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 dozen joyous reunions in the last chapter, or just before the curtain drops. The short story should concern itself with but one of these tangles.

Action is the fundamental requisite of a good plot. It transposes affections and situations from what they were at the beginning. A good, selling plot should bridge seeming impossibilities over practically certain disasters to a pleasing end. It should have unity of time, place and action; it should be brief, compact and plausible.

All these qualities are the result of the molder's skill. Let me outline a few methods of obtaining the raw material.

Since the origin of advice, writers have been told to search the newspapers for plots. It is probable, indeed, that a majority are secured through these mediums. Sometimes the plot is the development of a hint or suggestion, sometimes the completion of an unfinished bit of action, and sometimes, more rarely, an incident itself, precisely as it happened.

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 Again, writers are told to observe the unrecorded incidents of a busy world, the everyday events of their own lives. This method, too, is responsible for many good plots.

In spite of a process for manufacturing plots, however, there are many writers who sit at their desks, gazing blankly at the white paper and praying for inspiration, which in most cases includes something to write and the thoughts to clothe that something. If writers would only concede that in many instances inspiration is only another name for inclination, there would be less praying of this nature.

Very naturally the voluminous writer, i. e., the much inspired writer, soon runs short of plots. Here the amateur flounders; the experienced writer plods on with scarcely a pause. If plots fail him for the moment, he creates situations that afford ample opportunity for dramatic action. The man who writes the Nick Carter weeklies confesses that he forces his characters into some position from which escape, by all the laws of

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 the number of lines on a page, and the number of pages. No allowance should be made for short lines. In this way, it is easy to get the approximate length of the story. The editor will appreciate this courtesy, as it enables him to tell at a glance the amount of space the story would occupy in his magazine.

The top of the first page of your manuscript will now appear something like this:

Just beneath the title of the story should be placed the name of the author as he wishes it to appear in print. If he is writing under a nom-de-plume, an affectation countenanced neither by good sense nor good business ability, it should be placed here.

A soiled manuscript tells its own story of previous rejections, and invites others.

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 chance, is impossible. Then he leans back, presumably elated over his skill, and for the first time conceives some method by which the characters may once more acquire liberty and the privilege of more adventures.

In this method lies another plot producer. Outline, in your mind, some situation, improbable, inconsistent, inexplicable. Then fit in the characters and incidents necessary to make it altogether probable, consistent, explainable. Have the country lass, whom the hero loves devoutly, discover him in her father's chicken-coop with a fat pullet under his arm. There's material for a little love comedy. Or have the tourist, begging a drink at the hermit's hut, suddenly cringe at his feet. There's material for a melodramatic tale. Or have a page from a diary, telling of a man's undying passion for a woman, flutter to her feet in some deserted place, preferably from a balloon, an air-ship, an exploding shell far overhead, or what you will. There's material for an unique love story.

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 It takes imagination, of course, to work out the logical explanation; but if your intellect is not equal to the task, you have no business in the profession of writing fiction. And even when you have supplied your plot in this fashion, and written your story, it will not be a literary production. It will be just the “stuff” of a hack-writer, just a “pot-boiler”; but pot-boilers sell.

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 "You are not taking an unfair advantage of an editor," says Albert Bigelow Paine, "when you renovate your much-traveled manuscript, or recopy it on clean paper. You are taking an unfair advantage of your manuscript when you do not do it, and you are insulting the editor, who does not care where your story or article or poem has been, so long as it is presented to him invitingly."

The paper on which the story is copied should be of good texture, light in weight, but not transparent. A size about 8½ by 11, folded twice, has a great many advantages. Never fasten the sheets of your manuscript together in any way. They should be loose, to be shuffled as the editor finds need. Two sizes of envelopes should be purchased, one to fit within the other without folding. A stamped, self addressed envelope should accompany every manuscript.

If the name and address of the writer are on the first page, no explanatory note is necessary. As a matter of courtesy, however, a very brief one may be

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 METHOD OF NARRATION

that you have your plot well in mind, you must decide how your story is to be told. You must not go about writing it in a haphazard, hit-and-miss fashion, just because you have an idea.

First of all, as I say, you must decide on the method of narration. And right here let me set down a few “don'ts.”

Don't write in the first person till the conceit of being a mainstay of a story is a thing of the past. If you persist in being one of the characters, just study yourself. You will find that in the story you are either a conceited ass or a person of impossible intelligence. Telling a story in the first person is open to serious objections. Either you must keep in the background and only guess at what is going on around you, or else you must

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 put yourself in the middle of the stage, where you can see the full action and where you will be certain to indulge in bits of moralizing and criticising. In a short story, absolutely every paragraph, and even every sentence, should be an unfolding and a development of the plot. You must not preach nor teach in your story; not even hint at such things.

