The man who has an aim, and is game in his pursuit of it. Like the professional Marathon runner, he shows his mettle at the start, and proves his worth at the finish.

His forcefullness defies defeat.

His sincerity inspires belief.

He is trustworthy, yet is slow in placing his trusts. He possesses both brains and brawn, and is afraid to use neither.

He shares his friend's woes, not his vices.

ing to bide the time. The impatient man is never the successful one.

An old Irish miner once advised the superintendent's son whom he overheard complaining how long it took, and how much hard work was required "to rise in the world." "Arrah, me b'y, Oi know of but one way to git an aisy and quick rise in the world, jist light yer cigar and sit down on that powder kig. Yez'll be afther gittin' on and no thruble at all, at all."

The successful man doesn't allow himself to be

He shrinks from expressions of sympathy as he would from a knife thrust, one is as dangerous as the other.

He doesn't carry his ideas on his coat sleeve; neither does he bury them so deeply as to require an earthquake to shake them from him.

"He is not taciturn, but he is concise," as President Roosevelt once said of Mr. Knox, who has impressed many with the gift he has of telling a long tale in few words.

I believe he could give a complete criticism of the "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Gibbons, in three hundred words.

Attend strictly to business, and let the other fellow attend to his, is the successful man's motto.

Duty and Justice are the principal words in his vocabulary.

He isn't a partner to the crime of hypocracy, Conceit or deceit, so, when he extends the glad hand to a friend, he knows that he means it.

There is no unfairness or foul blows in his battles, he deals "straight out from the shoulder" blows, and does not whine when he receives one in return.

He realizes that egotism, selfishness, vanity, and flattery are bad spokes in the wheel of Progress, so he eliminates them.

'He is neither too profound, nor is he shallow. Neither is he cowardly, nor aggressive.

He stands firm for his convictions, even in the face of ridicule.

He never tries to avoid his friend in homespun, when he is in company with one in broadcloth.

He doesn't waste his employer's time, nor his own dimes.

He knows how long it takes to succeed and is will

An old lady once told me of a wild bird that after many years in captivity, came into her possession. She was a friend and sympathizer of the feathered tribe, so decided at once to liberate the little prisoner. She hung the cage near an open window, and opened its door, then stepped back expecting to see the little fellow go wild with delight in his new found liberty. Instead, he fluttered about, uttering startled cries, and finally returned to his cage. Captivity had become his habit, from which he could not break, and take advantage of this opportunity.

The man who would win must be always in readiness. Opportunity always comes unannounced, and is always in haste to be gone.

When Life's great Marathon race course is thrown open to him, he must be there teeming with eagerness to get into the race.

He doesn't play to the grand stand nor start with a spurt, and fall out after the first round, winded. The spurter "in the long run" is always the loser. He is like a "sky rocket" that ascends swiftly to quite a height, is luminous for a second, then fades into nothingness.

Perhaps the eyes of the crowd will be upon that brilliant spurter in the lead, for a time, but as his efforts become weaker their interest turns to that sturdy chap, who with long steady stride, is coming down the "home stretch," heeding neither jibe nor cheer, he has an end in view and nothing can distract or divert him, and he passes beneath the wire confident, coolheaded the Winner. But he isn't the only Victor in the race. There are men, who, knowing that the race is lost to them, run on with aching muscles, and pass beneath the wire-smiling in the face of defeatVictors every one of them.

It isn't what a man wants today that makes him money it is what he knows he may want tomorrow, and gets today.-Exchange.

We come into the world with a mind like a vacant sheet of paper, and all that we add to it we get from those about us, or from things taken in from books.

There are today in this country nearly fifty magazines that are willing to pay good prices for good stories. Among them they use about 250 stories a month and buy probably fifty more, which they will

never use.

Of these 200 or 300 stories marketed every month, about one in fifty is first-class and about one in ten is second-class, a writer in the New York Sun says. The others are purchased and printed because the editor must have something to fill in the spaces between the first cover and the advertise

ments.

The editors of the better class of magazines are continually howling for stories. If they get a good story from a writer they follow him up with requests for more. If they see a good story or two in another magazine they write to the author and ask if they cannot have something from him. They are on the watch all the time for any one who has the gift of narrative.

These are the facts of the case, well known to every one in the publishing business. On the other side are the theories beloved by budding authors who feel the germs of genius within them.

The authors of unpublished manuscripts seem to have two standard grievances against editors. The first is that editors will accept any old thing if the writer has a name. The second is that editors will never tell an unknown author why they refuse his story.

Errors of the Novice

The antagonism between the aspiring author and the unsympathetic publisher undoubtedly exists. What is the real cause of it and whose fault is it? With a view of getting at the truth of the matter the writer undertook to get upon speaking terms with the editors of fifteen of the leading magazines published in America and also to make some practical experiments of his own so as to test the truth of the charges continually made against the well-known editor by the unknown author.

The result of these interviews seems to prove pretty conclusively that if the unknown author cannot get his story published it is entirely his own fault and that the faults which lead to his discomfiture can be grouped under three heads.

