The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-08-02

everything in the house sent over to
borrow more mental sustenance from
a neighbor, who supplied him with
some New York Weeklies. He said he
became so immensely interested in the
fortunes of the COW boys, bandits and
ladies who carried dagSers within their
bosoms that he made up his mind to
try it himself. He straightway sat
down and did the best he could with
the result that the New York Weekly
sent him $3.50 by return mail after re-
cefving his manuscript. From that
time on he had no difficulty and be-
came one of the most successful dime
novelists in the country. OF course
this has very little to do with literature
but that dime novels have a place and
are an interesting development, no
one can deny. 1t was only the other
day that distinguished man right in
st. Paul made the statement that dime
novels OF the Bloody Mike" order, had
e. first awakened within him a desire for
reading. and that he had never en-
joyed any book more than the adVen-
lures of Buffalo Bill, which made him
realize the possibilities of a self-made
career. There are, of course, dime
novels and dime-novels and those of
Sawyer are of the better order if such
thing can be said of this form of
fiction.
New Books Gamble.
Authors who are disposed to grum-
bic at publishers and to believe that
they are hardly fair to their craft
seldom realize that the publishing of a
new book-especially by an untried
WRITER'S a gamble pure and simple in
which they stand to lose quite as much
and more than the author. There is as
much risk involved in the launching
of new book as a new play and NJ
one knows how the capricious public is
going to receive it. According to a
London publisher who has been speak
ing of this matter lately. it is only the
few that succeed and if a publisher
once in a while strikes it rich" no
one should begrudge him his well earn
ed emolument He says that five out
or every six novels barely pay and that
three out of every six fail absolutely
He further says that half the known
writer's have an ever decreasing pub
lie, and that often the sums paid out
on account of royalties when a book
is first published are never earned
This is not by any means an optimistic
view, but undoubtedly a true one
though it hardly accounts for the tre-
mendous amount of fiction published
each year which even the least discern
ing can see is trash. The non-success
of so many books is due perhaps to the
increasing good taste of the public
rather than to any lack Of it. 1t is an
age of haste and hurry and magazines
and Sunday papers have undoubtedly
interfered considerably with the book
trade.
Death of Mrs. Alexander.
The death recently in England OF
Mrs. Alexander, the novelist, or Mrs.
Alexander Hector as she was in reality
takes away one of the best of the old
time writer's of fiction. Mrs. Alexan-
der wrote many charming books, inter-
est1ng, harmless, pure stories that not
only hurt no one but were tales of good
and refined people who lived and loved
and died in the most natural and ex-
emplary manner. No one was ever
worse for the reading of them and they
contained no problems, no self-analy-
sis, no feminine Mysteries, no misun-
sderstood married heroines whose unap-
prcctative husbands gave them excuse
for fiirtationa with other women's hus-
bands. They were love-stories Of the
best Wpe and the modern literary world
contains too few of them for such a
writer as Mrs. Alexander to pass away
without leaving large gap which t
viii be difficult to fill.
Pidein Will Hardly Do.
Charles FELTON, Pidgin, the write: OF