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"The Pilgrim's Progress.''

THE WARRANT FOR JOHN BUNYAN'S ARREST.

Sometime ago the warrant upon which Johu Bunyan was arrested was discovered in London. The Fleming H Revell Company have obtained a photograph of the document and have reproduced it in half-tone to serve as an additional illustration in the new edition of their illustrated Pilgrim's Progress."

iards. The younger Spanish writers have been influenced by the works of Poe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hoffman, Sudermann, Maeterlinck, Tolstoy and Ibsen, but they have not always shown judgment and discrimination in their study of foreign literatures, and in some cases have borrowed from their master that which was least worthy.

M. du Dezert thus characterizes Castilian literature: "The field of poetry is a desert. It used to be said that Clarin contained only two and a half poets! On the basis of that reckoning, there would be left to-day just half a one-Manuel del Pelaccio. In reality there are more than that: Federico Balart, the author of 'Dolores;" Medina, author of 'Murcian Airs;' Salvador Rueda, 'the sensualist of the mind,' who in his 'Precious Stones' has sung the beauties of nature, art and love, and in 'The Land of the Sun' has struck all the strings of the lyre with a master stroke. Perez de Alaya, Gonzales Blanco, Manuel Machado, and a few others are endeavoring to transplant to Spain the complete symbolism of the French writers."

The long novel does not find much favor in Spain to-day, according to this writer. The short story is preferred.-THE LONDON PUBLISHers' CirculAR.

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It is the most difficult to write, because without the inestimable aid of descriptions of character and of scenery it is not easy, however brilliant the conversation may be, to paint portraits and convey atmosphere. If a novel does not convey character and atmosphere present portraits the butter-tub is its place. It is necessary, too, in the novel of conversation, to leave much to the imagination of the reader. The average reader has mighty little. It is better to give him the fullest details. He prefers the guide always at his elbow. He hates to be obliged to use his intelligence. He rightly looks upon reading as a relaxation, not an impost.

The novel of conversation is, also, a novel without a plot, and to the average reader a

novel without a plot is like soda water without whiskey.

It is most difficult to read because it is breathless and because "nothing happens." If it is dull conversation, there is no excuse for the existence of the novel. If it is brilliant it exhausts the average reader. There is nothing he dislikes so much as brilliance. He thinks the author is making fun of him. He generally accuses him of immorality.. Yet in the novel of conversation there must be no dull moment. notwithstanding the fact that it is for the dull moment that the average reader looks to enable him to gather his second wind.

Wherefore it may be assumed that the novel of conversation, being the most difficult to read and the most difficult to write, is the novel not to be published.

That, obviously, is absurd.

Re-read "The Story of the Gadsbys." In this delicious book, composed as it is almost wholly of conversation, except for the short italicised "directions," the characters stand out as clear and as vital as those of Dickens, who piled description upon description. There is also atmosphere and incident. The secret of the success of this book lies in the fact that the conversation is never merely brilliant. It is simply conversation taken down in shorthand verbatim from life, and translated into longhand in a slightly improved form. Among novels of conversation "The Story of the Gadsbys" still stands alone.

But, one is told, it is by no means the most popular of Mr. Kipling's books. This is the more difficult to understand because the average reader, in choosing a new book, runs quickly through its pages to see whether there is "lots of conversation.'

Wherefore, it may be assumed that although the average reader likes lots of conversation, he does not like the novel of conversation. This, also, is absurd.

Re-read any of Dumas's stories. These books reek of conversation-conversation that is neither brilliant nor life-like-conversation in which there is no attempt to convey character or atmosphere-conversation that is, on the face of it, thrown in to fill up the required number of pages.

The Marquise Count de la

"Ha!" "Ha."

"It is fine weather." "Yes?"

suddenly meets the Listen to them.

"You don't think so." "Oh yes."

"It will be a fine night." "Perhaps."

"A fine night is necessary." "Again perhaps."

"You saw her, the Countess?" "Yes."

"Did she see you?”

"She saw me."

"That was unwise, my dear Count."

"She did not see me, my dear Marquis."

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How can one manage to beat about the bush so long and not get at the central factthat the "new writer" who has it as his ambition to "get into the magazines" is simply out of place in a discussion of literature? Is there any magazine now published in the world for the sake of literature-which has any more relation to literature than it has to cigars and soap? Speaking not figuratively nor jestingly, but the simple fact-what is a magazine to-day but a means of enabling the exploiters of cigars and soap to make known their wares to their customers? To do this, of course, the magazine has to have readers, and to get the readers it publishes a mass of reading matter; but what possible relationship has this reading matter to literature? What possible meeting-ground is there between literature and the tastes of a cigar and soap-buying public?

