The Contributors' Club

Author. Do the critical notices which appear in the newspapers have any influence on the sale of a book? Publisher. That is a question which I have been studying these twenty years. I would rather solve that problem than discover a gold-mine. In fact, it would be equivalent to discovering a gold-mine. If newspaper praise insured a book’s success, or newspaper condemnation prevented it, we publishers would know where we stand. It would be a fine thing for literature, too; for none but books of striking merit would have much chance of getting into print. The skillful literary workman would be pretty sure of his hire.

Author. I am not so positive about that. Publishers are human, and might publish poor books; critics are very human, and would be sure to praise them. An inferior workman would probably be praised by the column, just as he is now, and the true artist would be dismissed, as he often is, with a contemptuous paragraph. No, I prefer things to remain as they are. I like to see a meritorious work making its mark in spite of dull or malicious misappreciation. Until our critics are trained men, as most of our professional authors are, it is best that their verdicts, favorable or unfavorable, should carry no weight. But is it true that they carry no weight?

Publisher. Heaven only knows, —the trade does n’t. I have sometimes been tempted to ascribe the success of a book to the disparaging criticism it has received. But it’s all a tangle. Here’s a work which fell dead; out of eighty journals to which it was sent for review only three handled it severely, and those three were journals not likely to hurt anything unless they indorsed it. This work is an authority on the subject of which it treats. Its appearance was saluted with volleys of type from the best Datteries. It died without a struggle. On the other hand, there’s X’s novel.

I accepted it out of personal kindness for the author. X’s father was an old schoolmate of mine. I printed one thousand copies and bound only five hundred. Before the critics could get at it I was obliged to bind up the remaining five hundred and print five hundred more. While those were in the bindery an order came by telegram for one thousand. To cut short a long story, ten thousand copies of X’s novel were disposed of almost in secrecy, so far as the press was concerned. Iam now printing the twenty-fifth thousand. 1 know of a work — I wish I had it on my list — of which eight or ten thousand copies have been sold every year for the last five or six years. I am not aware that during that time the title of the book lias been so much as mentioned in any newspaper; the publisher has not spent five cents in advertising it; I believe it does not even appear in his catalogue.

Author. I know the work to which you allude so feelingly. It has no great merit.

Publisher. It has the merit of selling eight or ten thousand copies per annum. I ’ve known books with greater faults than that. Moreover, it has merit. Every book which wins a wide circulation has merit of some sort; it supplies some precise need, — possibly an illiterate, lowborn need, but still a need. If one could only find out what that is, and supply it!

Author. Yet another book which shall resemble this, yea, as one pea resembleth another pea, would probably fall as dead as-’s poems.

Publisher. That’s the perplexing part of it. A publisher brings out A History of Ten-Penny Nails, and makes his fortune; another publisher brings out A History of Eleven-Penny Nails (a superior work), and offers to settle with his creditors at fifteen cents on the dollar. Then, again, a whole string of wishywashy stories meet with a large sale simply because their titles bear a resemblance to the title of a previous wishywashy story which happened to strike the public fancy. In book - publishing experience goes almost for nothing. I regard every new book I publish as a lottery ticket. Asterisk’s first book was a decided hit ; I am fifteen hundred dollars out of pocket on his second book. It had far more sense in it,—and not so many dollars. It was highly, extravagantly praised, and the former was scarcely noticed. I tell you it is a lottery. This is why a publisher is willing to pay a new man the same percentage he pays an established author. That does not seem quite fair, you think. But observe: the publisher knows that a fresh book from the established author is pretty certain to sell so many copies, and dead certain not to go beyond that; but the new man ! — there ’s no knowing what the new man may do. He bristles with potential possibilities. He may be a twenty-edition fellow! To come back to the newspapers: I fancy that in most instances a book sells itself without any regard to the critics.

Author. Then you believe that the public — the great public which buys books does not bother itself much about Literary Notices. I agree with you. There are just four persons who read a review, long or short: first, the writer of the review; second, the author reviewed; third, the author’s publisher; and fourth, the author’s friend, — if the review happens to be unfavorable. I take it that people unacquainted, personally, with authors, publishers, and journalists very seldom, if ever, glance at that busy column in which literary reputations are supposed to be made or unmade. The merchant, I imagine, no more thinks of reading the literary items than an author thinks of turning to the shopping list or the prices current. Yet for all that the merchant may purchase his ten or twenty books in the course of the year, and possibly has his favorite authors. An author really has two distinct reputations: he may rank very high with the critics and very low with the general public, or vice versa.

Publisher. You don’t seem to think much of the critics. They have always treated you handsomely, if I remember.

Author. And I have always treated them handsomely, —by trying not to bore them too often. But in discussing this question I set myself aside. I care greatly for criticism. The critical faculty is the very rarest. Epic poets are more plentiful than good critics. The great critics of the world can be counted on the fingers of one hand and not exhaust all the fingers. The really great critic comes only once in a century, if so often as that. He is a rara avis, a white blackbird. During the last four decades, see what a numerous brood of brilliant writers France has produced ! —but only one Sainte-Beuve. The world may wait a hundred years for another of his feather.

