BOOTH TARKINGTON Author of Cherry."

Mr. Harry Leon Wilson tells a story of how he was put in prison for pocket-pick

An Author Taken for a Pickpocket

ing. He says:

I left the "Puck" office one afternoon and squeezed into a crowded Broadway car. A block farther a stout gentleman wriggled off the car. When the car stopped at the next corner the fat man came running back shouting that he had been robbed. At the same moment I felt a tugging at the change pocket in my coat. Reaching down I caught a hand inserting a large watch and heavy chain in my pocket, the chain being trailed to advertise my possession. It was the fat passenger's watch. I gripped the hand and stepped off. dragging the owner of it. The fat man denounced us both as confederates and thieves. We were hauled off to the Mercer Street station. In vain I protested to the Sergeant that I had caught a thief; but he didn't see it that way. The Sergeant said the thief and I wore the same kind of suits, and on this damning evidence I was locked in a cell. I paced the

STEWART EDWARD WHITE, Author of The Silent Places."

which you enter Cloudy Canon and Deadman's Gulch. At the head of the latter is a notch or saddle in the range some 11,000 feet up. There are no trails. We've been trying to get through. Our most desperate assault actually took us to the other side. but we met a gentlemanly precipice and had to return. The

last two days I've been taking afoot twelve hours a day away above the snow line trying to pick a route. I think I've found one. We're going to try it, anyway. I've built about two miles of trail, and monumented the rest. If we get through, Mrs. W. will be the first woman to accomplish such a feat, and we shall name the pass "Elizabeth Pass" after her.

Suppressed by its Author

There is no accounting for the caprices. of the author. A few days ago a book for review came into our office from a certain well-known publisher. Before the package was even opened a letter arrived from the publisher urgently requesting the immediate return of the volume, as the author wished to suppress it. Of course the editor couldn't let the book go after that without reading it. The author's reason for desiring to call back his handiwork was easily patent; what was not at all clear was his reason for writing it. At the same time he deserves credit for realizing before it was too late that suppression was the only thing that the volume deserved.

Novel and Author Appear Contempora

*

This is the year for visits from Englishmen and Americans who have chosen to become Englishmen. It has grown to be a fashion for the American publication of a new neously book by an English writer to be attended by a visit of the author to America. Mr. A. E. W. Mason arrives in this country just in time for the appearance of his new novel, "The Truants." This is his first book since "The Four Feathers." One waits for it with aroused interest, for Mr. Mason is a good writer, good enough to have collaborated with Andrew Lang in the writing of a volume.

was Mr. Barrett's idea to dramatize the story and produce it this winter, but his death interfered with the plan. It will probably be put in play-form, however, in time for next season. It is thought to possess even greater elements of popularity than "The Sign of the Cross."

"Far from

Crowd"

We are beginning to believe in America's lack of literary atmosphere. It is somewhat uncomplimentary to our country, and yet it seems the Madding to be almost proved that the seeker in quest for quiet must get out of America if quiet he is to get. Of course, there are nooks and corners of untold number to which the overwrought may flee, but a potent fascination draws across the waters, and the ideal spots seem to have been made in lands more aged in association than our own.

Mr. David Graham Phillips spent his summer in beautiful Biarritz, down in the southwestern corner of France. This seaside resort is frequented chiefly in winter, so that Mr. Phillips found the quietude that he sought.

Doubtless he needed that vast silence from which great things proceed, for rumor says that he is at work on a "religious" novel, one picturing the war between materialism and spiritualism in the United States. This is a daring undertaking, especially for so young a man. Mr. Phillips has just returned home, though whether or not his manuscript is completed is not known at the present writing.

Mr. Austin and Poetic "White

Heat"

Mr. Alfred Austin talks much of poetic inspiration. In a recent letter to the "London Times," he said that "Shakespeare could by no possibility have borrowed prose passages from anyone and made poetry of them by turning them into Why not? Because, according to Mr. Austin's knowledge of the matter, "The white heat, the fine frenzy of the brain in the moment of poetic composition precludes so cold a procedure." Did we ever see evidence of "white heat" or "fine frenzy" in the Poet Laureate's verses?

verse.

Born in Leucadia, Santa Maura, Ionian Islands, in 1850, Lafcadio Hearn came of Greek and Irish parentage. He educated himself, became a printer and later a journalist. He lived for a time in New Orleans, went from there to the West Indies, then to New York. From New York he went to Japan, where he married a Japanese, and became a subject of the Empire, taking the name of Y. Koizumi. In 1896 he was appointed lecturer on English Literature in the Imperial University of

lightful romance of medieval France, and now "Black Friday" comes to show yet another phase of Mr. Isham's ability, and takes the guise of an American political and business novel.

Mr. Isham is, by birth, an American. He was born in Detroit in 1866 and was graduated from the Detroit High School. He studied two years in the Royal Academy of Music, London, and two years in Munich. His present residence is in Detroit.