These things are deplorable, of course, and men with conscience, magazine editors among them, battle against them bravely, but only to fail and either give up or else sink into obscurity. They fail and they must fail forever: it is intended by Nature that they should fail. just as it is intended that our political reformers should fail, that our tenement-house reformers, our stage reformers, our anti-imperialists. our peace agitators, our labor-conciliators. should all go down beneath the juggernaut of the bourgeoisie. The point is that we have now a system of society which makes wageslaves of the vast mass of humanity, and shuts them out forever from all hope of sharing in civilization, progress, and light; and the failure of all our efforts at reform, of all our dreams of joy and beauty, is simply the justice of Nature, the vengeance of this down-trodden class.

"Follow the chain of the slave," said Emerson, "and you will find the other end upon the wrist of the master." So it is to-day, and so it will be forever; there can be no haven of refuge and no Palace of Art for any one-only strife and failure for all-until the fact of human brotherhood is granted, until the truth has been pounded into our sluggish minds, that there can be no soul-life for any man until it is for all. that there can be among us neither political virtue, nor social refinement, nor true religion. nor vital art, so long as men, women. and little children are chained up to toil for us in mines and factories and sweatshops, are penned in filthy slums, and fed upon offal, and doomed to rot and perish in soul-sickening misery and horror. We have reached a state to-day when it is possible to say in the words of John Tanner, Member of the Idle Rich Class, that "any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior." And if we are inferiors, what have we to do with art? How can we be expected to produce art-how to understand art? So long as we are without heart, so long as we are without conscience, so long as we are without even a mind-pray. why should any one think it worth while to be troubled because we are without a literature?

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WILBUR NESBIT Author of The Trail to Boyland

page was made up. The transposition occurred again and again until the author protested. But when the foreman grumbled that he "never saw a poet yet that knew how to spell his own name,' the protest was silenced and the poor poet let the long-suffering printer have his way.

A Novel Issued in Nine Countries

Mr. George Horace Lorimer's first book, "The Letters of a Self-made Merchant to His Son," has up to the present time reached a sale of 300,000 copies. His new book, "Old Gorgon Graham," is published simultaneously in nine different countries, and in four different languages. Mr. Lorimer is editor of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post."

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A New Writer Heralded

*

One of the most pleasing of the new novels in gift-book form is "The Castle Comedy," by Thompson Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan is a New Yorker by birth; a Kentuckian by breeding. He attended the University of the South and was a devoted athlete, winning the Southern Intercollegiate championship twice in the high jump and hurdles. His romance has been written in the intervals of a journalistic career.

Mr. Buchanan has not been without some exciting experiences. For instance, he tells how he helped to make a number of notable arrests in Porto Rico while he was serving in Company C, First Kentucky Volunteer Infantry during the war with Spain.

He tells it this way:

It was after the signing of the protocol that our company, which was then encamped back of Ponce, was ordered into the mountains to hunt Black Hands. The Black Hands were bands of robbers, who used that insignia to strike terror into the hearts of the country people. Company C landed one night at Adjuntas, a village up in the mountains twentysix miles back of Ponce. The place had been fairly placarded with Black Hand threats, and an attack was expected. I happened to be the corporal of the guard. Some time before midnight there was a call from the farthest outpost. When I got there, I found a little Porto-Rican kneeling while a big soldier was

prodding him with a bayonet. The PortoRican had a rifle, a number of pistols, and a big machete. He talked a lot of Spanish, and only one English word-"Black Hand." "Sure," I said, and we marched him into town and threw him into jail. In ten minutes we had another call, and finally the calls came so close together that I just marched the guard up and down the streets. gathering in little Porto-Ricans with guns. It was lovely, and we felt awfully proud of ourselves. In the morning the guard-all our chests many inches larger-reported to the captain. We had twenty-two prisoners and several carts full of guns. The captain came down to the jail, and taking one look at the prisoners turned fiercely on

me:

"What the thunder have you been doing," he cried. "Were you all drunk last night?"

We had arrested the mayor, the entire police force, and about every citizen in Adjuntas capable of bearing arms.

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Every now and then writers of romances figure as hero or heroine in a romance in real life. We are

Romancers

Romances of glad that it is so, for it reminds us that there is still some romantic feeling alive in the world. Not long ago it was discovered that "Billy," to whom Stewart Edward White dedicated one of his later books, is Mr. White's wife, for whom her husband's pet name is Billy.

Now word comes that Miss Bertha Runkle has met the prototype of her hero of "The Helmet of Navarre." He is Lieutenant Bash, of Company B, First United States Infantry, distinguished for service in the Spanish-American War. Lieutenant Bash is now in the Philippines. Rumor has it that Miss Runkle and he are engaged to be married.

This reminds us that there is scent of a Corelli romance. It seems that the hero of "God's Good Man," Marie Corelli's new novel, has an original. Moreover, the original is a country clergyman whose little parish lies very near to Miss Corelli's home. Like John Walden, he is fond of archeological research, and, like him, too, has restored the church in his parish and has discovered an unique and beautiful sepulchre. Miss Corelli and the clergyman are great friends, and though there is no reason for believing them actually contemplative of marriage, yet there is more

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