Publisher. To come nearer home: is n’t Threestars a fine critic?

Author. He has an analytical mind, and his opinion on a work of philosophy or metaphysics is entitled to the highest respect. No one could discourse more amiably on the age of Confucius. In a narrow groove he is certainly a fine critic; but narrowness is the one thing not permissible in a critic. With the profoundest learning he should have the freshest sympathies and the most catholic tastes. Seneca should not be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. Yet we find men setting up as critics whose sole stock in trade consists of their individual likes and dislikes. By the bye, have you looked over that manuscript which I left with you the other day?

Publisher. The Tears of the Muses? Oh, yes; delightful, — delightful! But, really, I don’t see how I can help you shed those charming tears just at present. My list of publications for the coming season is quite full,—too full, in fact, — and nothing is selling. I shall have to ask you to wait a year — or two.

Author, walking away moodily. What a fraud that man is!

— In studying Chaucer lately, I have been led to meditate a paper on the Impertinences of Editors. Is it not impertinent, for example, for an editor to define words in an old author which are explained with accuracy in our Worcester and Webster ? It seems to me offensive and depreciatory of a reader’s intelligence to annotate passages and allusions in an early writer which would not be thought to need explanation if found in a book of the eighteenth or nineteenth century.

Suppose that I am editing Willmott’s works, and come to the following passage; shall I annotate it thus: —

“ Think of beholding in a clear glass 1 Macehiavelli 2 living along the lines of his political web ;3 Galileo 4 watching the moon plow 5 her way across the clouds; or Tasso,6 with Polybius 7 in his hand, 8 marshaling the Kniglits of Godfrey.” 9

1 Glass. Mirror.

2 Macehiavelli. Niccolo Macchnelli was secretary of the Florentine republic for a number of years in the fifteenth century.

3 Political web. Macehiavelli wrote a book on statesmanship which has identified his name with political craftiness, and it renders appropriate the expression “political web.”

4 Galileo. An Italian astronomer of the sixteenth century.

3 Plow. This expression is to be taken metaphorically, agricultural implements not being used at so high an elevation.

6 Tasso. An Italian poet who lived in the sixteenth cc-ntnry. His baptismal name was Torquato. His chief work was Jerusalem Delivered. The reader will notice Mr. Willmott’s familiarity with Italian history at this period, as exhibited in the freedom with which he mentions the great names of that country.

7 Polybius. A Greek historian of the second century before the Christian era.

8 In his hand. This is a figurative expression. Polybius had died before the time of Tasso, and Mr. Willmott would have the reader understand that one of the books of Polybius was in the hand of the later author, and not the historian himself.

9 Godfrey. The leader of the first Crusade was Godfrey of Boulogne, and he it is to whom Mr. Willmott probably refers, for be became king of Jerusalem, and Is celebrated in Tasso’s poem.

Perhaps I am a trifle generous in my annotations, but I find some that are not entirely unlike them in certain editions of Chaucer.

— Scandal, that is, spoken scandal, has doubtless been much mitigated in the course of the last century, as one of the Club set forth in our June conference. The amelioration of life in this respect is an accompaniment of that general improvement in the moral tone of society which has taken place during

the last three generations. For there has been improvement in this respect, that is, on the moral side; and there has moreover been a steady setting towards a greater mildness of manners among the whole body social, although the manners of even the best-bred people are not quite so fine now as they were among the same sort of folks in the days of our grandfathers. This class has spared something of its superfluity in manners to those less fortunately placed people who were in need of such endowment. Hence the scandal - monger has for some time been out of favor in decent society. The sort of women who used to go about blackening the reputations of other people, and particularly those of other women, has almost disappeared: partly because such talk would not now be tolerated in society of any pretensions to moral tone or to decorum; and partly because the desire, the willingness, to harm others by bearing witness, false or true, against them has in a great measure been bred out of us by the bettering influences developed in mankind by time and by reflection.

When, however, we come to consider the question whether the appetite for scandal has diminished, an answer favorable to our moral improvement is not so easily found. For we have only to look through our newspapers to see that this appetite must be insatiable if it does not find itself fed every day to surfeiting. The supply indicates the demand; in no respect does the cardinal axiom of the dreary science apply so absolutely as in journalism. The publisher of the newspaper is imperative upon this point,— inexorable. What “ our readers” demand, that they must have ; what offends them must be excluded. Judged from this point of view, society in regard to scandal has become like the Turk in regard to dancing: he does not dance himself, but he likes very well to have it done for him. And his vicarious saltation is far higher-kilted, to use a Scotch phrase, than any in which he would personally indulge, unless, indeed, he were to undertake to rival a royal poet whom he much respects, — David, in his dance before the ark, “girded only with a linen ephod.” So the scandal that is spread before us in print everyday shows not only our craving, but how much stronger a dose of this mental stimulant we can take in silence than in colloquial intercourse. Our servants the reporters rake the courts, great and small, the lobbies, the public offices, the vestry-rooms, — even, alas, the drawingrooms; and our friends the interviewers pursue, like Horace’s Death, æquo pede, every human creature from whom there is the slightest hope of extracting material for a “ sensation; ” and a sensation in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is made at the cost of more or less pain (and generally needless pain) to an individual and to his family and friends. And with what sublime indifference to the question of the truth or falsity of his story does our Sensation-monger serve us up the dish of savory meat which our soul loveth ! Only let there be the least occasion for it, or, above all, the slightest chance that another paper than that for which he labors will be the first to publish it, and if he get a sensational story upon any authority, or upon none, he unfolds his tale, and stings with it. Not that he cares particularly to sting, unless he may happen to have a grudge to satisfy, but simply that he regards mankind as material for and readers of sensation articles. Let any one who looks through the newspapers daily recollect the number of stories, more or less scandalous, which he has seen published during the past year and flatly contradicted by the persons who alone have competent knowledge in the matter, if indeed there be any matter; for, as we all know, stories are constantly published,—painful and injurious stories, full of detail which makes them truthful in seeming, — which are simply scandal and without foundation in fact. One of the most active dispensers of this sort of scandal is the Boston, New York, or Washington correspondent of some paper outside of those cities. His letters are frequently nothing but scandalous stories, that journals in the places to which they relate would not publish at first hand; but they will copy them with the saving preface, “The - corre-

