Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-06-02
London Press and
London Writers
Special Correspondence of The Star.

Special Correspondence of The Star.
LONDON, May %. 1907.
In Journalism here the latest literary
catch-penny trick is the unfinished Lin
erick. The missing word competition ana
the hidden treasure hunts which are ex-
tensively doomed here were later intro
duced in America and there Is no doubt the
same fate awaits this latest device for In
creasing calculations.
The editor prints, say. the following four
lines:
There WI. was young ts man of n Iar lee,
For now spring is here
1t Is perfectly clear
He then pauses abruptly on the brink and
invites his readers to take a header into
space Ito vacant space and to bring up
a fifth line rhymng with the first two, and
providing some witty and appropriate con-
clusion.
Each contributor is generally required to
send sixpence twelve cents with each sup
twelve sixteen lines adjudged to be the
best are supposed to divide among them
all the money thus harvested SO tashlon-
able has the sport become that tne 1or-
tunate prize winner sometimes rakes IN as
much as 500 a line, thus putting the old
title of "penny-a-liner" very much to the
blush. Syndcates are formed to work this
mine of ore, and young men and maidens
NAV be seen with their heads very close
together discussing such alternative end
ings
Like La Milo tundraped can't be-,
Bills and breeches recepted must be-
Great faith. naturally must be reposed
in the honesty of the judging, and there
must even then lurk suspicion that the
weared judge, confronted with a Ienerif-
fan pile of 10000 answers, skins the cream
of the first thousand or so and lets the rest
rip.
To counteract this natural feeling one
paper has appointed as Judge well known
criCketer and sporting writer Gilbert H.
lesson No Englishmen VINO has seen him
pull a good ball off the middle stump out
of the ground to leg for six runs will en-
terrain any doubt as to the dlrectness OF MS
methods
Gaining the prize, where so many COM
pete, may be a matter of fiuke; but one
thing is as certain as death and the advent
of the taxgatherer. Since each competitor
has to cut the four printed lines from the
paper and send them up with each attempt,
the circulation of that paper goes up by
leaps and bounds. q. p. F., as the es-
termed friend of our youth, Euclid, used to
say in his pithy and cock-sure postscript,
when he had propounded more than
usually cross-grained problem and settled
it in his own rigid and arbitrary manner.
AS from his decision then, SO from the
judges now. There is no appeal one
can't even say "How's that, umpire? as
there isn't one. From the proprietors point
of view the beauty of the scheme lies in the
fact that the competitors themselves sup
ply the prize money.
Matter Of Pen Impetus.
Several popular authors have recently
answered the query propounded by a maya
zine editor, How do you write?aN
Arthur Morrison says he begins with
notes on odd slips of paper and an untidy
table. The notes are destroyed when re-
jected or used. He makes no rough draft,
corrects as he goes, the copy he begins is
the copy that goes to the printer he WORKS
very irregularly and never uses a type
writer. Stanley Wayman's rules are the
rule of thumb" w. E. Norris does an
enormous amount of mental calculatlon
when he begins to write the story Is al
ready as good as written, Miss Braddon's
method is much the same. but she is of
opinion that 1t is in travel and strange sur
roundngs that the Ps ane to SWe
in a mist till one day he exclaims, That s
it." The favorite method seems, on the
whole, to be absence of method. Max
Pemberton has no stereotyped method of
writing" and George R. Sims lights his
pipe and sees things before he describes
them.
Amateur Censorship.
The absurdities into which the amateur
censorship OF the press nearly always lands
itself are well illustrated by the present
troubles of the London education commit
tee which is revising the list of books in
the school libraries under its control, and
has discovered that Mrs. Gaskells strong
and beautiful story of Mary Barton Is
an undesirable work. At least the respon-
sible subcommittee suggestes that it should
be removed from the school libraries in
which it has found place; meanwhile the
novels of Mrs. Henry Wood are left with
ont interference Comment is needless. A
still more amusing proposal has been made
by a local body of school managers, who
have requested the clerk to obtain for them
I,tI1 ctNrrlr ri
Salvation Yeo's famous eulogy on tobacco
as "a lone mans companion, bachelors
friend, hungry mans food, sad mans
cordial, wakeful mans sleep and emily
mans fire" is omitted. The moral peda-
gogues are afraid that this would inspire
children with a burning desire to devote all
their pocket money to the purchase OF
cigarettes instead Of lollipops.