you prefer to have your characters play their parts in the country rather than the city?" "I never have laid an entire story in New York. Its life doesn't suit me. You can do more with your characters in the country. It is sometimes quite necessary to take one's characters into the city. When such a trip is obligatory, unless the locality we are about to visit is thoroughly wellknown to me, I get on the cars with my imaginary companions and go into town. The railroad does not collect any fare for them, and I have the supreme advantage of observing how they act when they think I am not about. I can study them when they are off their guard. It is a great advantage." "What is your daily stint?" was asked. "Usually about a thousand words. I rise about 7 o'clock in the summer season, breakfast, walk out in my grounds if the day be fair, and generally buckle down to work by 9 o'clock. I have no system. It is drudgery, pure and simple, and I do not disguise the fact from myself. I generally dictate. My wife is my best aid in this respect My amanuensis must be without a trace of nervousness, for I will wait an hour for the right word. I used to try to compose rapidly and do the finishing touches afterwards, but I found that the results were not nearly so satisfactory." "How long do you usually make your stories?" "I never wrote one longer than 160,000 words. Less than 100,000 words is not a satisfactory length. One thousand words per day is nothing for me; I used to write several thousand words daily when I was in the newspaper business. It is said by my critics, occasionally, that I am doing too much; I don't see how anybody can do less. I have three books published this summer, and I am now writing a long story, which I shall lay away a few months to ripen. I dislike to have any advance engagement about publishing. I am sure that the sale of a book is helped by its serial publication prior to its appearance in book form. The Late Mrs. Null' was not so printed. It was flashed on an unsuspecting public in covers. It is a good idea now and then to get out a book that has not been printed serially."—" On a Margin" ( Julius Chambars), in New York Sunday World. THE AUTHOR is published the fifteenth day of every month. It will be sent, post-paid, ONE YEAR for ONE DOLLAR. All subscriptions, whenever they may be received, must begin with the number for January 15, and be for one year. THE AUTHOR will be sent only to those subscribers who have paid their subscription fees in advance, and when subscriptions expire the names of subscribers will be taken off the list, unless an order for renewal, accompanied by remittance, is received. Due notice will be given to every subscriber of the expiration of his subscription. All drafts and money orders should be made payable to William H. Hills. Stamps, or local checks, should not be sent in payment for subscriptions. The American News Company, of New York, and the New England News Company, of Boston, are wholesale agents for THE AUTHOR. It may be ordered from any newsdealer, or directly, by mail, from the publisher. THE AUTHOR is kept on sale by Damrell & Upham (Old Corner Bookstore), Boston; Brentano Bros., New York, Washington, and Chicago; George F. Wharton, New Orleans; John Wanamaker, Philadelphia; and the principal newsdealers in other cities. Advertising rates will be sent on request. Contributions not used will be returned, if a stamped and addressed envelope is enclosed. to Tudor Jenks instead of to James C. Purdy, as it should have been. Friends of THE WRITER and THE AUTHOR will confer a favor if they will inquire at public libraries whether complete sets of the two magazines are on file. Both magazines are educational in their character, and, being the only magazines in the world devoted solely to explaining the practical details of literary work, they should be found in every public library in the United States. The number of complete sets available is rapidly diminishing, and librarians will find it impossible to get complete files unless they order soon. Unbound sets can no longer be supplied. THE "WRITER" FOR JULY. An interesting feature of THE WRITER for July is a fine frontispiece portrait of James Lane Allen, of Kentucky, the short-story writer, which is accompanied by a biographical sketch. THE WRITER will hereafter publish the portraits of literary celebrities from time to time, paying especial attention to authors who have just begun to attract general attention by the excellence of their work. The other contents of the July issue are: "Author and Editor," by Ella W. Ricker; "Must Americans Learn to Spell?" by Jeanie Porter Rudd; "The Cincinnati Monday Club," by Daisy Rhodes Campbell; "The Editorial We,'" by Leigh North; "Southern Literary Association Convention," by Sara H. Henton; "Arnold's 