The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-02-15

want to read the thing put into words. Lots of men had been thinking about America when Columbus came over and discovered it.
 T suppose every writer does eight hours work that he hates for the priv ilege of having one hour at what he loves Novelists have to live, and even after a man has become successful he has usually put himself in a position where it is more than ever necessary, that he should make money. Often one doesn't write exactly what he wants to write, because he must satisfy his pub fishers and they must consult the taste of the public. Serials are really for a novelist the only sure means of SUD- port. Books, as a rule, don't pay a. liv- ing wage. The editor of a magazine must consider his readers when he chooses a serial. So novelist is gov- erned to some extent by public taste. Yes, writer can't always fly freely, and yet think that, as said, a book usually means that some man wanted to do that one thing and loved doing it. The thing works both ways. Public taste influences the novelist and the novelist influences public taste.
 "A man discovers something that he likes, something that he thinks true and beautiful. He puts it in a book A | few people recognize it's truth and like it, too. A discerning critic takes it up. Others read it because they hear, it 1 praised. Then a host of people who never see or feel the beauty in it read the book because they hear. that it is the thing to admire 1t. Other writers |, find that the discovery has proved pop ular and they glean along the same | field, and there's an epidemic of liter ] ature circling around that one original 1 bit of truth. There's Barrie. He dis covered the beauty of homely phase of Scotch life and he loved it. He put what he had found before the public There were people who felt with him and others read-then a deluge of stor- ies whose alien dialect was the only | thing remarkable about them. The general public didn't discriminate. Bar rie was sincere and genius, but there | have been others since who don't ring l true and don't bear comparison with l him. Sincerity is the great essential. Some of our young men need to learn that''
 What place are women to take in the literary fe1d?"
 Mr. Howells looked as nearly dis gusted as his unfailing good nature would allow.
 "Why, the place they can get,'' he said crisply. I'm a heretic about wo- man. People talk about her limita- tions. I don't see but what her limita- tions are the same as a mans, so far as literature is concerned. She may net look at life from a mans point of view, but that's no reason she doesn't see it as clearly. One hears platitudes about womans lack of breadth and power of generalization. They say she is intense l but within narrow bounds, that her ge- nius is better suited to the short story than to the novel. I call that nonsense.
 Women write more short stories than novels for the same reason that makes men do the same thing-because short stories are more easily handled and be- cause there is a reader market for them, but as for woman's ability, what's the greatest novel that has been writtenin America? Uncle Toms Cab- in:' and who wrote that?
 "Isn't Mrs. Humphrey Ward doing work as good as any that Is being done