ment; and moulds public thought, if it does not guide public energy, in every direction.

The growth of journalism must be more and more in the direction of greater brains and a higher range of work. It has substantially reached its full development in the mere collection of news - using the term here in its limited sense as meaning the current events of the day. It must discriminate, and select, and edit; its further progress must be on a higher standard: it must have a broader conception of news as meaning not merely the events of the day, but the intellectual, social, and moral movements of the time. It must have a still higher realization of its power and of its responsibility in leading public opinion and shaping public action, not merely in politics, but in the whole realm of human activity. In the broader conception of journalism there is no limit to its mission, and, without relinquishing the field of every-day interest, its further development will be in the direction of higher intellectual effort and leadership.

It

news

This requirement will steadily elevate the standard of the intellectual outfit in newspapers. will demand men of the highest grade of culture and special training. Some of them will be regular members of the staff, some of them will be experts employed for emergencies. The London papers retain specialists, just as a business house retains a lawyer; they may or may not be needed for a year, but with their retainer they are always at command when the exigency comes. In a great capital, where both journalism and expert ability are concentrated, this system is indispensable. In our country, where both are more scattered, it may not be necessary, but the general methods and results will be the same. We are accustomed to hear that the journalist must know everything. In the abstract, yes; in the concrete, no. With the division of labor, universal knowledge is not essential in any one man. Each man must know everything in his own department, and the more outside the better. Undoubtedly, the broadest information and the best faculty for communicating it in a word, the ripest knowledge and the best style — are the most valuable qualities in the editorial writer.

Thus the demands of journalism are constantly advancing, and the rewards are commensurate with the service. With these opportunities and rewards, journalism has great attractions for the young man of worthy ambition who is setting out on a career. But it has its trials as well as its triumphs. Unless the aspirant has natural aptitude for its requirements, he had better stay out of it. Native gifts

may be cultivated, but no cultivation will supply the lack of the prime instinct. The journalist, like the poet, is born, not made. He must at times work at the highest tension; he must sometimes, like the race-horse, put his whole force into a fateful hour; he must be ready to face the dens of vice and crime; he must be prepared to encounter rebuffs'; he must be eager to go through fire and flood to be first on the ground at Johnstown; he must ever be armed with what Napoleon called two-o'clock-in-themorning courage. The true journalist will glory in the triumphs of such emergencies; for the man who fails in the true instinct and quality they will be the severest trials, and he had better never undertake them.

One of the trials of the editor is the ephemeral nature of his work. Yet even this has its compensatory offset in the wider reading and the immediate effect. A hundred thousand readers spread over ten or twenty years would be a great crown and reward in any literature- why not a hundred thousand readers concentrated in a day? The editor has the world for his field, and all subjects of thought for his themes. He speaks before the orator can get to his feet, and settles opinion before the statesman makes himself heard. He draws the fang even while he gives it play, and sends his antidote with the poison. When Coleridge, reporting a midnight speech in the House of Commons, and dashing off his answer at 2 o'clock in the morning, sent it out in the same sheet, he established the editorial leader, and showed its possibilities. Napoleon regarded four newspapers as more dangerous than an army of a hundred thousand men; and newspapers in his day had all the limitations of the hand-press. How much more powerful with the immeasurable resources of today? Jefferson said that he would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers; and the philosophy of the observation is clear. The alertness, vigilance, publicity, and organized public opinion of newspapers are the safeguards of the social and political fabric. The editor scourges wrong-doers, dethrones political usurpers, unhorses official recreants, unfrocks pretentious charlatans, pricks social humbugs, routs old superstitions, moulds popular opinion, stimulates universal education, quickens individual aspiration, and leads the van of progress. In this broad realm and in these unlimited possibilities, while the daily grind brings its rasping trials, it is also illuminated by splendid and inspiring triumphs. Charles Emory Smith, in The Inde

THE AUTHOR is published the fifteenth day of every month. It will be sent, post-paid, ONE YEAR for ONE DOLLAR. All subscriptions, whenever they may be received, must begin with the number for January 15, and be for one year.

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THE GROWTH OF THE AUTHOR.

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The success of any periodical depends upon the approval with which it meets from those for whose use it is designed. THE AUTHOR has been received with cordial favor, and its future now looks bright. The test of its permanent popularity is in the promptness with which subscriptions are renewed. The publisher respectfully asks friends of the magazine to send in their renewals as soon as may be convenient, and, if possible, to send with the order for renewal one or more new subscriptions. Expressions of opinion regarding THE AUTHOR, criti

No. 43.-"C." inquires the meaning of the "salt" of Paracelsus, the great alchemist of the sixteenth century. "Salt" was the foundation of.

the first ternary of matter, composed of salt, sulphur and mercury, according to his theory. These terms were symbolical, of course, and some modern occultists translate as follows: "Salt" (Love) was the foundation upon which the Diety constructed all things. "Sulphur " (Wisdom) the structure; and "Mercury" (Change, Evolution) the plan upon which the universe proceeds towards perfection.

their baby prattle. To those of his small friends whose education is so far advanced as to permit of their being able to read he sends quaint notes, conceived in a humorous strain, and written with a typewriter. Young and old readers of "Alice in Wonderland" will be glad to learn that he has written another story, entitled “ Sylvie and Bruno,” and that it will speedily be published. — Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Henley. Last August a paragraph was printed in this department regarding Mr. W. E. Henley, the editor of the Scots Observer, sent in by a picturesquely inaccurate English correspondent. This item has been widely copied, and Mr. Henley very justly objects to the misinformation it contained. Here is his correction, and accompanying sarcasm : "I am much obliged to you for the interest you are pleased to take in me; and assuming that interest to be real, assuming that you had rather publish true news than false, I take for granted that you will permit me to correct your information by a liberal use of the negative particle, as thus: 'Mr. William Ernest Henley, whose verses have been published by Scribner, is not a Scotchman,' and 'is not a protégé of Robert Louis Stevenson.' He has not 'had literary greatness thrust upon him,' and he has not had to pay a fearful physical price for his mental development.' He did not 'begin life as a laborer,' he was not unconscious of latent intellectual powers,' he was not unversed in the primary elements of education,' he has never been a man of dissipated habits.' He did not meet with a terrible accident,' neither of his lower limbs' having ever been crushed beneath a boulder'; and though it is certainly true that while at a hospital for treatment' he met Robert Louis Stevenson,' it is certainly untrue that Robert Louis Stevenson was ever a patient in the same institution.' then began the mental existence which has led' the Mr. Henley of your correspondent's dream 'stage by stage upward to the rank of poet.' Did it? I hear of it with a certain interest. It is so brilliant with novelty-it is so strange, and startling, and untrue! Again, 'his limbs are still completely paralyzed, and he does all his work in an invalid chair.' Are they, indeed? And does he, really? To one whose limbs' are utterly guiltless of paralysis, and who has not sat in an invalid chair these fifteen years at least, it is permissible to receive such statements with a mild surprise, and even (it may be) a little gentle unbelief." - Current Literature for December.

And

Sangster. Sometimes the life-work of a poet lies not far from, and almost parallel with, the track

of daily duty. To such an estate Margaret Elizabeth Munson was born at New Rochelle, Long Island, February 22, 1838. She was principally educated at home, and early displayed a strong literary bent. When twenty years of age she married Mr. George Sangster. The labors of her pen gradually impelled her toward editorial work, till in 1871 Mrs. Sangster became associate editor of Hearth and Home, which position she held until 1873. She then accepted a similar chair on The Christian at Work, laboring for that excellent religious weekly for six years. In 1879 Mrs. Sangster transferred her pen to the service of the Christian Intelligencer, which she assisted in editthe ing until 1888, in mean time, in 1882, editorial assuming the control of Harper's Young People. On the death of Miss Booth she was, early this year, appointed as the editor of Harper's Bazar, a responsible and lucrative position. During the entire period of her editorial work Mrs. Sangster has been writing verse. The natural inclination of her mind was toward religious things, and her connection with the press always has been characterized by the exertion of a strong moral influence. Her poetry, like her prose, is oftenest directed to the moral sense, the devotional spirit. The home, the family, and the influences emanating from domestic shrine and circle naturally enlist her pen. Mrs. Sangster's poems that are generally deemed most successful are Our Own," "The Sin of Omission," and "Are the Children at Home?" She has published collections of verse, entitled "Poems of the Household" (1883), and "Home Fairies and Heart Flowers" (1887). Besides several books for the Sunday-school library, Mrs. Sangster has given the world a "Manual of Missions of the Reformed Church in America" (1878). She is still a frequent contributor to the periodical press, her poetry being widely copied whenever it appears. — Allen G. Bigelow, in the Magazine of Poetry.