Secondly, don't tell your story by the use of letters or diaries. It is just as impossible to narrate a good story in this manner as it is for an old soldier who fought at Gettysburg to describe the charge up San Juan Hill. To be natural, you must bring in details foreign to your plot, and the story that is not sharply condensed is hopeless.

Thirdly, don't allow an animal or inanimate object to relate the story. The one argument against this course is that no magazine in the country will accept such a story.

Fourthly, don't attempt dialect stories. Although they were in vogue a few years ago, there is now no market at all for them.

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 them): it may easily be imagined how fatal such a practice was to the graces of elocution. Goethe alludes to it in Faust:—

It may be mentioned that many parts of Faust are unintelligible to the reader who knows nothing of German university life.

During this period he studied natural science, and his progress was marked with such success that he was granted a pension or scholarship by the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, which enabled him to continue his studies and researches. Liebig went to Paris in 1823. Having communicated a paper on fulminic acid to the Académie des Sciences, he was introduced to Alexander von Humboldt, Gay-Lussac, and other savants then living in the French capital. Liebig became a pupil in the laboratory of the famous chemist Gay-Lussac, discoverer of the law of volume. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were only a few chemists in Germany, and this was the reason that he went to Paris.

In the same year that Liebig went to France, he began to perfect the method of organic or combustion analysis. The principle of the method is the one now used for determining the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in organic compounds. The compound is heated with copper oxide in a glass tube, and the carbon and hydrogen are


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 sent. It should be somewhat along the following lines:

Editor, Blank Magazine, New York City. Dear Sir: The enclosed manuscript is submitted with the hope that it may be found available for publication in The Blank Magazine, at your usual rates.

Never display your lack of common sense by any of the petty little tricks common to the writers who believe their manuscripts are not read. If an editor finds the sheets of your story lightly gummed together, he will not take the trouble to separate them. Neither will he sort out pages not properly numbered. He cannot afford to waste time on writers who stoop to such detestable actions. He knows they will never be able to please him with their work.

Your manuscript will be read if it is worth while and properly prepared. If your first page is dull, your second may never be read. But if you have good material, served up in such a way that the reading is more of a pleasure than a task, your manuscript will be

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 Fifthly, don't have a story within a story. All of us have read tales of a railroad wreck, where in the course of a thousand words an injured man is carried to a farm house. Just when you get interested, the man rises up in bed and says: “I will now tell you of my past.” And then you find that the real story is about to begin, and that the wreck, and the girl who bandaged his head, and the quaint old farmer really had nothing to do with the story proper. Common sense should teach that this style is to be avoided.

Successful stories have been written along the above lines, it is true, but the beginner has no right to handicap himself by using these methods.

The best short stories have been written in the third person. These are far more apt to be simple and direct, free from irritating deviations from the central theme, and withal stronger and more interesting. You stand just behind the curtain, with your hand on your puppets. You observe from a distance, and there is no obtruding of your

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 on its merits, whether it is signed by Rudyard Kipling or by John Brown.

I have had the pleasure of reading manuscripts by such writers as Jack London, Albert Bigelow Paine, Charles Battell Loomis, and a great many of the best authors of the day; and I say unhesitatingly that their copy, without exception, was the neatest and most correct that ever came under my eye. These men have won their positions in current literature by pure merit, and their example in the preparation of copy is worth following.

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 personality. You tell your story in a perfectly natural, straightforward manner, that is bound to be a pleasant contrast to the affected, slinking way of the first person, of the diaries or letters, or of the narration within narration.

But even in this method there are pitfalls for the unwary. You are apt to believe yourself a regular magician because you can create people out of nothingness, and to imagine you have a perfect right to put down the innermost thoughts of all your characters. This is a wrong view-point. In reality you are the mind of some one of your characters. You can write of his actions, of his likes and dislikes, of his thoughts. But there your power ends. You must not err by putting down the thoughts of all your characters. With the single exception of the one whom you push to the foreground, you must make the minds of your people closed books. You don't know what they feel. You are breathing, thinking, living with just one person. You observe the others as he might.