To begin with, the most common fault of all, the manuscript may be all right, the situations well described and the dialogue clever, but no story.

In the next group of failures are those manuscripts in which the story is there, but is not properly ar

ranged or told. This is a fault which puts a manuscript just in the balance. Whether the editor thinks enough of it to bother further with it is largely a matter of the humor of the moment. It is very much like the hesitation of a person in buying something that is not quite what he wants, but which could be made to do by spending a little time and trouble on its alteration.

The third class of failures is stories which are all right, but are not suited to the magazine to which they are sent. This is the cause of nine-tenths of the failures of inexperienced authors.

Thinks Manuscript Isn't Read One of the most extraordinary delusions of the novice in authorship is that his manuscript is not even read. One often hears of pages gummed together as a test, and so on. The reply to this charge is that it is not always necessary to separate the yolk of an egg from the shell to find out it is rotten.

If writers only knew the eagerness with which the publisher's reader scans every story that comes into the office from a new source they would quickly get over the idea that their stories were returned unread. Many of the writers of established reputation are written out, and the magazine editor is tireless in his quest for new ideas, a fresh style, an unexploited field. All he asks is that the new story shall fit into the style of architecture on which his magazine is built.

The one absolutely hopeless case is the writer who has no story to tell, but who can fill up fifteen pages of typewriting with a mixture of dialogue and incident that leads nowhere. Several of the editors interviewed spoke feelingly of the time and trouble wasted in wading through this sort of authorship.

"This sort of writer," remarked a reader for one of the best-known magazines, "reminds me of a young fellow who applied for a job in a carpenter's shop and brought a perfectly smooth piece of board as a sample of what he could do. The carpenter asked him what is was for or what it fitted and found that it did not fit anything but was simply a beautifully smooth piece of work, planed and sandpapered, top, bottom and sides.

"The carpenter told the young fellow to take it back home again and bring it to him next day with a mortise and tenon joint in it, or an O. G. panel on one side anything to show what the work on it was for."

Requsites of the Short Story "Some people do not seem to understand," re

marked another reader, "that the short story should be restricted to a single incident. If it is a story of adventure there must be only one adventure. If it is a love affair it must be only one episode in the courtship. If it is a character sketch it must deal with one trait of character only.

"There is no more common mistake made by would-be magazine writers than to imagine that a short story is a condensed novel. A short story should be like a flashlight picture of a single stone being laid in the wall. The novel is a description of the whole building from cellar to roof."

The rapidity with which a reader can judge a story is the result of long practice. While it is true that an expert can scan a story without reading more than a third of the words in it, he will never miss the story if the story is there.

It may be badly told, but if it is a really good story the editor will rescue it every time. He will enter into negotiations with the author to fix it up to suit himself. Every magazine has men employed for that purpose.

Not one in ten of the smooth reading stories that one finds in the magazines is printed as it was written. Unless they are the work of a trained writer who knows all the tricks of the trade they have been chopped and changed around in order to lick them into presentable shape. Unnecessary introductions have been cut off the beginning, anticlimaxes cut off the end, superfluous adjectives taken out of the middle and descriptions of scenery removed entire.

To the writer was shown one short story printed in McClure's, which was a first attempt on the part of its author. It had been changed four times, forty-eight superfluous words had been cut out by twos and threes at a time and six explanatory and argumentative letters had been exchanged between author and publisher before the final proof was passed.

All this trouble over a 3,000-thousand word story submitted by mail by an unknown author, who had never written anything before, and by a magazine that receives several hundred manuscripts a month and can command the best writers.

Why? Because the story was there, and S. S. McClure knew it the moment he saw it and he rose to the bait like a pike. The author was one of his finds.

Opinion of Mr. McClure

"What is the particular element that you imply as so desirable when you speak of the story in a manuscript?" the writer asked Mr. McClure.

"It must be human and there must be some motive in it," he answered immediately. "It may be cleverly written; but so are advertisements. Adventure and incident may be there, but if there is nothing human in it no laughter will ever shake the reader's hand, no tear will ever fall upon the page."

Many readers who were interviewed expressed the

same opinion in various ways, insisting that it was this want of the human touch that caused the rejection of 90 per cent of the stories submitted to magazines.

"A story must act on the reader's feelings as well as on his mind," remarked one. "It must quicken his impulses somehow. If it is a story of adventure it should be able to carry you along with it, just as the audience used to hold on to the backs of the seats in front of them when John B. Gough described the stage coach tearing down hill close to the edge of the precipice with a drunken driver on the box.

"The habitual magazine reader remembers a story. that has made him feel long after he has forgotten those who made him think."

Pathos Munsey's First Choice

Frank Munsey classifies stories simply by their commercial value and puts pathos first, love second, adventure third and humor last.

"Anyone can invent love plots and adventures," he says, "and some men cannot put pen to paper without being humorous; but the pathetic story is always from the heart, and if it is genuine it always reaches the heart of the reader. Those are the stories that are hard to find."

