The morning journal-courier., 1908-12-11
REJECTED AUTHORS Novel Way That an Imprinted Californian Adopted to Re
 lieve the Situation,
HE MAKES MSS. COPIES
Adair WClCler Is His Nnmc---Found a Way to Get Around the
 Publishers.

If there are any mute ingorious
 Mtltons lingering along until the
 churchyard gets ready to claim them, they have only themselves to blame If they will only be as vocal and as glorious as they please says the New York Sun. Adair Welcker has shown the way, Adair Welcker the Shakes peare of the Contra Costa,
 That's Spanish It means no more than the opposite shore. It Is the com
 mon name In San Francisco for Alameda County, Cal, which lies
 across the bay and also includes Con- tra Costa County, which lies back in the hills. Say 1t In Spanish, however and It sounds sort of poetlcal. This s the way MT. Welcker puts the case:
 T had during several years been continuously sending articles to American magazines, and from all the magazines possessed of standing with the public had had the articles returned. By not one American magazine possessed of standing, pur- porting to he a literary magazine and devoted solely to the publication of literature, has any article from my pen ever been published "Onp of the writings sent to maga- zines claiming to publish literature was a dramatic blank verse work The drama was offered by me to the Century Magazine for publication but ny their refusal to publish 1t, 1t was discovered that that magazine. as well as the others to which 1t had been sent did not care to publish litera- ture that would please the minority who think, but sought matter that would cause the magazines to be bought by the general public. Having thus by experience learned that to send such Literature longer to American magazines would be to put to ruinous expenditure time whose loss would be more irreparable than magazines many times over. I deter mined to take other methods of get ting before the thoughtful among mankind what I had written or would write"
 Welcker has proved a puzzle to Cal ifornia. It's easy enough to class him as crank but when you've got him once classed he's apt to come out with some bit of common sense that all may appreciate. Then when he follows it up with orphic utterance it's salving to ones intellectuas to feel that tho remark Is instinct with high thoughts.
 He has spent more than to years in California, most of that time In oak land and Berkeley As he is just 50 it Is easy to figure out that he Is
 almost wholly Californian. He can not qualify as a native son of the Golden West and wear the gold griz- zly bear for he was born at Water vllet Arsenal across the river from Troy. The only time he has been out of California was in 1887. when he spent six months in Great Britain and on the Continent.
 Those were the months when
 Welcker found himself highly sppre- ciated. Tn his luggage he carried
 his dramatic poem Louis XVI" and ,
 that's the one the Century could not find available This work was read | 'n Stratford -on- Avon and the local
 paper of the other Shakespeare
 horne noticed the reading for as
 much as two sticks.
 Tn Edinburgh he read 1t before
 "one Of the most intelligent audiences that the world can produce" and Proi John Stuart Rlaclde was kind enough to say It was quite play. These arc Incidental details. of value as serving to orient the bard.
 The lesson of this literary career i' laid down by Welcker In his writings
 mainly manuscript It ls this: TT
 tho editors turn you down lot them gr
 to blazes You know why they did i
 they want to sell their old maga
 zines Show them what you thinl
 of them; don't send them any nor,
 of your work; go on writing master
 pieces"
 But Welcker's literature is not al
 imprinted There is at hand a sln
 volume of real paper, imprinted wltl
 black ink from real type, "Flavla, b,
 Adair Welcker, Copyright 1885 b,
 the author, Berkeley, California
 Adair Welcker," In time to come thi
 may have value as a nnc copy Q
 the first 32-mo, and autographed n
 that It shall he held for g rise. Thi
 is a ive-act drama in tho days O
 Nero, Poetry, too Listen to th
 about moonshine:
 See how the moons soft rays conn
 gently downward,