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 prime necessity to the commercial world of many Argentine products, such as beef, mutton, hides, wool, wheat and Indian corn. Efforts to hasten this development have created some serious financial and industrial crises, and have burdened the country with heavy debts and taxes. During the decade 1881–1890 great sums of European capital were invested in railways and other undertakings, encouraged by the grant of interest guarantees and by state mortgage bank loans in the form of cedulas, nominally secured on landed property. In 1890 the crisis came, the mortgage banks failed, credits were contracted, the value of property declined, defaults were common, imports decreased, and the losses to the country were enormous. The constant fluctuations in the value of the currency, then much depreciated, intensified the distress and complicated the situation. Recovery required years, although made easier by the sound and steady development of the pastoral and agricultural industries, which were slightly affected by the crisis; and the steadily increasing volume of exports, mainly foodstuffs and other staples, saved the situation. There have been some changes in commercial methods since 1890, the retailer, and sometimes the consumer, importing direct to save intermediate commission charges. Such transactions are made easy by the foreign banks established in all the large cities of the republic. The conversion law of 1899, which gave a fixed gold value to the currency (44 centavos gold for each 100 centavos paper), has had beneficial influence on commercial transactions, through the elimination of daily fluctuations in the value of the currency, and the commercial and financial situation has been steadily improved, notwithstanding heavy taxation and tariff restrictions. The import trade shows the largest totals in foodstuffs, wines and liquors, textiles and raw materials for their manufacture, wood and its manufactures, iron and its manufactures, paper and cardboard, glass and ceramic wares. The official valuation of imports, which is arbitrary and incorrect, was $164,569,884 gold in 1889, fell off to $67,207,780 in 1891, but gradually increased to $205,154,420 in 1905. The exports, which are almost wholly of agricultural and pastoral products, increased from $103,219,000 in 1891 to $322,843,841 in 1905.

Government.—The present constitution of Argentina dates from the 25th of September 1860. The legislative power is vested in a congress of two chambers—the senate, composed of 30 members (two from each province and two from the capital), elected by the provincial legislatures and by a special body of electors in the capital for a term of nine years; and the chamber of deputies, of 120 members (1906), elected for four years by direct vote of the people, one deputy for every 33,000 inhabitants. To the chamber of deputies exclusively belongs the initiation of all laws relating to the raising of money and the conscription of troops. It has also the exclusive right to impeach the president, vice-president, cabinet ministers, and federal judges before the senate. The executive power is exercised by the president, elected by presidential electors from each province chosen by direct vote of the people. The president and vice-president are voted for by separate tickets. The system closely resembles that followed in the United States. The president must be a native citizen of Argentina, a Roman Catholic, not under thirty years of age, and must have an annual income of at least $2000. His term of office is six years, and neither he nor the vice-president is eligible for the next presidential term. All laws are sanctioned and promulgated by the president, who is invested with the veto power, which can be overruled only by a two-thirds vote. The president, with the advice and consent of the senate, appoints judges, diplomatic agents, governors of territories, and officers of the army and navy above the rank of colonel. All other officers and officials he appoints and promotes without the consent of the senate. The cabinet is composed of eight ministers—the heads of the government departments of the interior, foreign affairs, finance, war, marine, justice, agriculture, and public works. They are appointed by and may be removed by the president.

Justice is administered by a supreme federal court of five judges and an attorney-general, which is also a court of appeal, four courts of appeal, with three judges each, located in Buenos Aires, La Plata, Paraná and Córdoba, and by a number of inferior and local courts. Each province has also its own judicial system. Trial by jury is established by the constitution, but never practised. Civil and criminal courts are both corrupt and dilatory. In May 1899 the minister of justice stated in the chamber of deputies that the machinery of the courts in the country was antiquated, unwieldy and incapable of performing its duties; that 50,000 cases were then waiting decision in the minor courts, and 10,000 in the federal division; and that a reconstruction of the judiciary and the judicial system had become necessary. In June 1899 he sent his project for the reorganization of the legal procedure to congress, but no action was then taken beyond referring the bill to a committee for examination and report. The proceedings are, with but few exceptions, written, and the procedure is a survival of the antiquated Spanish system.

Under the constitution, the provinces retain all the powers not delegated to the federal government. Each province has its own constitution, which must be republican in form and in harmony with that of the nation. Each elects its governor, legislators and provincial functionaries of all classes, without the intervention of the federal government. Each has its own judicial system, and enacts laws relating to the administration of justice, the distribution and imposition of taxes, and all matters affecting the province. All the public acts and judicial decisions of one province have full legal effect and authority in all the others. In cases of armed resistance to a provincial government, the national government exercises the right to intervene by the appointment of an interventor, who becomes the executive head of the province until order is restored. The territories are under the direct control of the national government.