One of the most common errors of the novice in authorship is sending his manuscripts to the wrong place. The further he is from the right place in his selection the longer he will probably have to wait for its return. This delay and the repitition of refusals is one of the most disheartening things the budding author has to contend with, but it is entirely his own fault. He may imagine that all the editors have conspired against him, whereas there is nothing against him but his own lack of judgment.

If a man had a patent churn to sell and went hawking it among the housewives on the west side you would laugh at him and tell him to take it to the country and sell it to the farmers' wives. If he replied that the country was just the same as the city, all houses and people, you would laugh still louder at his folly. Yet the author who sends his manuscripts to the wrong place is just as misguided.

The first thing that a new writer usually does is to send his story off to his favorite magazine or to the magazine that he hears most highly spoken of. All amateur actors want to play Hamlet from the The high-class, well-known magazines, like Harper's, have to wade through more trash than any others.

start.

Amateur's Lack of Judgment

"A story was submitted to me privately by a friend of mine," said one reader. "The author was a young lady who did not know that I was employed on a magazine. She thought it was the greatest thing that ever happened, that story of hers. Most authors think that about their first attempts.

"She was in doubt whether to send it to Harper's or the Century, as she did not want to offend either of them by giving the other the refusal of it. After reading it over I advised her to try it on the Waverly Magazine first and not to expect any pay for it.

"She has not spoken to me since, but I learned from a friend of hers that she sent it from one magazine to another for nearly two years, having to copy it again once or twice when it got shabby. The funny part of it was that she finally sent it to the Waverly and they used it."

There is a young woman in Brooklyn who has just brought out a book that promises to be a success. She has a classified list of magazines, beginning with those that she would like best to publish her stories and ending with those that are better than the waste basket.

She has twenty-five magazines on this list, and every short story she writes is sent to each in turn and upon its rejection to the next magazine in line. If the manuscript sticks anywhere on the trip, well and good. If it is rejected by the whole twenty-five

into the waste basket it goes.

While this scheme may impress some persons as clever, it is really a confession of bad judgment. It is like offering to sell carpenters' tools to twenty-five different trades, when two or three trades use them, although all trades use tools.

Everyone who hopes to be successful as a magazine writer should buy and read at least one or two numbers during the year or thirty of the leaders. The sort of stories and articles they contain should be carefully studied.

"Names" Needed by Magazines

Unless his story is of exceptional merit, which of course every author imagines it is, there are never more than four or five magazines that would even consider it. When magazines buy stories from authors with big names they do it for the purpose of advertising the fact that the big man is writing for that magazine and they usually care very little for what he writes.

It is the same in all matters of business. When Albin, the first man to ride a bicycle on one wheel, was engaged by Barnum he wanted to show the public what he could do on a wheel, but the manager told him he could have only three minutes.

"We don't care a cent for your act," the manager told him. "All we want is to show the public that we have got what we advertise."

The secret of the success of any magazine lies in its individuality. People come to recognize it as different from the others and they do not feel that any other magazine will take its place.

What makes this individuality? The editor's power of selection, his ability to pick out the stories and articles that carry out his conception of what a magazine should be. If any old story would do for any

old magazine, as some writers seem to imagine, what wuld become of this distinctive trait?

Unless a writer who sends a story to a magazine has studied this peculiar touch that gives the magazine its character and has written something that fits in with it he is simply wasting time and postage stamps. He may have made a beautiful churn, but the woman who lives in Central Park West does not think it fits into her ideas of what should be in her household.

Young Authors Unusually Sensitive

One great cry of the novice in authorship is that the editor will not tell him what is the matter with his story when it is rejected. This is only half a truth. The editor would gladly tell him, but he knows the author would not believe it. The editor of the Popular Magazine told the writer that he once made the mistake of telling a new writer what was the matter with his story.

The man seemed very modest and anxious to learn and the editor told him the exact facts. Instead of

being grateful for this expert criticism, which was valuable, the author of the story became abusive and told the editor that he had never printed such a good story in the Popular, which was a rotten magazine anyhow, and much more to the same effect. Such authors are hopeless, because they will never learn.

John Thompson, editor of Pearson's, told the writer that one had to be more cautious about mentioning the defects in an author's stories to the author himself than one would be about remarking upon the defects in a woman's personal appearance if she asked you about it. In fact he thought the author would be the more vindictive of the two.

At the same time he had found, when he was sure that he was talking to the right sort of man, who would not be misunderstood, that he could put his finger on the weak spot in a story, and that more than once he had been rewarded by the author going home to think it over and bringing him just the kind of story he wanted.

John S. Phillips of the American Magazine tries authors out with hints, such as that the story would be improved if he began at such a place instead of where the author begins it. If the author watches. the blue pencil cut its way across the page without flinching, and sees his beautiful adjectives crossed out without serious objections, Mr. Phillips knows that the man will stand the gaff and be a success as a writer; but when a man fights for a phrase and insists on a description that has nothing to do with the story, however fine it may be in itself, he is never going to do.

These editors all agree upon the one cardinal point, the writer must have a story to tell and it must be human. Editors care little or nothing about grammar or style; they have experts to fix that up. What they are looking for is the story that is not from the head but from the heart.