spondent of the writes thus. " And

away a reputation goes; that is, would go, if we had not come to doubt, if not to disbelieve, everything of this kind that is not thoroughly established on grounds known to us. I was shown the other day a long letter in a Washington newspaper filled with a tale of scandal about a well-known gentleman ; and the gentleman who showed it to me, who was in a position to know the whole truth, said, “There arc twenty - seven assertions in that letter, and just twenty-seven of them are absolutely untrue; the whole story from beginning to end is absolutely false.” Nor need a story be slanderous to make its publication the cause of annoyance to those to whom it refers. Their wishes, however, are not in the slightest degree regarded. Only a short time ago the daughter of a friend of my family who lives in the country, who is an entirely private person, and who has no more prominence than is given by wealth, culture, and character, was married. To my friend’s surprise, reporters came fifty miles, from New York, and, asking to see him. put him to the question about the whole affair, the ceremony, and the parties to it. He decidedly but respectfully refused to give them any of the particulars about which they were so anxious, and told them that it would be very unpleasant to him and to his whole family to have any public notice taken of the marriage. Vain man! the next day he saw the whole affair set forth in two New York papers, the reporters having fished out the particulars from other parties. And but a short time since I saw announced the birth of a child to a lady who had threatened nothing of the kind for ten years and more, and who was likely to be much annoyed by congratulations upon an event which had not taken place. Now, to marry is not sinful, or to have children criminal; and a story published that one does either or both is not a libel, and therefore is not punishable at the law. But it. should be so, unless done by consent of the parties interested. For stories may not be damaging to business or to reputation, and may be true, and yet may therefore be none the less likely to give pain. No class of men ought to be allowed to give pain to private persons in order that they may make money by gratifying the prurient curiosity of thoughtless women — and men. What we need for the remedying of this evil is a law like the French law, which makes the publication of any purely private and personal matter, however true or however harmless, an offense punishable on the, complaint of the party offended. For, O reader, the other and more effectual remedy, which you could begin to apply yourself, will not be applied, I think. It is, not to read scandal, and to let the editor and the publisher of the paper that prints scandal know, in the most effective way, that you find scandal, tattle, and personal gossip offensive.

— It is a favorite assertion of the mathematicians that figures cannot lie; yet here are two learned contributors to an educational journal of high rank fairly by the ears over the expression “1800 A. D. ” One contends that it marks the last year of the eighteenth century; the other rejoins, with a quiet assurance which is suggestive of Mr. Furnivall, that it cannot indicate anything but the first year of the nineteenth century, — in other words, that the year 1800 A. D. was the 1801st year of the Christian era. I have been greatly entertained by the argument of the latter writer. In setting up mile-stones, he says, we do not put No. 1 at the starting-point, but. at the end of the first mile. “ In referring to the clock at the beginning of the day, we do not call the time 1 o'clock, but 0 o'clock [do we, though?], and during the first hour we read 0-05, 0-10, etc., until one hour has passed, when we read 1 o’clock.’’ So also the one used to denote a child’s age is used not at birth but at the end of the first year. Having elaborated these three examples, the writer asks, “Why do not these same rules apply in the use of dates for marking points or divisions of an era? Why should not the dates 1, 100, or 1800 be understood to denote that one year, one hundred or eighteen hundred years have passed since the beginning of the era? ” Apparently he sees no radical difference between separating dates and separated periods. To apply his idea, he says that during tlie first year of the era one might properly write “ April 12 ; ” during the second year, “April 12, 1;” the latter expression indicating that one year and three months have passed, and that the twelfth day of the fourth month of the second year of the era is now reached.

I still cling to the delusion of my boyhood, however, and wonder why, if the mile-stone argument is apt for the year, it is not equally so for the day; why, if the 1 shows that one year lias passed and the second has been reached, the 12 does not in like manner show that twelve days of the month have passed and the thirteenth has been reached.

— This truthful record of what a man has done in and made by literary work during the ten years to January 1, 1878, must be interesting to many, and of service to some, — the latter those who think of adopting literature as a profession.