Army.—The military service of the republic was reorganized in 1901, and is compulsory for all citizens between the ages of 20 and 45. The army consists of: (1) The Line, comprising the Active and Reserve, in which all citizens 20 to 28 years of age are obliged to serve; (2) the National Guard, comprising citizens of 28 to 40 years; (3) the Territorial Guard, comprising those 40 to 45 years. Conscripts of 20 years of age have to serve two years, three months each year. The active or standing army comprises 18 battalions of infantry, 12 regiments of cavalry, 8 regiments of artillery, and 4 battalions of engineers. A military school, with 125 cadets, is maintained at San Martin, near the national capital, and a training school for non-commissioned officers in the capital itself. Compulsory attendance of young men at national guard drills is enforced for at least two months of the year, under penalty of enforced service in the Line. In 1906 the president announced that permission had been given by the German emperor for 30 Argentine officers to enter the German army each year and to serve eighteen months, and also for five officers to attend the Berlin Military Academy. The equipment of the standing army is thoroughly modern, the infantry being provided with Mauser rifles and the artillery with Krupp batteries.

Navy.—The disputes with Chile during the closing years of the 19th century led to a large increase in the navy, but in 1902 a treaty between the two countries provided for the restriction of further armaments for the next four years. The naval vessels then under construction were accordingly sold, but in 1906 both countries, influenced apparently by the action of Brazil, gave large orders in Europe for new vessels. At the time when further armaments were suspended, the effective strength of the Argentine navy consisted of 3 ironclads, 6 first-class armoured cruisers, 2 monitors (old), 4 second-class cruisers, 2 torpedo cruisers, 3 destroyers, 3 high-sea torpedo boats, 14 river torpedo boats, 1 training ship, 5 transports, and various auxiliary vessels. Two of these first-class cruisers were sold to Japan. The armament included 394 guns of all calibres, 6 of which were of 250 millimetres, 4 of 240, and 12 of 200. There are about 320 officers in active service, and the total personnel ranges from 5000 to 6000 men. The service is not popular, and it is recruited by means of conscription from the national guard, the term of service being two years. These conscripts number about 2000 a year. In addition, there is a corps of coast artillery numbering 450 men, from which garrisons are drawn for the military port, Zárate arsenal and naval prison. The government maintains a naval school at Flores, a school of mechanics in Buenos Aires, an artillery school on the cruiser “Patagonia,” and a school for torpedo practice at La Plata. The naval arsenal is situated on the “north basin” of the Buenos Aires port, and the military port at Bahia Blanca is provided

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 These rules hold true, of course, only in the ideal short story; the presenting of a bit of real life, the relating of an incident covering only a brief period of time.

No matter what method of narration you may choose, you must make up your mind at the outset to be simple and direct in telling your story. If you try to put style in your work, it will fall flat. After all, style is more or less of a humbug. If your writing is correct, and straight from the heart, and you put your individuality into it, critics will label your way of telling things “style.”

Not long ago Mr. Frank A. Munsey said some good things in regard to this quality to the students of Yale University.

“The style that means most,” he averred, “is that which comes from a man's own soul. Every one who cuts any figure in life has his own individuality, and it is this very individuality that gives character to style and lifts it out of the rut of machine-made stuff. No man ever gets very far with the

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 oxidized to carbon dioxide and water, the former being absorbed by caustic potash, and the latter by calcium chloride. The method now in use differs from that of Liebig in only a few particulars, the principal of which is that gas has superseded charcoal.

In 1824 Liebig returned to Germany, having been appointed Professor of Chemistry in the University of Giessen—a seat of learning which he made famous throughout the world by means of his discoveries and teaching, and where he attracted students from all parts of Europe.

About this time Liebig gave special study to the cyanates, which were also being studied by Wöhler. The two young men became friends, recognized each others powers, and aided each other in scientific work, and many papers were published under their joint names. Liebig's researches were published in Poggendorff's Annalen; Liebig's Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie; Handwörterbuch der reinen und angewandten Chemie; and Jahresbericht der Chemie: in all he published three hundred papers.

