The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1906-01-14

staying at the useful Lady AIary's place
in Yorkshire. She meets Basil by ac-
cident one morning while riding alone.
That is the advantage of having an
American girl for your heroine Like
the British army: 1t goes anywhere ana
does anything. In chapter i've Basil
and Ursula meet again, this time at
picnic The sub-editor does not wish
( to repeat himself, otherwise he prob
ably would have summed up chapter
five by saying it was Taken up with
the humors of the usual picnic" In
chapter six something happens. BASIL
returning late one day, comes across
Ursula Bart, in a lonely part of the
moor, talking earnestly to g. rough
looking stranger. His approach across
the soft turf being unnoticed, he can
not help overhearing Ursula's parting
words. must see you again. TOmor-
row night at half-past nine. In the
gateway of the ruined abbey. Who
is hep And why must Ursula meet him
again at such an hour? In such spot2
So, here, at the cost of reading twen-|
ty lines, I am landed, so to speak, at
the beginning of the seventh chapter.
But for taking the trouble to read it
through for myself, my kindly guide,
the sub-editOr, has spoiled me. ~ on
read it, I want to say to him. "Tell
me what it's all about tomorrow. Who
to see him again? Why choose a
draughty place? Why half-past nine
/ o'clock at night which must have been
/ an awkward time for both of them
+ likely to lead to talk? Why should I
wade through three columns and
I half2 It's your work. What are you
/ paid for ?'' Ny fear is that this sort
/ of thing will lead to a. demand on the
part of the public for condensed nov
els What busy man is going to spend
a week of evenings reading a book,
When a nice young sub-editor is will
ing in five minutes to tell him the
whole story? Then there viii come a
! day feel 1t-When the buSineSS-like
editor viii say to himself: what in
| thunder is the sense of paying one man
4 to write a stors of sixty thousand
/ words, and another man to read it and
/ tell It again In sixteen thOuSand2 We
shall be expected to write our novels
/ in chapters not exceeding twenty
words Our short stories will be re-
| duced to The formula: Little boy. Pair
| of skates. Broken ice. Heavens
gates. Formerly an author commits
stoned to supply a child's tragedy of
\ this kind for, say, a Christmas number,
! would have spun it out into FIVE thou
! sand words. Personally. should have
/ given the reader the summer and the
/ autumn to get accustomed to the boy.
! He would have been a good boy; the
sort of boy that makes a Decline for
/ the thinnest ice. He would have lived
! in a cottage I could have spread that
/ cottage over two pages: the things that
! grew in the garden; the view from the
! front door. You would have known
that boy before I had done with him
felt that you known known him all
your life; his quaint sayings; his child
/ ish thoughts; his great longings would
/ have been impI essed upon you. The
| father might have had dash of humor
in him. The mothers early girlhood
might have lent itself to pretty writ
ing For the ice we would have had q
mysterious lake in wood=said to be
haunted. The boy would have loved
/ O. twilghts to stand upon its margin.
He would have heard strange voices
calling to him. You would have felt
the thing was coming. So much might
have been done. When I think of that
plot wasted in nine words it makes me
positively angry. And what is to be-
! come of US writers if this is to be the
4 new fashion in literature We are
paid by the length of our manuscript at
rates from half-a-crown a thousand
words and upward. In the case of