The Contributors' Column

AN American-born Quaker, Nora Waln has enjoyed unique opportunities to know China and the Chinese. ‘ The House of Exile’ tells how she went to live as an adopted daughter in a wealthy Chinese family. Later, marrying an English government official, she remained in China, residing successively in several treaty ports.George J. Anderson (‘New Shirts for Old ’) has had a widely varied career in merchandising, manufacturing, publishing, and mining. Not long ago he resigned as president of one of the largest coal-mining companies in America, and has since devoted himself to consulting work in the financial and administrative phases of business reorganization. ∆ Within little more than a year Willa Cather (‘A Chance Meeting’) has published two new volumes: Shadows on the Rock, a novel, and Obscure Destinies, a collection of short stories. William I. Nichols (‘What Can a Young Man Do?’) graduated from Harvard just before the bottom dropped out of the business world. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship, returned to his Alma Mater to serve as Assistant Dean, took a brief fling at business in New York, and is now back at Harvard as Secretary to the University for Information. Ann Bridge (‘The Burberry’) is the author of Peking Picnic, the Atlantic Monthly Prize Novel for 1932. ∆ During the war, Francis Vivian Drake (‘ Air Stewardess’) served with distinction in the Royal Flying Corps. Wounded in action in 1917, he came to America as a loan from the British Government to teach in Army flying schools. He remained here after the Armistice, took up banking, and plans to become an American citizen. At the moment, he is off upon an air tour of South America. ∆ For some years a member of the Atlantic staff, Theodore Morrison (‘Hesperides ’) has since become an instructor in English at Harvard.

John W. Burgess (‘ A Civil War Boyhood’) was a scholar and historian of international renown. From 1890 until his retirement in 1912, he was Dean of the Faculty of Political Science at Columbia. He died early in 1931. ∆ A generation of Wellesley graduates hail Vida D. Scudder (‘The Privilege of Age’) as a wise and gracious teacher of English literature. To a larger public she is known through her authorship of a score of books. ∆ Born in Iowa, Richard Sherman (‘ The Two of Them’) grew up in Montana, took his degree from Harvard in 1928, and for several years has worked on the editorial staff of the Forum in New York. James Norman Hall (‘Skip’) is co-author, with Charles Nordhoff, of Mutiny on the Bounty. ∆ After a lifetime of service with the British Government in India, Sir John Campbell (‘Jungle Byways in India’) is now Financial Adviser to the Colonial Office in London. ∆ Conundrum: Why is it that poets thrive in the dusty air of the British Ministry of Labor? Certainly they do, for Freda C. Bond and Richard Church are two poets who find the Labor Office congenial enough, and Humbert Wolfe (‘For Helen’) is another. ∆ Scientific research is a hobby with George W. Gray (‘ Universe in the Bed’), whose literary education and journalistic training prepared him to make the mysteries of the laboratory intelligible to laymen. ∆ A young widow, Mina Curtiss (‘This Quiet Dust Was Gentlemen and Ladies’) is an Associate Professor of English at Smith College. Educated at Smith, Columbia, Radcliffe, and London University, she served during the war in the Military Intelligence at Washington. She is the daughter of the well-known Boston merchant, Louis E. Kirstein.

Expostulation and reply.

Dear Atlantic, —
I have, just got back from the Public Library, where I go every month to read the Atlantic and several other magazines that a literary person ought to read. In your October number I read the story that Miss Mary Ellen Chase wrote about me, and I think it only fair that you should get my side of the story, even if your readers do not.
Miss Chase has had a lot of fun at my expense, even going so far as to make fun of the old broadcloth coat I wore the fall I was studying under her, and my red hat and worn cotton gloves, overlooking the fact that the ten dollars I was paying for being taught might have bought me some clothes, just as her share of my ten dollars probably helped her to put on some style. As a matter of fact, I treasured that red hat and probably wore it longer than I should have, because it was the last thing my husband. Jim, bought for me the pay day before he was killed.
It seems to be a mystery to Miss Chase that a Dumb Dora like me should ever have tried to write fiction. Well, after my husband, Jim, was killed in the railroad yards, I was just desperate for something really worth while to do, that would keep body and soul together for me and my family, and enable us to keep on living in the little house with the big garden where Jim and I had been so happy. Our minister told me of a class that was going to be held in our town, where I could study short - story writing with the personal guidance and help of his old friend, Miss Mary Ellen Chase, who was supposed to be quite an expert. The charge was only ten dollars, so I took the money I was saving for a new winter coat, and joined.
Most of the students were people like myself, who were just trying to work their way up to something higher and better than the things they had to do to earn a bare living. I don’t blame Miss Chase for not admiring our literary talent, but I do think she was wrong in consenting to become what Jim, my husband, used to call ‘a ten-cent cigar in a five-cent face.’ If she was too good to teach the kind of people we were, and felt that, with all her ability and knowledge, she just could n’t make successful writers of us, the kind thing would have been to admit it and quit, instead of wasting our time, even if she had to give back what the school was paying her for teaching us. We all learned how much she knew about writing short stories, even if we did not learn much about writing ourselves. As a matter of fact, she helped me, because there is a certain inspiration in working against people, though not so much as there is in working with them.
Speaking now as one writer to another, is it considered artistic for a writer to express such bitter contempt for one of her characters, whether real or imaginary ? In my own work I have always found it best, when writing about a character who is especially low or dumb, just to tell a few significant facts, in a quiet way, and let my readers draw their own conclusions. I think a great deal of my success has been due to the sympathetic spirit in which I have treated all my characters, high or low.
I have never sent you any stories, but have had very good luck in selling stories to what we in the trade call the ‘pulps’— that is, magazines printed on cheap paper. They pay quite well, and, now that my girls are married. I can make a very nice living down here where living is cheap and gardening a real joy. I won’t write any more at present, because I have an order now for one of those stories. I think I will call it ‘Journeys End in Lovers’ Meetings.’
AMELIA PENLUSTLakeland, Florida