Liebig remained at Giessen for twenty-eight years, i.e., until 1852, when he accepted the chair of chemistry in the University of Munich. This was due to the influence of the King of Bavaria. His fame spread rapidly, and students filled his laboratory. Great enthusiasm was evinced at his lectures, and though not a fluent lecturer, the knowledge he imparted carried away his audience,


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Author:Charles Battell Loomis

Works

 * Just Rhymes (1899), verse
 * The Four-Masted Cat-Boat (1899)
 * Yankee Enchantments (1900)
 * "Overheard on the Outside" in Smart Set (May 1900)
 * A Partnership in Magic (1903)
 * Cheerful Americans (1903)
 * More Cheerful Americans (1904)
 * I've Been Thinking (1905)
 * Minerva's Manœvres (1905)
 * Cheer Up! (1906)
 * A Bath in an English Tub (1907)
 * Poe's "Raven" in an Elevator (1907), the third edition of More Cheerful Americans
 * The Knack of It (1908)
 * A Holiday Touch (1908)
 * Just Irish (1909)

Works from periodicals

 * "Interesting People: Peter Newell," (1911) extract from "Interesting People in The American Magazine, vol. 72

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 public who squares his work to the slant of other writers.

“The best way to tell your story is to plunge right into it, and let the atmosphere take care of itself, which it is sure to do in good time. The closer you can write to the way you talk, the closer you will come to interesting the reader and attaining a good literary style.”

Charles Darwin once said to a young writer:

“Do not despair about your style. I never study style; all that I do is to try to get the subject as clear as I can in my own head, and express it in the commonest language which occurs to me. But I generally have to think a good deal before the simplest arrangement of words occurs to me. It is a golden rule always to use, if possible, a short old Saxon word. Such a sentence as ‘so purely dependent is the incipient plant on the specific morphological tendency’ does not sound to my ears like good mother English—it wants translating.”

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 for he taught living facts, not merely the dead ashes of science. The late Dr Hofmann, who was a pupil of Liebig, said of his master: "Nor was it so much the actual knowledge he imparted, as the wonderful manner in which he called forth the reflective powers of even the least gifted of his pupils. And what a boon was it, after having been stifled by an oppressive load of facts, to drink the pure breath of science such as flowed from Liebig's lips! What a delight, after having perhaps received from others a sack full of dry leaves, suddenly in Liebig's lectures to see the living, growing tree! We felt then, we feel still, and never while we live shall we forget, Liebig's marvellous influence over us; and if anything could be more astonishing than the amount of work he did with his own hands, it was probably the mountain of chemical toil which he got us to go through. Each word of his carried instruction, every intonation of his voice bespoke regard; his approval was a mark of honour, and of whatever else we might be proud, our greatest pride of all was having him for our master. Of our young winnings in the noble playground of philosophical honour, more than half were free gifts to us from Liebig; and to his generous nature no triumphs of his own brought more sincere delight than that which he took in seeing his pupils' success, and in assisting, while he watched, their upward struggle." Lucky was he who was under such a master.


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 I think there is nothing to add to the foregoing, except that style is largely a quality that comes only after much practice in writing. A beginner apes those who have gone before, and as soon as he learns that in his own individuality lies the only style he can hope to acquire, he is on the high road to success in literature. He must learn to be himself; to make his writing, not affected, but natural. When he fully comprehends this fact, and begins to profit by it, he sets about cultivating style.

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 THE INTRODUCTION

well begun is half told. Unless you can interest an editor in your first two or three paragraphs, your story may be submitted to every periodical in the country without the slightest chance of acceptance.

So much depends on the introductory sentences, from the viewpoint of the editor, that fully three-fourths of the stories submitted are never read beyond the first page. If they are lacking in interest here, the editor realizes that the writer knows nothing about the fundamental principles of story-writing, and that what follows is practically certain to violate all its rules. Unless the beginning interests him, therefore, he rejects the manuscript promptly without further reading.

An editor's method of determining the value of a manuscript is very simple.

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 He scans the introductory paragraph, and if he finds that the writer plunges into his story at the very outset he is interested enough to skim over the entire first page. If nothing is found that condemns the story, the editor now turns to the last page and studies the conclusion. If he finds this weak, the story is returned without further reading; but if it ends with a quick, sharp turn, or in a manner that suggests rapid dramatic action somewhere earlier in the story, he dips into the middle and glances over the other pages; not systematically, but in a hop-skip-and-jump manner. Then, if the first promise is fulfilled, he leans back and reads the story clear through. If he does this, the chances are all in favor of an acceptance, though some detail may still warrant a rejection; or, possibly, the tenor of the story may not be in line with his publication.

From the foregoing it will be seen that if you expect even a careful examination of your story, you must interest the editor at once. You cannot do this with a long description. You

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In My Merry Oldsmobile

Young Johnnie Steele has an Oldsmobile, He loves a dear little girl, She is the queen of his gas machine, She has his heart in a whirl.