In eight principal magazines published in those ten years, and of which five remained in existence on the 1st of January, 18 78, I have had nineteen articles, for which my pay was $927. In five weekly publications my work has appeared nine times, and brought me $188. From two daily papers I have received $24 for reviews, and $52 for correspondence. Receipts from the above sources, $1141. Then I wrote a short romance and published it at my own expense, getting the imprint of a hook-house in Xew York. That netted me a profit of $198. During the time named I have written three other books of fiction, published by one of the most celebrated houses in the country. Of all, 4600 copies were printed, and 4500 sold, netting me at ten per cent., as copyright, $562.49, and paying to the publishers $3302.57,— this at wholesale rates, and not deducting expenses of publication ; probably the publishers cleared but little more than the author. The sum total of my pay for literary labor is $1901.49, and, estimating roughly, it has consumed about a year’s or fifteen months’ time, at eight hours per day. I have had, fortunately, other occupations by which to eke out a living. Of the four books, three are now out of print. One was republished in England. All appeared over a nom de plume. So did my other writings, except, perhaps, half a dozen, and in omitting my proper name I made a great mistake. Literary work without signature is a bond without interest. Let the young author remember this.

Having done now with the figures of this paper, I will give some incidents of my experience with editors and publishers. A manuscript of mine, ordered in December, had lain in an editor’s hands three months. This fact I had mentioned to a gentleman who is one of our best and most voluminous magazine writers and novelists. He wrote me, “Mr. Editor spoke most favorably in a recent

letter of your-, but did not explain

the delay. . . . By the way, editors are sometimes unreasonable, even the best of

them. If the-magazine turns out

too fastidious, or impracticable, or anything of that sort, why not try the — ?

Of course-would not like this sug-

gestion, but one must live and let live; the world is not for editors alone.” Seven months after the letter from which the above is taken was received, the article referred to appeared in print, without resource to the-, and my friend,

writing me again, said, “I read-

last evening. I have read it through carefully, with entire satisfaction and with great pleasure, and even with surprise. Certainly it is extraordinarily well written, and is the best-which I have

ever seen in an American periodical. It must attract wide attention to you. ” It did not, and when published, after eleven months’ delay, payment did not come with its appearance in print. But a few lines to the magazine’s publishers put me in possession of their check for $75. Without naming any price at the time the article was sent in, I had left that to the fairness of the editor, and I think he treated well enough a comparatively unknown writer, though the pay should have been, according to that magazine’s custom per page, $104. One of our most popular magazinists wrote me once concerning the very small pay that the

-had sent me for a story: “Thirty

dollars was very small pay for six pages, in small print, of matter that was readable, interesting, and worthy of insertion. At the same time, editors pay more for notoriety than for quality. Now there are several publics, and each has its celebrities. I am an old writer for the magazines, and therefore I get more than that, but I did not a few years ago. Even now I dare not ask above $10 a page, believing that that is all a magazine can afford, except for an out-and-out notoriety. A new man must work on, painfully and patiently, for years, every now and then demanding a rise in his wages. There must be bargaining as well as writing. The next time you

send a piece to-, write your price

at the top of the MS., thus: ‘ Price $60,’ or, ‘Price $80.’ If he declines, send it on to the next, and the next. See how it will come out. I am sorry you find the road of authorship profitless. So it is with nearly all who try it. I am never less than a few hundred dollars in debt, and often wish that I had some other trade, more profitable, — a machinist’s, for instance.”

The editor of a magazine once accepted a contribution of mine in this way: “ Your story is not of the kind which has been usually found most attractive to our readers. It is, however, picturesquely conceived, and the interest fairly sustained, and I shall therefore be happy to insert it, paying on publication at five dollars a page. ” As this story had been

returned by-and-, I accepted.

It appeared in eighteen months from the date of the editor’s letter, and I waited that time for the pay, $73. Meanwhile, I happened in the city where my editor reigned, and, laid flat by an acute attack of impecuniosity, I called at the office of the magazine and begged an advance of $5(!), which was granted. Why tailors and authors must always wait for payment I cannot exactly understand.

I was once ambitious to write editorials for the New York Daily-. Mr. A

B was tlien the literary editor, and Mr.

Y Z, as now, the commander-in-chief. I obtained a proper introduction to Mr.

Y Z through a prominent politician, who was his personal friend. I had a pleasant and rather promising interview that ended in my leaving with him two MSS. on social subjects, which he promised to put in the hands of Mr. A B. A week or two after, my friend sent me the following letter, which he had received from Mr. Y Z: —

I herewith return Mr.—’s articles,

and in doing so wish to say to him that he need not be discouraged in keeping on, as our best writers have been those who did not reach the point of excellence until after many failures. Let him send us articles as he may find subjects to write upon; they shall be carefully and kindly considered, and used if possible, leading to perhaps a more permanent connection. As ever, sincerely yours,

Y Z.

I was not discouraged, but kept on, until I had sent in five pieces, not one of which was accepted, and some of which, I firmly believe, were never Opened by the managing editor. Four of these rejected contributions found market elsewhere, and one of them was copied in the Sunday edition after its refusal by the Daily-.

