The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-27
Wax Beacb, Writer Of Real1aes
By HARRIS MERTON LYON.

" got one good stomach laugh out of the whole bunch. I preferred Richard Hard- ing Davis or George Ade. Sometimes I went on a still hunt for witnesses and dragged them into court, then rode herd on them while my two brothers told the jury how their clients had been abused My brothers are real lawyers, orators you know, with eloquence to burn. The only eloquence I have developed was when I drove a dog team. A lot of these clients were Polacks and MontenI grins and Russians whose names sounded like a bad cough, and most of them smelled worse than they sounded, so I went to Alaska.
 "Yes, yes. A-seeking gold. To cut long story short, found two honest men in that whole country. One of them is my partner now in a claim up there that is paying us big money every year. I forget who the other man was. But I went broke-then flush-then broke then fush-then broke again, time after time At this stage of my career I de- veloped my genius for carrying things, above alluded to. Whenever there was anything too heavy or too dirty for any of the Indians to tote the foreman al- ways used to yell: Where's Beach?' And little Beach came meekly forward and toted it. Sometimes I strayed away-so they put Deli Oti lll6. BOl SO l NhCNNa a cud and Tapped my ears.
 After I had stevedored all the freight that had to be transferred from United States into Alaska, I went back and mined zinc in Missouri. They showed me! l turned a promoter next, never having been a promoter. I took coal dredge to Nome to see if I could not work the beach. found that I couldn't. Along with a few thousand other and better T Co uf hat buzzed. I decided that I wasn't a real promoter, for I couldn't go home and face the music, and yet I couldn't keep to that steam boiler nor even feed any part of the fittings to my engineers. Times were tough in Nome that year; there was less money than in Michigan or Florida, and no apples, so l girded up my rubber boots and got busy. I was game for any financial enterprise from pitch and toss to manslaughter. The on- ly thing I barred was a lead pipe. The nights were too short to use the latter, anyhow; there wasn't any darkness whatever. I tried everything from vocal lessons to longshoring, for I knew there must be some money concealed some where in the world. Meanwhile those en- gineers sat on my dredge and ate their wage in the most extortionate manner pos sible, clamoring discordantly for em- I tized the owner into setting a price on it then found a fellow who had roll Of money with a rubber band around it pinned up in his inside vest pocket with a safety pin. I talked him into coma and before he had recovered conscious ness we owned the claim. I set the ten der-handed engineers of mine at work with picks and shovels and gloated over them. We struck 1t rich. continued to syfra n6 fa,tt
 For two years I followed the game, stampeding from Cooks Inlet to the Arctic, a little matter of three or four thousand miles, mining, prospecting, speculating Sometimes I was poor. then again I was broke No matter how evil my fortunes, I knew they were certain to get worse. Finally I came back to Chicago to spar for wind. Here, not knowing anything about fire brick, I of course engaged in the brick industry. About the time I got so that I could tell a brick from a nosegay of pink nastur- tiums, took on an interest in a contract ing business. We built furnaces, erected chmneys, and installed power plants. I knew less about this than did about fire brick, but being a director of the several companies nobody dared to tell me so. I was doing very well, thank you, when a friend of mine put me wise to DerIeCI nllnL or IlOfleA llldl was SOthA tO waste in the author business. He proud 1y displayed to me samples of his oP n handicraft as a fiction writer. These sam ples were printed in a harvester con- pany's trade journal.
 DO they pay money for that stuIf? asked in alarm.
 "They do,' said the proud friend. T get ten dollars apiece for each story
 Tt looked easy and appealed to me hsax to carry anything, not even suit case full of brick samples. Why should I fire-brick for living after that? I asked myself So I sat down and mannand.e1 a piece about Alaska. I sent It to one of the big New York magazines, thinking to start 1t at the top and Jet it work down to the Poultymans Review by the natural law of gravitation. But the big magazine took 1t; and the pig magazine editor came out to Chicago to see n'e. He introduced me to a lot of nice looking literary people who, it seems, a.d him in his nefarious job of publishing maga- zine once every thirty days This Is Beach,, he said to them. l carefully lapped one foot over the other and look ed bashful. Beach! Beach!' they echoed. They knew me. The evil was done.
 "I went back to the office and threw bricks around the room until there wasn't u went to Chicago, rented a blank office in the Fine Arts building q chose the mama purposely) locked myself in, and wrote The Looting of Alaska'-twenty thous- and words. Just like that Then I start ed The Spoilers Also a nice batch of short stories.
 My first appearance in New York with all this material; my plunge into the lit erary world there-ah, 1t is like dream, a bewlldering dream. I sold the stuff right and left. I pulled in five thousand dollars to start with. Then I went out with a club after anybody that had mon dy-editors, theatrical managers, ever body. My slogan was How dare you have money? Gimme that!-with brusque, ungentlemanly gesture-and got It.
 'eWhen I wrote my first play the cri- tics all got even with me- The next morn ing the querulous plaint of all of them was one and the same thing. Yes. Each one of em hammered the same. sad, minor key It was: How dare you write a playY There is no answer. I now live in New York, you see, so nothing mat ters.
 "But I am not a real author, know. feel distrait. I ought to be carrying something. Therefore, whenever l can't stand 1t any longer I go up in Alaska and hunt bear"
 Beach lives on upper Broadway, New York. He works hard, and, for recrea- ton, boxes and wrestles and drives 7O-horse- power Panhard.