'Selections from Wordsworth,'” by A. L. Hanscom; Newspaper Enterprise," by M. Y. Beach; "Dialect and Slang," by Pamela M. A. Cole; Editorial - "Effects of the New Copyright Law"; with the usual departments entitled "Queries," "The Scrap Basket," "Book Reviews," "Helpful Hints and Suggestions," "Literary Articles in Periodicals," and "News and Notes." Henry M. Alden of their magazine, who is in years City Tribune. much time in wading about in the Chesapeake to form a more intimate acquaintance with the shellfish. Philadelphia Press. Browning. A correspondent of the Pall Mall Budget relates a new story about Browning, who had an instinctive dread of an after-dinner speech. At a dinner party he was assured that he could overcome this aversion to speech-making. After much good-humored resistance, says the writer, on his part to this view of the case, he at length said: "It is very curious that you should think me capable of making speeches, but I must admit that you have some justification." He then proceeded to recount to me an anecdote to this effect: Years before, on a Sunday afternoon, he was walking across Hyde Park, and came upon a crowd of people listening to an atheistic lecturer, who was denying the existence of God and scoffing at the doctrine which he denied. When he had finished, Browning - relying on the audience knowing as little of him personally as he knew of thempushed through the crowd, stepped up into the former speaker's place, and presented at -an little length the theistic doctrine. He promptly won the close attention of the people, threw himself warmly into the work, and, as he admitted to me, and even asserted with much hearty good humor, he carried the audience over to his side of the argument. Bashkirtseff. The letters of Marie Bashkirtseff, those which the New York Sun has just published, show that she was not above playing the part of Modeste Mignon, and opening correspondences with distinguished authors known to her only through their works. Her epistles to Mons. de M.-Maupassant? queries the Sun; and there seems to be some reason to believe so, judging from a literary allusion that is made in one of the letters- - are signed "Miss Hastings," and are abundantly foolish. To Edmond de Goncourt she generously offered her now famous Journal, offer which, evidently, he did not accept. It is very funny to find her saying to that delicate sensitiveplant, Zola, "I could wish you to be alone and in need of pity." Braddon. - Miss M. E. Braddon, the famous English authoress, writes to the Argonaut to complain against William Caldwell, a publisher of New York, who has printed in his Sunday newspaper a story entitled, "Tiger Head; or, The Ghost of an Avalanche," crediting the same to Miss M. E. Braddon, author of "Lady Audley's Secret," etc. Miss Braddon says that this alleged story was hashed from an old melodrama which she wrote years ago, and produced in Liverpool under the title of "The Missing Witness." It was never printed in any other form, and Miss Braddon repudiates the story emphatically. She says: "I have patiently seen fifty novels of my writing reprinted in America without the slightest pecuniary advantage to me, and I feel constrained to protest against frittering away of my name as a writer by giving it to stories that I am known not to have written." San Francisco Argonaut. some Green. Of Anna Katherine Green's experience in securing the publicaton of her famous novel, "The Leavenworth Case," by which she scored her first real success, the following is told: Her mother suggested that she should write a story. Anna replied that she could not do it, but felt that if she ever did it would be one with a plot. After thinking the matter over for some time she began "The Leavenworth Case." She wrote and rewrote, but said not a word to any one of what she was working at. When the book was about two-thirds written her father discovered what she was doing and discouraged her attempt. Having received his permission to read it to him she did so, and he then urged her to finish it. She labored on, and when it was completed she found it necessary to write much of it over again, until several large drawers were filled with manuscript which had been thrown aside. She took the book to G. P. Putnam's Sons and made a proposition to them to publish it. After considerable discussion Mr. Putnam agreed to look through the manuscript. He took the story with him on a business trip and started in to read it. The result was that he sat up all night and half neglected his business the next day to finish it. He was favorably taken by it, and told her so, but to her disappointment he was not sure that it would prove a financial success. He made this promise, however, that if she would cut 50,000 words out of it, and after doing so read