In the memoirs of Count de Grammont (?) we read of an elegant French duelist who, whenever —and it was often — he sent his short sword clean into an antagonist, exclaimed, with pathetic courtesy “ Mille pardons ! ” This

was like-of the-. He pierced

you with a rejection, but he added an amende, as once he wrote to me, “ Your work is always so good that I don’t feel like losing any of it. The article just received exceeds our space. I should be glad if you would allow me to exchange it for something else of yours.” Another magazine editor, returning a manuscript, sent, these words: “ Your MS. goes with this letter. It is one that will find hearty welcome in any magazine but this, where, because of Certain, etc. I am obliged, etc. I think, if you will pardon the suggestion, that it would be eagerly accepted by George Macdonald’s Good Words, published in London.” I thankfully took the advice, paid over a dollar in postage, and inclosed a like amount, and that was the last I ever heard of what I thought was a good piece of work.

Nearly a year ago, I took an article to

the editor of-. He opened the sheets

and read them through (at least twelve magazine pages) whilst I sat there. lt First-rate! ” then he said, “just what I want,— interesting and timely. 1 ’ll take it. Call again to-morrow.” I discounted the payment with a fine dinner and a grand bottle of wine. In the morning I stepped in for my pay. “ I

have shown your MS. to Mr. -. lie

says it must have illustrations. Can you supply them? ” “ No, it is impossible.”

As I went away, I asked: “ What should I get for this article?” “Do not take less than one hundred dollars. Send it

to the - magazine, and it must be

copied in England.” I sent it, — alway sobeying an editor; and it liung fire for three months. I reclaimed it., and ere its timeliness was quite gone I sold it for half what the illustrated editor named.

So I might go on for columns concerning the anxieties, disappointments, and labors of literary work by one of small name, — aye, and these troubles come, too, more or less, to all authors except the great celebrities (they may be literary artists, mountebanks, scolds, or quacks) ; but I shall give only one more instance. The best piece of work I ever did went to a magazine with two editors, after having come back from four such journeys, and been accepted and after twenty days’,thought rejected by another magazine. The junior editor returned it to me with these words, writing, as he probably supposed, to some entire novice in literature. The letter of advice came through a mutual friend:

“ It can’t be used in the-. I have

written a letter giving him some suggestions as to how to make his work marketable. He certainly has ability; he knows how to view things, and can express himself with remarkable command of words. He now needs to study with great attention the mode of making himself compactly impressive to the public. ” The underscoring is my own. I may have smoked three pipes in succession over that patronizing epistle.

Thereafter I gave tip my pen for eight months, and took to speculating in pigs. It was a new business, and had a flavor about it peculiarly recreative to a deadbeat author. There was a wild, gorgeous poetry in the statement (founded on figures that cannot lie, please remember) made me by my instigator to the porcine adventure. He — I mean the instigator, — lived in a fine rooting country, six hundred miles off to the south. I had nothing to do but plan, administer, forward checks, and count my profits four months ahead. He was to act, execute, buy, and perhaps share my profits. If I could not be famous in letters, I would at least he rich in hogs. Alas, there are figures that, as has been said here and elsewhere perhaps, cannot lie, and there is hog cholera! — worse, far worse than editors and publishers. Write, write, if you will, young man, but for Heaven’s sake do not attempt the pig business. The latter, I know, requires more genius, but like all real labors of genius it will not pay. Its end is to make hashed sausage meat of you. What happened to me is of little consequence, except in the result,—that I took up my pen again. It was heavier now, and worked greasily, but I had learned boldness. Mv first act was to send off the rejected MS. of nearly a year ago to the other editor of the same magazine. He was summering by the sea-side, separated from his junior. In forty-eight hours I received the following lines: “ I accept with great pleasure your—. It is a study of ex-

traordinary force and vividness, and, I take if, must be from life. I wish you would do some more things like it.”

I have other confidences to make, but not now, to men who may have literary ambition, and may be, as I, “ to fortune and to fame unknown.”

— Apropos of the notice contained in The Contributors’ Club for February of the reappearance on the scene, fresh as ever, of our old acquaintance the hero of The Wide, Wide World, I am reminded of a story told to me last September by friends who had just returned from Europe. It will be seen that that book has been setting fashions for us on the other side of the water without our being aware of the honor. My friends were spending several days last summer at the residence of an English gentleman. At dinner on the first day, I think with the joint, something dark in a little cup was passed to my friend’s wife by the servant in waiting. She glanced at it, but could not make out what it was; thought it might be some mysterious English form of beef tea, or a sauce; concluded on the whole it would he safer to decline, and did so. Same pantomime gone through with the husband, who, also mystified, declined. Servant disappears with the cup, of which no one else is invited to partake, and dinner proceeds. But their kind hostess is evidently disturbed; at last she remarks, “ Perhaps it was not strong enough; or was it too weak?” And then it appears that the dark liquid was tea, and that they “ supposed you always drank tea with your dinner in America.” “ Where could you have obtained that impression?” said ray friend. “From The Wide, Wide World,” was the innocent answer. The simple country folk in that bucolic book are, it will be remembered, always pictured as drinking “tea” with their dinner; and if this little incident had not intervened that English family would have forever supposed that all Americans did the same!