P. S. What rates do you pay for stories?

Dear Mrs. Penlust, —
Yours is an alarming — and an amusing — note. Can it be that you are spoofing? At any rate, you have enlivened an office morning.
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Dear Atlantic, -
I presume that I might have been spoofing, at least in a technical sense, but I was really more serious than I intended to sound. It is a tribute to Miss Chase’s ability, perhaps, when I say that I was able to visualize the aspiring Amelia Penlust so very well that I could not only put myself in her place, hut could also sympathize with the reactions she might have been expected to feel.
GORDON WILSONLakeland, Florida

A mountain doctor’s ambition.

Dear Atlantic, —
My husband and I have greatly enjoyed Louis Reed’s stories of the West Virginia mountains. They remind us of home. As a bit of corroborative detail, I am sending the following excerpt from a newspaper published in the next county to my own in eastern Kentucky.

DR. RUGGLES THROWS HAT INTO RING

To the Voters of—— County:
Upon the solicitation of my friends and a number of the leaders of the Radical party, I have fully decided to make the race for jailor. Am well known throughout the county. I am a son of Benton Ruggles, Sr., in the county.
I am now somewhere in 40 years old, I think at my next birth, and have never served my people in public life. I feel that I have reached the zenith of my life both mentally and physically, and would like to give four years of the best part
of my life to the dear old county of-. It is
not what little I might draw of the public money that I ask for this beautiful office, but I just want to serve the people. Of course I can use the money.
I promise if the Radicals will nominate and elect me that there will be no claims turned in to the Fiscal Court for doctoring the prisoners, as I will doctor the prisoners free, and I will feed them nice, clean, well-cooked, and good, substantial food, and keep the quarters about the jailhouse as clean and neat as a pin, and will provide all kinds of indoor games and amusements for the prisoners, and just show them an all’round good time.
I have two litters of children, two by my first wife and four by my second wife. I was raised a very poor boy, have been engaged in the practice of Herbs for a number of years.
I have always been a Radical, never cross for anything. My people are all Radicals, I being a grandsire of Old Elijah Ruggles, deceased.
I will have to admit that I am a sinner, but am a friend to churches and schools and roads and public improvements.
So give my claim due consideration before casting your suffrage, and if you decide I am a better man for the place than the others that are in the race, vote for me, and if not, vote for the other man. If I am defeated, I am still a Radical. I thank you. Watch the Times for further announcement.
C. RUGGLES, M.D.

I do not know what he means by the Radical party, but suspect from my knowledge of the territory that he means the Republican. I never found out whether the good doctor was nominated and elected.
ANN RIDDELL ANDERSON
Iowa City, Iowa

The Shadow of McAdoo.

We are indebted to Mr. Roy Boardman Smith of Boston for this highly suggestive summary, which we print as a footnote to Judge Anderson’s paper, ‘Salvaging Our Railroads,’ in the December issue.

GOVERNMENT OPERATION OF RAILROADS December 26, 1917 March 1, 1920

Government operation increased the number of employees by 121/2, per cent to do only 71/2 per cent more business.

Government operation increased the cost of wages by 112 per cent to handle only 71/2 per cent more business.

Government operation for two years decreased profits to the vanishing point in spite of increased business.

But, by 1926, private operation had decreased the number of employees by 13 per cent to handle about 2 per cent more business.

By 1926, private operation had decreased the cost of wages for handling 2 per cent more business by 20 per cent.

By 1926, private operation had increased profits from the vanishing point up to $1,233,000,000.

A clarification.

Dear Atlantic, —
It has been brought to my attention that certain language contained in my review of More Merry-Go-Round in the November Atlantic Monthly might be understood to imply that one of the authors of the predecessor. Washington MerryGo-Round, was dismissed from a newspaper by reason of breaking confidences and selling information which was not his to sell. I do not know such to have been the fact. As far as I know, no newspaper which has let go an author of these books has stated any reason therefor. I naturally regret having used language which, by any construction, may give rise to an implication which was not intended.
The opinion which I meant to convey in my review, and which I continue to hold, is that the publication of anonymous books containing material like that contained in the Merry-Go-Round books, which comes to the authors while employed as newspaper correspondents in Washington, is contrary to the best ethics of American journalism and of itself affords critical condemnation of such books.
Very truly yours,
HENRY CABOT LODGE, JR.
Beverly, Massachusetts

Author to editor.

The Editor takes this means to thank a valued contributor for the understanding expressed in these lines inscribed to him upon a Christmas card:—

A CONTRIBUTOR