it to Rossiter Johnson, the editor of the Little Classic Series, then, if he said that the story was one likely to succeed, the firm would publish it. Mr. Johnson was a very busy man and it was a difficult matter to secure his attention. His promise was finally obtained that he would come to Brooklyn and stop at her father's house from Saturday night until Monday morning. The interval was a very anxious one to her. The day arrived and with it came Rossiter Johnson. Immediately after dinner on Saturday night the little party sat down to hear the reading of the story by her. It lasted until early in the morning, when they retired. Immediately after breakfast it was resumed and continued throughout the day and late into Sunday night, with intervals only for meals. As chapter by chapter was read, the only comment made by the man who held the fate of the book in his hands was: "Another." The result was that he recommended it to the Putnams for publication. The author was disappointed, however, from the fact that she expected to earn a great deal of money by its sale, at the expense of universally harsh criticism. The reverse, however, happened. The first year she made very little money, but the book was everywhere received with great favor in fact, it is said that no book of modern fiction has been accorded as much distinc - tion as was "The Leavenworth Case." Through it she numbers among her friends and aquaintances men and women of the highest attainments in all the professions. - Brooklyn Eagle. Harte. Bret Harte is said to be receiving $15,000 a year for his literary work in England. He is still one of the most finished and fascinating of writers, if some of the freshness and novelty of his earliest work is lacking. His style is popular with the English, as, indeed, it should be popular everywhere. It will be remembered that when he first came East from California Bret Harte came under a contract that was to afford him something not far from the above-named sum. Messrs. Fields, Osgood, & Co., the predecessors of the Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. house, agreed to pay him $1,000 a month for a contribution in prose and poetry to each issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The arrangement was a failure, however, the mind of Mr. Harte refusing to respond to drafts upon it to order, as was stipulated in this case. The magazine soon came short of the promised work, and the contract, having failed to be carried out, was not renewed. Boston Herald. Hibbard. George A. Hibbard, who has won for himself within the last two years a reputation as a writer of short stories, is a young society man of Buffalo. In appearance he is of medium height, with a smooth shaven face, light hair and eyes. His features and build are heavy. His manner is quiet. His conversation is spiced with a dry sarcastic wit. He is as fond of art and music as he is of literature, and nearly as clever with his brush and bow as with his pen. A collection of his stories will soon appear in an attractive volume, entitled "Idna, and Other Stories." McClelland. Miss M. G. McClelland, the Vir. ginia novelist, has come to Baltimore for a short visit, and is the guest of her cousin, Mrs. A. G. Gillet, 1411 McCulloh street. Miss McClelland is the author of a number of well-known novels and novelettes, among the former being "Oblivion," "The Princess," "Jean Monteith," Madam Silva," "Burkett's Luck," and "A Self-Made Man." Her latest novel is "Eleanor Gwynn," and she has another now in press. 99 66 Miss McClelland is of middle age, tall and slender, and with iron gray hair parted over her forehead. She is a genuine Southern woman, kindly and cordial of manner, hearty and pleasant of voice. "I consider myself partly a Baltimore woman," she said yesterday, "for my mother was born here, and her brother, Frederick B. Graf, was for many years consul in Baltimore for Norway and Sweden. Yes, I am a distant cousin of General McClelland's family, although the ‘d’has been dropped from their name. I have been writing ever since I can remember, but my literary life began only seven years ago, when a little poem of mine was printed in a Western paper. How well I remember my wild delight at seeing myself in print, even in so modest a little effort. "Where is my home? Well, I think perhaps a description of my old home has been read oftentimes without its being known. In the first place, it is one of the 'deadest' parts of the country imaginable, but a very beautiful region notwithstanding. It is in Buckingham county, Va., and the land has been in the family since the original grant from the crown, in 1723. Right in front of Elm Cottage,' my home, is a gigantic elm tree, which is said to be the finest elm in the country, and was second only to the big one that was |