— There is nothing so majestic and slow-moving to-day in all our quick America as an old South Carolina gentleman, for instance, making a few remarks to yon in your parlor, or on the Charleston Battery. His words, his periods, his very thoughts, are all old English. There is no use in trying to hurry him, and much loss. For, if you will only lay aside your modern impatience, and listen, your ears will soon be charmed by the very language of Johnson and Addison. He never says “Mrs.,” but always “Mistress;” his lips never syllable a contraction, but roll out their “do not,” “can not,” and “shall not” with slow precision; no chance expression of the day is aught to him. This stately, unhurrying way of talking is particularly apparent when you hear it from the sweet voices of the Southern ladies; their voices are much softer and richer than those of our Northern women, and modulated on a lower key. What gives an oddly contrasting local color to this dignified speech is the pronunciation of certain words, — a pronunciation probably caught in childhood from negro nurses. Almost all words in ar and ere have a y in them, or rather it is like this: garden is gee-ar-den, with the first two syllables run together; they tell you to take the street kee-ars; and here is yere or h-yere. The abbreviations of mother and father, that is, the words ma and pa, I defy any Northerner to imitate successfully; they might serve as a shibboleth for carpet-baggers. Hawthorne says somewhere that it is a good lesson for one who has dreamed of literary fame to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and see how utterly devoid of significance beyond that circle is all that he achieves and all that he aims at; and I advise the Northern writer of to-day, if he wishes this sort of lesson in its fullest strength, to go South! No matter who he is, no matter how honored in the circle, for instance, around The Atlantic, he will there find himself unknown. Not that Southerners of the best class are unliterary; in one way they are more literary than we are, for they have the old English essayists, dramatists, and poets at their tongues’ end, and quote voluminously and well. But they seem never to have come down farther than about the middle of the last century; there they stop with their quotations. But the bewildered Atlantic man would not mind that so much if they would but stop entirely,— short off, as it were; with a little rubbing-up, he knows the old authors, too. Instead of that, however, these Southerners have made a chain, from

the leg of Addison, say, down to today, consisting of a succession of writers whose names he has hardly even heard, — he, a man of wide-open eyes, accurate memory, and the most catholic choice in reading. He is told of an essayist, “ now living,” whose work equals “ anything in The Spectator; ” of a novelist, “at present dying,” whose power is “superior to Fielding;” of a poetess, “ just dead,” who was “ the inspired soul of the century.” All this with sincerest belief and earnestness, and said by intelligent persons. Books are put into his hands (generally badly printed), and there in type these productions face him; they are not, then, the manuscript children from whom great things are expected by friends, but on the contrary they are full-grown, clothed, and in their right minds. He begins to doubt whether he is in his! He turns over the pages in a confused sort of way, and at last mentions perhaps some wellknown writer whose fame is in all the magazines; they have never heard of him. He then brings forward another, whose volumes are, as he supposes, distinctly recognized as among the best of the day; they do not know his name. He now drops America, flees to England, and holds up George Eliot and Charles Reade ; they have heard these names, but vaguely. They begin a discussion upon Richardson and Miss Austen, and close with allusions to the latest tale by some “ daughter of Georgia,” or “ child of the Southland.” It must not be supposed that I am making fun; these titles are used and bestowed with both pride and affection by the people and the writers themselves. I have heard them, and others like them, many times. The number of these Southern writers is today larger than any one would dream who has not studied the subject; and the Atlantic man might well be proud of so ardent and loyal a following as many of them possess. Their own people believe in them heartily, —if no one else does. I have recently looked through a volume containing short biographies of Southern writers, and, out of two hundred and fifty names, recognized about twenty! Of course I except, in these remarks, a few authors with whose works we are all acquainted; there are exceptions always. But I think no one who has lived for any length of time at the South will dispute the truth of what I have said. The Southerners have finer and costlier oldfashioned books than we have. The library at Charleston is piled to the ceiling with venerable mahogany-colored English bindings, which look as though they had been “ through the wars,” as they have. The handsome young librarian says, — but not apologetically; the Charlestonians never apologize, — “ We have but few new books.” He does not know how delightful and new it is to see nothing but old ones! But the quaintest little places are the “ neighborhood libraries,” in the country; not by any means established for “ the people,” as with us, for there were no “ people,” but for the pleasure of the planters’ families in that neighborhood. Twice I have had the key of such little buildings, now almost always lonely and forsaken, and have spent hours taking down and looking through the dusty books. Almost all were fine old English editions of fine old English authors, together with some of the most famous Frenchmen, also; on a lower shelf, the “ Southland ” writers. I call to mind now a courteous, white-haired gentleman of the old school, who had retired to a remote little village with the poor remains of his fortune and his library. On a drygoods box covered with chintz reposed the few superb old volumes which he had saved; the remainder, he said, were “ burned at Columbia, when MajorGeneral Sherman did us the honor to pass through. The soldiers, I am informed, heated their coffee with them.” He never touched a newspaper, or saw a modern book; but he used to read aloud to his wife on summer afternoons from these old volumes, and discuss their contents with any one who came in. Sitting there and listening, one almost forgot that there was any present, or any George Eliot, or even any Atlantic, save the ocean.

