The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-12-24

, power, for the half-mad girl in the next | room had left that crucial thing out of her story. q know this seems impossible ! said the novelist to himself, but if we
 are to throw realism overheard let us weight it and sink 1t while we are about | it) In his first transports of agony | the only thing that occurred to the | stricken father was to give up the posi- ton he had won in the community and | flee to the other side of the continent
 and begin life anew. and he actually be- san preparations. But he was drink ing man, and his enemy intervened. | He drank himself into state of mad ness and did not come home that night. After he had gone and it was too late 1 the girl had. recovered self-command
 enough to remember, and had told her
 mother that one vital fact she had for l gotten, and the mother waited up all
 night to tell the father. But when she | learned that he was drunk she decided l to postpone the telling; the daughter 8 half-told story went untold by the mother until better season, and that decision of hers, with her daughters failure of
 memory the day before, cost a mans life. | The boy came to tell the father of the reparation he had made. At sight of l him the wild beast rose in the drink soaked brain, and the boy was shot with | his story on his lips If any one of the | strarge series of accidents had failed, ] he would have been heard. and the story | twice frustrated would have come out;
 but when one is writing fiction, fiction of
 this kind the use of accident and coinci-
 dence has no limits and the probable
 must be sternly excluded. It is not con
 scientious writing, but readers of crime
 stories demand it. So in this novel the boy was slain by a story never told; story half-told one day, untold the next,
 and finally stifled on his lips.
 Months later the murderer was placed
 on trial. His daughter had not seen him since the day of the half-told secret l When she came into the courtroom her father rushed to her and embraced her. She repulsed him, and then she went
 on the witness stand and told her shame
 to save his life So the half-told story. the untold story, the stifled story, was tcld at last, with all the world listening.
 but told too late.
 | The novelist showed this tale in proof
 to his friend, who read it with a half
 weary smile. My boy,' he said, handing
 it back "as long as you write on crime 1 you will have to go on spinning more
 and more impossible plots. It is unworthy
 of you.i Why don't you give it up and go in for realism?''
 
 line she said that she hoped when the prize winners came to Washington year later, that the President would meet them
 in person
 l Since that time Mrs. Wilson has died, l bu. the hope that she entertained was recalled by the President and in com l pliance with this desire which she puh- | licly expressed, President Wilson laid aside official duties and stood in the east
 room for more than a half hour and
 shook the hand of every member of the | Buckeye Corn Special
 Every day there are requests that the l President meet different delegations, but | they are refused because of the demands | on the time of the chief executive. The President dressed in gray business suit, | wore a black band on his coat sleeve, and | his greeting to the corn boys and girls 1 was one of the real treats of the entire | trip.