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the boss of us all, Tennyson." Letters were read from Lord Tennyson, Richard Watson Gilder, Edmund Stedman, and others. Mr. Whitman has about ready what he considers his last book, entitled "Good-bye, My Fancy," and a sub-title, "Second Annex to 'Leaves of Grass.'" It comprises sixty-six pages of prose and verse. He says that many of his pieces were submitted to publishers and magazine editors, and "were peremptorily rejected by them." "To the Sunset Breeze" was rejected by Harper's as being an "improvisation" only, and "On Ye Jocund Twain " was returned by the Century as "personal merely."― Literary World.

LITERARY NEWS AND NOTES.

The first chapter of Amélie Rives' new novel will appear in the Cosmopolitan for August.

Mrs. Cynthia Morgan St. John, whose compilation, "Wordsworth for the Young," has just left the press of D. Lothrop Company, is a resident of Ithaca, N. Y.

"Old-fashioned Roses," a London edition of James Whitcomb Riley's poems, which has been out of print since the Bowen-Merrill Company fire of a year ago, is being reprinted. It will be the same neat little volume that it was in the first edition, and is expected to arrive shortly. Mr. Riley sailed May 27 for England, and will doubtless do Great Britain pretty thoroughly before his

return.

The author of "The Silence of Dean Maitland," who wrote under the pseudonym of Maxwell, is a Miss M. G. Tuttiett. She is the daughter of Dr. Tuttiett, of Newport on the Isle of Wight. She was born and brought up in this quiet home. Her first novel, "The Silence of Dean Maitland," excited a widespread interest, notably that of Alfred Tennyson. But, like many young authors, her first work has so far proved her best.

George Parsons Lathrop and his wife (Hawthorne's daughter), who recently joined the Roman Catholic Church, are living in New London, Conn. They offer a very marked contrast physically. Rose Hawthorne is a stout woman of medium height, with a handsome face and luxuriant reddish hair. Her husband is a short, thick-set man, with very dark hair and beard, and an olive complexion. He looks more like a Frenchman than an American, while his wife is thoroughly English in appearance. They have no children, their only child having died some years ago.

R. D. Blackmore, the author of "Lorna Doone," attended the annual dinner of the Booksellers' Provident Institution recently held in London. As he is something of a recluse, most of the authors at the dinner had never seen him before. He is rather old, with the face of a canny Scotch farmer, and a fringe of beard under his chin.

M. Dumas has written a preface to an anonymous book in praise of anonymity. He holds that thought should be crystallized into the forms used by Pascal and De la Rochefoucauld, and then cast upon the world without the author's name attached, so that it may be taken or rejected on its own merits.

Colonel John Hay has been suffering in London with the influenza.

"Whatever else we may think of this Russian censorship," says a writer in the Pall Mall Budget, "it must at least be admitted that its officials do their work conscientiously. A few copies of Miss Hawker's 'Mademoiselle Ixe' were recently posted to various addresses in Russia. They are now coming back to the senders-like the Lord Mayor's memorial - with the word 'Défendu' stamped on their covers. One of these returned copies now lies before me. Its leaves are cut from end to end, and evidently the book has been handled and read. Moreover, on turning over the pages, I find red pencil marks placed at various passages in the earlier part of the story. After a time they stop The censor saw, I suppose, that it was a clear case for prohibition, and did not trouble to score the obnoxious sentiments any further."

The author of "Vice Versa," F. Anstey, published some years ago a short story called "The Black Poodle," which was translated into French and published with proper acknowledgment in the Revue des Deux Mondes. A few weeks ago the author, in a Parisian book-shop, found a volume styled "Le Caniche Noir," dedicated "by the author" to a lady of rank. It was "The Black Poodle." The scene was changed to France; the poodle's master was now an Italian, not a FrenchMr. Anstey then wrote a letter, in French, to the French author, signing not his own name, asking permission to render "Le Caniche Noir" into English. The author answered in English that he did not think his book deserved the praises libererally heaped on it by Mr. Anstey. "About your demand of adaptation, I am sorry to tell you that I am my own translator, and that the 'Caniche Noir' exists in English already."

man.

The June number of the North American Review is the 415th issue of that standard periodical, and brings to a close the 152d volume, of which a careful index is included in this number.

"The Science of Language," by Professor Max Müller, founded on the lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, will be published shortly by the Scribners. The book embodies the results of the author's studies during the past thirty years. Lowell says "the secret of force in writing lies not so much of the pedigree of nouns, and adjectives, and verbs as in having something you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it."

