Los Angeles herald., 1908-11-22
WASTE BASKET LETTERS

WI quite walked away with honors
AA this week. There were many
splendid letters from them. and in
every contest they were conspicuous
for their good work. This will put the
Junior girls on their mettle, 1 know.
The girls have been sending in so
many more letters than the boys that
they naturally received a majority of
the prizes. This past week, however,
the boys made decided squirt, and the
roll of honor today shows the result.
There is one point which I want to
speak about to you boys and girls. In
Junior said: II have tried in these con-
tests, but without success, so will make
one more effort"
looked up the old papers and found
that at least three Communications
from that girl had been published
within the past six weeks. That is
pretty fair success, / think. Boys and
girls, won't you please realize that it is
a marx of fair work when 1 use your
contributions at all? Each week
have to throw a great many letters,
limericks and stories away and it is a
decided honor for you when you see
your work published. Now / cope that
my dear nieecs and nephews will
cease to think that they are having no
success unless they receive a prize. You
know there are only few prizes each
week, and some one must go without.
am trying to give every one a chance
at these prizes by awarding book for
each three honorable mention" pa
pers. Save the Juniors" which con-
tain your work, especially If there is an
honorable mention over the story,
limerick or letter, and when you have
three with these magic words over
them bring Their to my office and Sc
lect your book, or if YOU are an out-of-
town writer, mail them to me and tell
me what sort of a book you would
most like to have. OF course, 1 cannot
promise to supply you with exactly
what you want, but viii come as near
to it as possible.
Shall I tell you once more why your
work is not always published? Here
are a few of the reasons. The most
frequent one is because of writing on
both sides of the paper. That makes
any communication absolutely impos-
sible. l cannot promise even to read
such letters, let alone to publish Them
1 have said this repeatedly, yet even
the old writer's make the mistake of
writing a full page and then turning
the page and putting name, address
and so forth on the other side. This
bars the work from competition and
generally leads it directly to my waste
paper basket.
Then, another thing which I want
to emphasize is that all letters or other
communications to be published must
be signed with name, address, school
and grade, unless for some reason the
competitor is not in school. Frequently
letters come to my desk unsigned ex-
cept by initials or nom de plume,
and one writer added a postscript by
saying: IF this wins prize 1 will send
my name and address," want every
one of the young writer's to do the best
work possible and send it to me, and
the work which is the best in style,
composition, penmanship, punctuation
and general appearance will be the one
to which / will award the prize
Do not use freak paper, my dear boys
and girls One very excellent contri-
button came written across paper near
ly as wide as two pages of this Junior,
and so it too followed the others TO
the waste basket.
1 hope that every boy and girl who
does not find his letter or other work
published in this paper today will sit
down again and try and do better, re-
Numbering all these criticisms
Perhaps some of the boys and girls
think 1 am too particular about the
way letters come to me, but if they
could know how many / have to read
each week they would realize that tits
necessary to present them in the most
convenient possible way.