LITERATURE—PAWED AND UNPAWED; AND THE CROWN-PRINCE THEREOF.

“See here!” cried a friend of mine the other day, “you’re always crying down the magazines, but I’ll bet you couldn’t write a magazine story to save your neck!”

My dear boy, I never said I could write one—in fact, I am very sure I couldn’t; it’s all I can do to read them after the other people have written them. That is an infirmity which has, I am sure, interfered seriously with my labors as a critic—this inability to wade through everything that the magazine editors are kind enough to set before us. But I contrive[Pg 100] to keep in touch with contemporary fiction by frequenting the Mercantile Library, where I can not only read and write undisturbed, but also take note of what others are reading and writing. And toward the close of each month I make it a point to arrive very early of a morning and take a superficial glance at the pages of the different periodicals, in order to gain an idea of the relative popularity of each one, and of the stories which they contain. When I find a story that is smeared with the grime of innumerable hands, or a magazine that has been torn almost to shreds by scores of eager readers, I retire to a corner and try to find out the cause of all the trouble.

But this labor-saving system, excellent as it is in many ways, has its defects; and so it happened that I came very near missing one of the most charming stories that I have ever found in the pages of a magazine.

[Pg 101]One bleak autumnal morning not many years ago I paid one of my periodical early visits to the library, and had just finished my examination of the literary market when my eye happened to fall on the name of Fran?ois Coppée printed in about the last place in the world that one would be apt to look for it—namely, in the table of contents of Harper’s Magazine. It was signed to a story called “The Rivals,” and although the pages of that story were neither torn by nervous feminine claws nor blackened by grimy hands I began to read it, and as I read New York slipped away from me, the wheezing of the asthmatic patrons of the library became inaudible to me, for I was in Paris with the young poet and his two loves. When I had finished the book I looked up and saw that I was still in the library, for there were the shelves full of what are termed the “leading periodicals of the day,” and two elderly ladies were racing[Pg 102] across the room for the new number of Life.

And then in the fullness of my heart I gave thanks to the great firm of publishers that had dared to violate all the sacred traditions that have been handed down from the Bonnerian to the Johnsonian age of letters and print a story that could make me forget for half an hour that I had a thousand words of “humorous matter” to write before twelve o’clock.

It was sad to come back from the coulisses of the Vaudeville and find myself directly opposite the shelf containing the Chautauquan Magazine and within earshot of the rustling of Harper’s Bazar; but I turned to my work in a better spirit because of M. Coppée and the Harpers, and I have reason to believe that the quality of the “humorous matter” which I constructed that afternoon was superior in fibre and durability to the ordinary products of my hands. I know that a[Pg 103] dealer to whom I occasionally brought a basketful of my wares gave me an order the very next day to serve him once a week regularly thereafter, and as he has been a steady and prompt-paying customer ever since I have special cause to feel grateful to the famous house of Harper for the literary stimulus which the story gave me.

I have already alluded to the fact that the pages on which “The Rivals” was printed were not torn and discolored like those containing other much-read and widely discussed romances. It was this circumstance which led me to reflect on the difficulties and discouragement which confront the editor whose ambition it is to give his subscribers fiction of the very best literary quality. In this instance the experiment had been fairly tried and yet at the end of the month the virgin purity of these pages was, to me at least, sadly significant of the fact that Coppée’s delightful[Pg 104] work had not met with the appreciation which it deserved.

I did not, of course, lose sight of the fact that the story appealed almost exclusively to a class of people who keep their fingers clean (and have cleanly minds also), and that it was, therefore, not improbable that it had found more readers than the condition of its pages would indicate; but nevertheless I was forced to the reluctant admission that from a commercial point of view the publication of “The Rivals” had proved a failure; nor has the opinion which I formed then been upset by later observation and knowledge. All of which served to heighten my admiration for the enlightened policy which gave this unusual bit of fiction to the American public.

I said something of this sort to a friend of mine, who, although rather given to fault-finding, had to admit that the Harpers had done a praiseworthy and courageous[Pg 105] thing in printing M. Coppée’s story. “Yes,” said my friend, rather grudgingly, “it was a big thing of Alden to buy that story; but if that story had been offered to them by an American they wouldn’t have touched it with a forty-foot pole.”

My friend was quite right, for if that story, or one like it, were offered in the literary market by an American writer, the editor to whom it was offered would know at once that it had been stolen, and would be perfectly justified in locking his office door and calling for the police. Coppée has simply told the story of a young poet beloved of two women, a shop-girl and an actress; and he has told it truthfully as well as artistically—so truthfully, in fact, that I shudder when I think of the number of people of the “Christian Endeavor” type who must have withdrawn their names from the Monthly’s subscription-list because of it. If I could be assured that the number of these[Pg 106] wretched Philistines were far exceeded by that of the intelligent men and women who added their names because of this important step in the direction of true art, I would feel far more confident than I do now of a bright near future for American letters.

The very next day after that on which I read “The Rivals” I was aroused by a sudden agitation which spread through the reading-room of the quiet library in which I was at work. The table on which my books and papers were spread shook so that the thought of a possible earthquake flashed across my startled mind, and I looked up in time to see the young woman opposite to me drop the tattered remnants of Harper’s Bazar, from which she had just deciphered an intricate pattern, rush across the room, and pounce upon a periodical which had just been placed on its shelf by the librarian. If she had been a second later the three other[Pg 107] women who approached at the same moment from three different parts of the room would have fought for this paper like ravening wolves.

The Christmas number of the Ladies’ Home Journal had arrived.

I do not know of any magazine which so truthfully reflects the literary tendency of the age as this extraordinary Philadelphia publication, and I am not surprised to learn, as I have on undisputed authority, that it has a larger circulation than any other journal of its class in this country. It is conducted by that gifted literary exploiter and brilliant romancer, Mr. E. W. Bok, the legitimate successor to Mr. Johnson, and the present crown-prince of American letters.

I took the trouble to examine the number which the librarian had removed, and found that it had been pawed perfectly black, while many of its pages were torn and frayed in a way that indicated that[Pg 108] they had found a host of eager readers. Here was pawed literature with a vengeance, and so, after leaving the library that afternoon, I purchased a copy of the Christmas number, thrust it under my coat, and skulked home.

All that evening until well into the early hours of the new day, I sat with that marvelous literary production before me, eagerly devouring every line of its contents, and honestly admiring the number of high-priced advertisements which met my eye, and the high literary quality of many of ............