George E. Woodberry, of Beverly, the wellknown poet and critic, has been elected professor of literature at Columbia College, New York City. Miss Abigail Dodge -"Gail Hamilton "- has been in Beverly, Mass., recently, with her brother Stanwood Dodge, who has been quite ill.

Leslie Stephen, owing to ill-health, has been obliged to resign the editorship of the “Dictionary of National Biography," but hopes still to be able to contribute to it.

The manuscripts of all George Eliot's novels, except those of "Scenes from Clerical Life," have become the property of the British Museum, through the death of Charles Lewes. The penmanship is said to be very neat and legible, and a dedication to George Henry Lewes is prefixed to each manuscript.

Joseph Cook, after a long lecture tour in the West, has gone to his summer home in Ticonderoga, N. Y., where he will occupy himself with his regular literary work.

"Grace Greenwood" (Mrs. Sarah J. Lippincott) denies the published statement that she is blind, or nearly so. She says: "My trouble is, I hope, only a common and temporary visual weakness, resulting from too constant and merciless use of eyes originally very strong during a time of sorrow and severe sickness." Mrs. Lippincott lives now on Capitol Hill, Washington.

The largest sum ever paid for a single novel is said to have been $200,000 to Alphonse Daudet, for "Sappho," published in 1884. Eighty thousand dollars was received by Victor Hugo for "Les Miserables" (1862), published in ten languages. Lord Beaconsfield received $60,000 each for "Endymion" and "Lothair." George Eliot received $40,000 for "Middlemarch," and Charles Dickens $37,500 for "Edwin Drood."

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson is to edit another volume of Emily Dickinson's poems, and is also to have his Nineteenth Century Club address on 66 The New World and the New Book" published in book form in connection with some kindred papers.

John Banvard, the artist, who died recently in South Dakota, may truly be called a prolific author. He wrote no less than 1,700 poems, besides plays, books, and articles of travel.

Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale has written a new story which is appearing in the Boston Commonwealth as a serial. It deals with Boston life, and is entitled 'Harry and Lucy."

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A. T. Quiller Couch, first introduced to American readers as "Q," the author of "The Splendid Spur," is a Cornishman, and was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, where he gave signs of his literary gifts in sets of verses, parodies, etc., some of which have recently been published in a collection of Oxford poetry. In appearance he is described as tall and strongly built, with a frank, open face and good-natured looking eyes, bearing witness to kindliness and good nature.

A portrait of Oliver Wendell Holmes, engraved from a recent photograph, will form the frontispiece to the July number of Harper's Magazine.

With its first issue in July the Christian Union will appear with new type, with a new form of page, with a permanent cover having a specially drawn cover design, and with an increased number of pages. Hereafter original illustrations will be used more frequently.

One of the most successful books ever written is Mrs. Henry Wood's "East Lynne." It is now in its 225th edition — and each edition means a thousand copies.

Miss Mary Hawker is the name of "Lanoe Falconer," who wrote "Mademoiselle Ixe." She sent the first check from her publishers ($50) to the editor of Free Russia.

"Eleven Possible Cases," Cassell's Sunshine Series, is a book written by eleven popular authors. It is a collection of short stories by Frank R. Stockton, Edgar Fawcett, Henry Harland ("Sidney Luska "), Nym Crinkle, Maurice Thompson, Brainard G. Smith, Anna Katherine Green, Franklin Fyles, Ingersoll Lockwood, Joaquin Miller, and Kirk Munroe. Each author was asked to write the story of a possible case, something that could hardly be expected to happen, and which yet had about it an air of possibility.

The passing of the Copyright act is said to have already cost one of the largest printing houses in Edinburgh the sum of over $15,000.

Count Moltke has left a number of valuable manuscripts, which will be given to the public before long.

The prize offered by the Manchester (England) Times for the best composition on "The Best Book and Why I Like It" has been won by Jessie Ludlow, a South Carolina girl of sixteen summers. Her subject was "Ivanhoe."

Busy workers who feel that the amount of nervous force at their disposal is being overtaxed will be interested in the article, "The Technique of Rest," which Anna C. Brackett contributes to Harper's for June.

Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, the popular novelist, will have in the July number of the North American Review a defence of the dignity of the profession of literature. She is much offended by a passage in a recent story which imputes to society people a disrespect for women who write.

The sixth annual meeting of the Western Association of Writers will be held at Warsaw, Indiana, July 6-10.

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A current "literary note says: "Señor Galdos, a rising Spanish novelist, is a modest and retiring man, very fond of hemming handkerchiefs on a sewing machine when not engaged in writing."

"Harry Romaine," who is writing some bright verses for the humorous papers, and whose poem, "My Tender Conscience," in the Ladies' Home Journal for June is being widely copied, is F. B. Studwell, of Brooklyn, N. Y.