Now, when they go for a spin, you know, She tries to learn the auto, so He lets her steer while he gets her ear, And whispers soft and low;

Come away with me Lucile In my merry Oldsmobile, Down the road of life we'll fly Automobubbling you and I.

To the church we'll swiftly steal, Then our wedding bells will peal, You can go as far as you like with me, In my merry Oldsmobile.

They love to spark in the dark old park, As they go flying along, She says she knows why the motor goes; The sparker's awfully strong.

Each day they spoon to the engine's tune, Their honeymoon will happen soon, He'll win Lucile with his Oldsmobile And then he'll fondly croon;

Come away with me Lucile In my merry Oldsmobile, Down the road of life we'll fly Automobubbling you and I.

To the church we'll swiftly steal, Then our wedding bells will peal, You can go as far as you like with me, In my merry Oldsmobile.

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The New International Encyclopædia/Sierra Morena

SIERRA MORENA, mṓ-rā'nȧ. A mountain range of Spain running along the southern edge of the great central plateau, and forming the boundary between the provinces of Ciudad Real on the north and Jaén and Cordova on the south (Map: Spain, D 3). It rises but slightly above the plateau, its average elevation being about 3500 feet, but on the south it falls in a steep and imposing escarpment toward the low valley of the Guadalquivir. The railroad from Madrid to Cordova crosses it through several tunnels in the romantic pass called the Puerto de Despeñaperros.


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 cannot do it by labeling your characters, in imitation of a theater programme. You cannot do it by presenting familiar and worn-out situations.

Ninety per cent of the “unavailable” stories have one of these faults in their introduction. A good majority of those that are accepted begin with conversation that arouses interest, or striking sentences that make the reader anxious enough for an explanation to read further.

Your first sentence should plunge your reader into the action of your story. Leave your descriptions until you have interested him; then what would have bored him at first will prove only a pleasing explanation of the situation. In the ideal short story, the descriptions are sifted in so adroitly that there is no lagging of movement.

Don't begin your story by having a beautiful maiden wondering if her lover is true. Don't begin by saying that the heroine, dressed in well-fitting clothes, makes a handsome picture. Don't begin by presenting a girl who is

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Author:Vincent Patrick Bryan

Works

 * In My Merry Oldsmobile (1905)
 * Tammany (1905)

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 her past life. All these have been done time and time again. Strive for originality if you would write acceptable stories.

Why not have the girl watching her faithless lover, ten miles away, through a telescope? Why not have the heroine dressed in brightest crimson and living in a convent? Why not have the girl wondering if the man she just pushed in the cistern is dead? All these are far-fetched and extravagant, I admit, but they illustrate the point I would make: that you must begin your story in a manner novel and original.

A goodly number of the light little love stories of to-day need no setting beyond that suggested by the conversation. It is pure idiocy to dilate upon the beauty of the scene, or the charm of the weather, or the innermost feelings of the characters. If you must get these points into your story, do it by suggestion. Make the man and woman so thoroughly in love with each other, that neither you nor a master-hand can keep your reader from knowing that the

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 scenery is magnificent, nor that the sun is shining its brightest, nor that every sentence your lovers utter is bubbling with sentiment. If you can't get this happiness into your love story, you have failed. Tear it up and write it all over.

Did you ever study Hope's “Dolly Dialogues”? If so, you have found that, although there is no direct information given or scenes described, you are in full possession of all the necessary facts, gleaned through the words and actions of the characters. Yet the stories start abruptly and go forward in a natural sequence of events.

It is the best practice in the world to write a story without the use of any method of presenting ideas except direct discourse.

There are times, of course, when a description of the setting of your story is absolutely necessary. Suppose you wished to say that a man who had been away for years from a girl he loved was approaching her house, a great stone structure high on a hill. You might follow the beginner's example, thus:

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 “The house of Dorothy Owens was a magnificent stone mansion, beautiful inside and out. It stood on a high hill. But, in spite of its beauty, Dorothy was not happy. Years before she had had a lover, who, could she but have known it, was even now approaching the house, mounted on a mettlesome steed.”

Your ear tells you that this is trite and dull. There is no reason to go on reading; no promise of anything better. Would it not be more interesting if begun a little differently? For instance :

“The horse stopped suddenly, and the man lifted his head with a jerk. For the last mile he had been sitting in the saddle, not caring whom he met, not seeing. Now he looked ahead at the road that led straight up the hill to a house that stood on the summit. For a moment he stared at it, debating with himself. