SOME AMERICANS OF TO-DAY Present literary conditions are very different from what literary conditions were in the days when Edgar Allan Poe was satisfied to receive a five dollar bill for one of the best of his grotesque tales. To avoid any appearance of lèse majesté, let us begin with the President. It is only a few months ago that the newspapers were full of various extraordinary stories on this score. Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, was represented as being violently besieged by a troop of magazine editors and publishers, who, fired by competition, were bidding one dollar a word, one dollar and a half a word, two dollars a word, and even beyond, for anything that the President would write. It was said that one publishing firm had made Mr. Roosevelt a flat offer of one hundred thousand dollars for a book about his forthcoming visit to Europe; and that another publishing house had bid fifty thousand dollars for a book on sports and hunting. While the present writer is not going to discuss these offers, real or alleged, there is no question about the President, with his exalted position, and his dominating personality, having a

really high literary value. At that, as a literary property pure and simple, he is very far behind Mr. Winston Churchill. Once upon a time an industrious person of a statistical turn of mind figured that four thousand spruce trees had to be cut down in order that Richard Carvel might be printed. From the story as a book and from the royalties accruing from its dramatisation Richard Carvel yielded Mr. Churchill over three hundred thousand dollars. That book was the greatest individual money winner. Yet not so far behind have been The Crisis, Coniston and Mr. Crewe's Career.

A very charming story that deserves a little paragraph by itself when discussing the subject of this article is Mr. Booth Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire. In one way it ranks among the greatest of all money winners. As a book it sold not far from a hundred thousand copies in the form in which it was first published, and perhaps fifty thousand copies in a subsequent cheaper edition. Yet its total length was only about eleven thousand words, not much more than the length of a short story, and the profits, when estimated by the "price per

word" take on an astonishing aspect. One of the steadiest and most consistent of present day money winners among American novelists is Mr. George Barr McCutcheon. It is unusual when a book of his does not reach a sale of one hundred thousand copies, and the list of his successes includes Beverly of Graustark, Nedra, The Daughter of The Daughter of Anderson Crow, Jane Cable, Brewster's Millions, and The Man from Brodney's. In addition Brewster's Millions yielded its author the profits that come from a successful play. In six years his novels have sold more than a million and a quarter copies. Fate has made very generous compensation to Mr. McCutcheon for an early literary indiscre

tion. He sold the copyright of Graustark, his first book, outright for five hundred dollars. Graustark has attained a sale of more than four hundred thousand copies.

In the same class with Graustark and Ships that Pass in the Night must be mentioned Florence Morse Kingsley's Titus, which is said to have sold a million copies. Mrs. Kingsley's reward from Titus was one thousand dollars. The story was written for a prize contest, one of the conditions being that the winning author should relinquish all claims to royalty.

A case similar to that of Sir Walter Scott is that of Mark Twain. In 1894 when the humourist was almost sixty

years of age, the firm of Webster and Company, of which he was president, made an assignment for the benefit of its creditors, acknowledging liabilities approximating eighty thousand dollars. Within less than ten years Mark Twain was able to pay off all this debt, and to build for himself a handsome new fortune in addition. On the other hand Mr. William Dean Howells, who has done so much for the dignity of the American novel, has won what may be regarded only as a comfortable competence. Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith has unquestionably found literature fully as remunerative as his other professions of painting and engineering. Although we are inclined to think of him as still being a young man, for fully a quarter of a century F. Marion Crawford has been holding his public and winning a fine income by his pen. He is a rapid and indefatigable worker and the list of his novels now numbers about forty. His literary earnings cannot have been less than five hundred thousand dollars.

Of a younger generation are Mr. Richard Harding Davis and Mr. Robert W. Chambers. For the past four or five years Mr. Davis has devoted most of his time to the writing of plays. His profits from this source belong to the province. of another article. There was a period when his earnings strictly as an author, from his short stories, his descriptive articles, and the royalties from his books were estimated at twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Just at present, as a literary property, Mr. Robert W. Chambers has a value second only to the value of Mr. Winston Churchill. It is no indiscretion to say that he is probably among the men and women who command a twenty per cent. royalty and in consequence receive thirty cents for each copy that is sold. Others of this pa

trician class are Winston Churchill, James Lane Allen, Marion Crawford, John Fox, Richard Harding Davis, F. Hopkinson Smith, Booth Tarkington, Thomas Dixon, George Barr McCutcheon, Alice Hegan Rice, and Kate Douglas Wiggin among Americans. Among English writers deriving the same returns from the American market are Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, An

thony Hope, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Katharine Cecil Thurston and Marie Corelli. The sales of some of Mr. Chambers's recent books, such as The Fighting Chance and The Younger Set, have been advertised as reaching two hundred thousand copies.

Mr. Thomas Dixon's royalties from The Leopard's Spots amounted to sixty thousand dollars; from The Clansman forty thousand dollars and from The One Woman almost twenty thousand dollars. As Mr. Middleton pointed out. in his paper last month, The Clansman as a play has brought Mr. Dixon ninety thousand dollars in royalty, and as he is also part owner in the production, it has earned for him in addition one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars-making a sum total of over three hundred thousand dollars. A few years ago a newspaper story was printed to the effect that Alice Hegan Rice had formed a private banking company in Louisville. If the report was true Mrs. Rice enjoys the distinction of being probably the only woman banker among literary people. At any rate it was far from being impossible, for Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch sold almost a million copies and Lovey Mary proved a very substantial successor. Other American women who have reaped large rewards from the products of their pens are Mary Wilkins Freeman, Mrs. Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Frances Hodgson Burnett (we shall always insist on regarding Mrs. Burnett as an American woman) and Kate Douglas Wiggin. With Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Kate Douglas Wiggin joined the ranks of those writers who have won a small fortune with a single book.

PROFITS OF THE SHORT STORY

While to win one of the big prizes in the lottery of authorship it is necessary to make a decided hit with a novel that is being published on a royalty basis, the short story field is one in which the author may reap very substantial rewards. Indeed in many cases the short story is found to be the most reliable source of income. There are instances, for example, where a writer has strung together ten or a dozen short stories which have