Besides being an author, Mrs. Kate Douglass Wiggin is also a composer, and her musical setting of "The Lover's Song," by Edward Rowland Sill, has just been published by the Oliver Ditson Company.

James Whitcomb Riley testifies that he writes his poems anywhere and everywhere, "sometimes on the kitchen table in my sister's house; then in the parlor, and again on the printer's case, just where the fancy seizes me. When the Frost Is on the Pumpkin' was writter on the end of a tall, standing desk, in obedience to the editor's call for 'copy.' The trick line had been running in my head for some time, and when I was told I ought to have a poem in the next day's paper I just took a piece of paper and wrote out the poem on the end of a desk, handed it in, and never for a moment dreamed of its subsequent success."

Theodore Tilton is still living in retirement at Paris, where he is preparing a volume of verse for publication.

Mrs. Frances James, the widow of the prolific novelist, G. P. R. James, the inventor of the "solitary horseman," died at Eau Claire, Wis., June 9, at the age of ninety. Her husband died in Venice on the same day of the month thirty-two years ago.

Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. are to publish "Paul Patoff," by F. Marion Crawford, and "A Midsummer Madness," by Ellen Olney Kirk, in the Riverside Paper Series.

"Literary Industries," an important volume of reminiscences, by Hubert Howe Bancroft, is announced as nearly ready for publication by Harper & Brothers.

"It is a thing to be devoutly thankful for," says the Brooklyn Times, "that the ridiculous words "poetess" and "authoress” are used less frequently than heretofore. Think of calling George Eliot an "authoress"! An eminent English critic says that "the foolish word 'poetess' is a standing witness in our language to the national obtuseness. How little must the artistic constitution -the third sex- - be understood among a people with such a word in their dictionary. How inorganic such distinctions are, of course, needs no illustration."

Hiram Hunt, who recently died at Robbinston, Me., is said to have been the original clockmaker of "Sam Slick." He was selling clocks in Nova Scotia when he came under the notice of the author. He never felt proud of the notoriety which the book gave him, and resented allusions to it. His age, at the time of his death, was nearly ninety years. A number of his wooden clocks are

still in existence.

The need of condensation has affected the novel itself, as well as its integument; comparative brevity is felt to be the soul of narration. The shrinkage is not so great as in poetry, for prose is the natural human language, whereas most of us can now take our verse only in homeopathic doses. The romance of three hundred thousand words is still tolerated, while the epic of one-fourth as many finds no publisher, or falls still-born from the press. It must be a great writer who in our day ventures on the dimensions of "Copperfield" or "Pendennis," or "Middlemarch," and our ablest authors of both hemispheres find that they can usually paint to advantage on a smaller canvas. For obvious reasons, the story that can be read in an evening or two is displacing its elder brother, who requires the leisure of weeks.

THE AUTHOR:

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE TO INTEREST AND HELP ALL LITERARY WORKERS.

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THE GREAT GERMAN LIBRARIES. B. W. W.
BESANT'S RETORT TO "QUIDA."

STOCKTON AT HOME. Julius Chambers.
EDITORIAL.

Notes, 102- -THE WRITER for July.

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT WRITERS.

Alden, 102- Bashkirtseff, 103 - Braddon, 103-
Brooks, 103 Browning, 103- Green, 103-Harte,

104 Hibbard, 104

- McClelland, 104 — - Stedman,

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If it had been "Nym Crinkle, United States," it would have come as straight. There is but one of him. And he is "Nym Crinkle " of New York. He could not belong to Buffalo, nor to Boston.

Andrew Carpenter Wheeler was born in his present home, July 4, 1835. His first writing was a newspaper sketch, written when he was a boy of seventeen. He tells a pretty story of the fresh, full delight with which he walked down Broadway, eyeing the passers-by, thinking of the abstracted: "They have n't read it yet!" of those talking eagerly together: They've read it!"

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Now the spirit of adventure took possession of him, and he drifted West, making foolish land speculations and long horse-back excur

No. 7.

sions. At length he found himself, penniless, in Iowa City. Here he fell in with the manager of a strolling company, who incidentally expressed a wish to get hold of a skit with attractive localisms.

"I'll write you one to-night," said the future "Nym Crinkle " promptly. "When do you want

to use it?"

The man answered that he required it at once. "You can put it on the boards in forty-eight hours," was Wheeler's assurance. "Don't you worry about your play!"

A remarkable adaptation of John Brougham's "Pocahontas," suited to all the exigencies of the case, was ready at the time appointed. It filled the town with a buzz of talk, it filled the manager's cash-box, and it slipped $100 into its adapter's pocket.