a name

Tupper. Edith Sessions Tupper frequently seen now in the magazines and journals of New York and Chicago, attached to dramatic stories and very clever verse — was born at Panama, in western New York. Her family are the well-known Sessions of Chautauqua County, and her father and uncle are famous state politicians. Her first literary work was done for the Buffalo Express. For nearly two years she has been connected with the Chicago Herald, of which paper she is now the New York correspondent. She began her work on the Herald doing special local sketches and interviews. She won the $300 prize lately offered by

the Chicago Tribune for the best story, over 250 competitors. "By a Hair's Breadth" is now between covers, and selling well throughout the country. Margaret Sullivan awarded her the prize, and advised her to go on with novel-writing, as she had a remarkable gift for the making of Wilkie-Collins plots. The recently issued story, "By Whose Hand," is said to be successful over all her other publications, and fully justifies the statement of the Chicago Herald, that "her undoubted talents are of such an order that she may reasonably expect to attain high rank among the fictionists of her time." In addition to prose ability, the lady is a charming versifier. She is tall, dignified, has brown hair, and frank, expressive eyes. — Current Literature.

Sherman. Frank Dempster Sherman was born in Peekskill, N. Y., May 6, 1860. He obtained his early education in the town of his birth, and received the degree of Ph. B. from Columbia College in 1884. He was made a Fellow of this institution in 1887, and is at present connected with it as Instructor of the Department of Architecture. During the winter of 1884 and '85 he attended lectures at Harvard University, where he would have taken a degree had not family interests called him for a time from the pursuance of literature. He was married in November, 1887, to Miss Joliet Mersereau Durand, daughter of Rev. Cyrus B. Durand, of Newark, N. J. Like Arthur Sherburne Hardy, Mr. Sherman writes the practical and ideal in letters, being both mathematician and poet. His taste for figures he inherits from his father, a man of rare powers; his poetic gift comes from his mother, to whose memory he has paid a most beautiful tribute in "An Old Song," which appeared in Lippincott's Magazine for August, 1888. Though no American has touched so piquantly the spirit of love in youth with blithe "patrician rhymes," it is in another direction, as Mr. Howells pointed out in a recent number of Harper's, that Mr. Sherman's best and most natural expression reveals itself. He is a literary descendant of Herrick and Carew. He believes in the lyric, and never hesitates to pronounce such a belief. Every poem from his pen shows that his creed in regard to technique is the same as that proclaimed by Mr. Dobson in his "Ars Victrix." Poetry with him is never a thing to be "thrown off," as many are fond of expressing it, but something to be as carefully moulded as the most symmetrical statue. A sprightliness of fancy, a delicacy of touch, and a rare melody characterize all of his work, and his choice of epithet is unfailingly happy. Mr. Sherman is a true bibliophile, and

some of his most charming poems are anent books. In this connection might be mentioned his "Bookhunter," and two pieces recently printed in the Century Magazine. He is particularly successful in the line of children's verses, having, among other things, contributed in this vein a series of ten month poems to St. Nicholas. Mr. Sherman has published "Madrigals and Catches" (1887), and "New Waggings of Old Tales" (1888), the latter being in conjunction with Mr. John Kendrick Bangs. He has in preparation a treatise upon the elements of architecture, a volume of children's poems, and a collection of miscellaneous pieces. The last will contain his "Greeting to Spring," one of the most exquisite lyrics of the day. - Clinton Scollard, in the Magazine of Poetry.

LITERARY NEWS AND NOTES.

Edgar Saltus has been dangerously ill at the Cavendish Hotel, in London. He suffers from terrible facial neuralgia, and morphine affords him the only relief from pain..

The Critic for November 30 contains a long and interesting article on "The Home of Charlotte Brontë," by Mrs. L. B. Walford.

Marion Crawford and wife will spend the winter at Washington, Mrs. Crawford's father, General Berdan, having taken apartments at the Shoreham.

Nym Crinkle (A. C. Wheeler) has discontinued writing for the Mirror, and is now furnishing an admirable essay for each number of The Theatre Magazine.

The new edition, just issued, of Mr. Cable's "The Silent South" has some fresh matter, and contains a portrait of the author.

A new magazine, to be called the Gotham Monthly, will be published in New York City next year. The first number is to make its appearance in January.

The January number in the Great Writers' Series will be a biography of Balzac by Frederick Wedmore.

The Society Review is the title of a new weekly about to be issued in New York City. It will be edited by William de Wagstaffe, who planned The New York Saturday Review, and was its promoter. He will be assisted by the majority of the staff of The Saturday Review, all the more attractive features of which will be perpetuated in the new

venture.