— In your review of Judge Caton’s book on the Antelope and Deer of America, in the March number of The Atlantic, you help to disseminate a grave error into which he has fallen, concerning the area of country over which the blacktailed deer is distributed. Of course the author was misinformed, as, had he any personal knowledge on the subject in question, he would not have made such an error when writing as a specialist.

I have lived, since the war, in the States and Territories north of the Arkansas and south of the Yellowstone rivers, and have hunted in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Dakota; I have found the black-tail in all these States and Territories, and I am reliably informed that it abounds in Idaho and New Mexico; in fact, it is found as widely distributed east of the Sierras as west of them.

As to the antelope shedding their horns yearly, as do the deer, elk, etc., their antlers, it is considered an open question where antelope abound; but as Judge Caton has had an opportunity for careful personal observation on this point, and as it is not probable that any abnormal habit in this respect should obtain when antelope are removed from their native plains and confined as were those observed by Judge Caton, of course be is right.

I have seen buck antelope killed at all seasons of the year, but have never seen any with new horns; in fact, I onee observed a tame buck antelope, almost daily, for several years, which showed no sign of shedding its horns. With one exception, all the hunters, trappers, guides, etc., whom I have talked with on this subject deny that the antelope sheds its horns, Bridger, the celebrated guide, hunter, and trapper, knew of but one instance, and that was so remarkable that it will not help to prove the affirmative to skeptics. He was once hunting along the base of a rocky, precipitous mountain, following the only practicable game trail in those parts, when, as he turned the sharp corner of a huge rock, he saw just in front of him, and rapidly approaching, a buck antelope pursued by several wolves. The buck, on seeing Bridger, stopped so suddenly that his horns dropped off at Bridger’s feet !

— Never were our houses better arranged for pictures, and never have people been less inclined to purchase them. The subdued colors of the Morris paperhangings, the rich, dark tints of curtains and upholstered furniture, are admirably fitted to set off the colors of oil-paintings, provided there is any light in which to show them; and our sombre parlors and libraries actually demand the relief of the gold frame as well as the brass sconce. By preference I might be inclined to the purchase of a fine head or figure-painting, did not my judgment tell me that there are qualities in a good landscape representation which, for many reasons, would be paramount. In the first place, it is like an open window, giving upon a beautiful country scene; and in the city this is an element of primary importance. If it has atmosphere and distance it actually gives length or breadth to a room. On entering an apartment the eye falls easily upon the horizon of the picture opposite the door, and the room goes off into immeasurable perspective. I recall a gallery twenty feet in width which stretches out to forty feet by means of a skillfully painted “ interior,” the long retreating arches of which lead one easily into distant and suggestive space.

When “ better times ” come, we may' have learned, by the want of good pictures, what to buy and where to bang. When the bric-à-brac fever has spent itself, it will be succeeded by a return to the purchase of good paintings. And we know better how to buy than we did ten years ago.

— At a recent soirée of the Royal Society, the Fellows and their guests gathered with interest around what at first glance seemed to be an ordinary cartede-visit e. It was not, however, the picture of one but of many individuals, — the Portrait of a Family. The photographed faces of a large family and their near relatives had been placed in an album, and one after another had been copied on the same plate, — face upon face,—the time required for taking a single portrait being equally divided among them by covering and uncovering the camera while the portraits were successively brought before it. The result was very striking, — almost mystical. One looked upon a life-like, expressive, and even beautiful face of a human being that, individually, never existed. But also it was a real being, and one that can never die. A family name may perish, but a family is immortal. The stream of its life expands, indeed, to a shoreless sea. If a man and wife had two children, and even that moderate average of increase continued in their line for twenty-five generations, their descendants would equal the population of Great Britain. If by some searching glass we could read all the lines on this average face of a family, if we could go on adding such generalized portraits and discerning all their characters, we should have types of mankind, and in the end — if there were any end — a portrait of the human race.

But where no tangible magnifier enables us to search the far depths of this personal-impersonal face, imagination may lend us further vision. It resembles all who sat before the great artrealist,— the sun,—and yet no one of them, however pronounced in feature, can be identified in it. All are raised somewhat, some a great deal; the highest owes something here to the lowest. It is only the Smith family, but with what romance does it invest the Smiths! How unconscious were we — and they —• that through all their loves, cares, sorrows, pursuits, nature was steadily carrying forward a persistent character, a convoy of some quality she is resolved shall inhere in humanity!

— I went on a journey the other day through the back regions of one of the older States, to a little village which is yet untouched by any railroad line. It is a drowsy, gossiping market town, precisely like thousands of others in the country. Besides its county jail, its Catholic chapel, and two meeting-houses, these are some of the things which I found there: — The carpenter, an old Scotchman who had followed his trade at sea for forty years, off every coast, and had ended with Kane.

The priest, an Alsatian Jesuit, under some cloud for which he had been exiled to this barren shore. No need to fish here for souls or for preferment; the man composedly gave himself up to studying spiders.