Shortly after this, the young man was made editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, by Rufus King. He says, in speaking of Captain Charles King, the novelist : "I never can realize that he is the same little chap who used to be under foot in his father's office."

Two years later Mr. Wheeler followed up the war as correspondent for various papers. He was with Grant's army at Shiloh, went down the Mississippi with the gunboats, and saw the battles of Pittsburg Landing and Fort Donaldson.

The next scene opens in New York, where, through Artemus Ward, he was made special correspondent of the New York Leader. The staff also included, at that time, Stephen Fiske, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Adah Clare, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, William Winter, and Fitz James O'Brien. As "Trinculo," Mr. Wheeler wrote here his first feuilleton. A little later, in the World, came his first dramatic criticism on

Copyright, 1891, by WILLIAM H. HILLS. All rights reserved.

Wallack's "Rosedale." The wakening powers of the free lance startled the town. At the suggestion of the editor, D. G. Croly, he adopted a pseudonym, and the first work "Nym Crinkle " did was dissecting the causes of Clara Louise Kellogg's success. He wrote in the next few years for the Spirit of the Times, the Sun, and subsequently became editor of the Star under John Kelly, returning to the World early in the Pulitzer régime.

Most people imagine that they are familiar with "Nym Crinkle's " field of work. I doubt it. There are as many sides as facets to the glitter of a diamond. So with A. C. Wheeler the man. How many who wonder at his versatility are aware that he is not only a trained musician, but, also, a painter above mediocrity? The general public sees that he uses, with the carelessness of familiarity, intelligence gleaned from the broad domains of philosophy, history, biography, and science. They are not witting to the fact that he has read law, taken a course in medicine, and is one of the best versed theologians in America. One of his passions is the study and argument of religion. Some five years ago this actor of a hundred parts appeared in a new rôle as lecturer, a good lecturer, too, -replying to Ingersoll's attacks upon Christianity.

Rev. Thomas Dixon has lately put forth a volume of sermons, for which Mr. Wheeler wrote the introduction. Some of the critics remarked, much to the amusement of the collaborators, that if the sermons had been as good as the preface, they would have reached a still higher standard of excellence.

As poet," Nym Crinkle " has written the words for several popular pieces of music, and a few verses of reflective sentiment, like the familiar "An August Tint," or such tender love lays as "An Idyl." In the summer of 1890 he published his first novel, "The Toltec Cup," which displays a wealth of talent in plot and character drawing. Best of all, he is known as dramatic critic and then creator.

It is one of the compensations of this best of possible worlds that the sudden flash will startle; not the steady flow. His readers accept "Nym Crinkle's" talent as a thing for granted. With that conundrum, "The Lady or the Tiger?" Stockton gave one leap up the

ladder of Fame. Since the days of "The Amber Gods," the most daring attempt in fiction was "The End of the World." What did we say about it?

We said it was like "Nym Crinkle. "

This marvellous effort, following much else as fine, was thrust into the man of that journalism which, Mr. Wheeler sighed once, in weary confidence, "takes all my thoughts before their bones are hard." There is the loose-jointed picturesqueness sauntering through his hack work. There is the good-humored sarcasm levelled at his adversary, William Winter. There is the clean cut of such a sentence as this, taken from his review of Colonel Ingersoll's "Myths and Miracles": "If I were asked what it was that his anatomy represented, I should say that its facts were Myths and its logic Miracles."

He

Who

Mr. Wheeler is of those rare talkers who have wit to spare, from print, for speech. scatters good things with both hands. ever will may gather them up. Here, again, one grows only to miss in others what one ceases to marvel at in him. He is a man careless of fame, and playing with fortune, who never takes time to appreciate the power he simply appropriates for immediate uses. The genius that might have made reputation for ad vocate, or novelist, physician, or divine will be summed up in his epitaph : "One of the ablest critics of his time."

CATSKILL, N. Y

DIXIEISMS.

Ruth Hall.

"Some o' these yere folks are right foolish," a nice old woman in the Georgia mountains confessed to me; "and mebbe you'll make a heap o' fun outen 'em; but you must brush 'em up a powerful lot. You mus'n't give 'em too much o' their nat'l appearance."

But in their naturalness lies their charm. Naturalness is a rare quality in these United States.

A short branch railroad, since built into the heart of these Georgian hills, was under contemplation when I was there, and the mountaineers were greatly excited over it. A gushing damsel of seventeen explained the case to me, thus:

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"Uncle Jim saays 'f he was to see one o' them railroads a-comin', he'd leave the world and take a

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