The minister, who had been, twenty years ago, a lawyer of acumen and force in New Orleans. There was a divorce, a duel; the husband, who killed his man, went into the church, took this charge, and worked in his old age for his Master with a fervid, hopeless zeal, strangely pathetic and effective.

There was a great man visiting the village while I was there, —Sharp (worth uncounted millions), of New York. We all looked at his gold-plated harness with bated breath. Sharp had been a farm boy, with an itching palm, in the neighborhood, thirty years ago. He was back now to look after his uncle, old Sam. Sam had starved himself until he was sixty to save his few thousands; now a materialized spirit and her family had quartered themselves on him, and the money was going fast.

The postmistress was a wizened old creature, in a knit woolen jacket, and patched shoes that clattered as she dealt out the pounds of brown sugar, or yards of yellow calico, or the few grimy letters. Now and then the pure intonation of the cracked voice startled a stranger, or a brilliant gleam from the gray eyes under the spectacles. This woman had been a power in Washington when women of culture and power were few. Old Aaron Burr had bowed to her budding beauty. The men who were giants in those days gathered about her father’s table. “ She had a shrewd wit, and that memory for details and magnetic presence which go to make up the great politician,” said the greatest politician of his day of her. But for a slight chance she thinks her husband would have been minister to France. But the chance, death, was not to be set aside, and she came to this village postoffice instead of Versailles. She thinks this, but does not say it. You shall not hear from her the story of her life.

On my way from the lonely little hamlet to a city where you might reasonably look for different people, I happened to read a late number of one of the heaviest British reviews, and found its final sentence upon the impossibility of that Bore of Expectation, the American novel. It declared that, owing to the rapid fusion of classes in the United States, characters for representation, if people of any culture, must all be found upon a dead social level, and offer therefore no dramatic possibilities to the novelist; whereas in English novels, from the graded ranks, there is an endless supply of incident and passion in the friction of society, in the ambition of individuals to pass its intangible barriers, in misalliances, etc.

It seemed to me our novelists were not sufficiently grateful for this very fusion. They have a chance to test their subjects in every change of circumstance, and so strip character of circumstance. The artist, in human nature may miss the social scaffolding for his novels which has served its turn so long in England (and the American substitute, if he tries it, will prove very shifty); but he will find in this country not only divers figures, but certain new and unique lights thrown upon each figure which are not possible in older civilizations.

— When an English novelist does us the honor of introducing any of our country-folks into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable desire to invent something very typical in the way of names for his American dramatis personal. His success is seldom or never commensurate with his desire. If he were only moderately familiar with American names, he would not bother himself by appealing to his imagination. Any city directory would furnish him with more material than he could use in a century. Charles Reade might have obtained in such a work a happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee captain, though I doubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope could have got anything better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the young woman from “ the States ” in his last novel. Perhaps I am rash in saying his last novel, for Is He Popenjoy? was published nearly a month ago, and the industrious author may have turned out three or four novels since then. To call a sprightly young female advocate of woman’s rights Olivia Q. Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than is usual with Mr. Trollope, who has traveled extensively in this country, and whose misunderstanding of everything American is in consequence nearly complete. But Fleabody is excellent; it was probably suggested by Peabody, which must have struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just as Trollope strikes us as comical), or, at least, as not serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names seem odd to a stranger. I know that the signs above shop-doors in England and on the Continent used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there. (One of Dickens’s characters is the proprietor of a lollipop establishment in the charming little town of Chester, — I think it was Chester.) I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but English writers always make merry over them, as if our very queerest names were not thrown completely into the shade by some of their own. Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of The Pall-Mall Gazette (I ’ve the paragraph carefully preserved in an old scrap-book) an account of a young man by the name of Onions who was arrested (by a “peeler,” of course!) for stealing money from his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Co., “stuff merchants,” of London. What mortal could have a more ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled-Onions? And then for Onions to be engaged in the vegetable line! Could there be a more incredible coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly awful. No American story-writer would dare to present that fact in his novel; it would not be accepted even as probable fiction. In the mean while Olivia Q. Fleabody is quite clever — for Mr. Trollope.

— If your contributor who contends that chalet should be written without the circumflex accent is wrong, he is wrong in very excellent company; for M. Littré himself, an indisputable authority in such matters, sustains the contributor’s position.

Apropos of this, I am permitted to quote the following passage from a letter addressed some time ago by Mr. P. G. Hamerton to his American publishers, who were then engaged in reprinting one of that author’s delightful hooks;—

“ The English text is all right, but in French words there are some errors. The printer ought not to put any accent on the a in chalet, — he always writes it châlet, which is a mistake I cannot imagine myself to have committed in the manuscript. This blunder begins at

page7emdash;, and I suppose your printers

intend to go on sinning in like manner to the end of the volume. If the sheets are stereotyped when this reaches you, the accent might easily be removed with a small chisel wherever it occurs on the a in chalet, and I beg that this may be done. It may be an American habit to put a circumflex accent on chalet, but in France no one does it, and the word is French.... I find on referring to

some books in my library that the English always stick a circumflex over the a in chalet, though it is quite incorrect. No French philologist of any importance does it or would do it.”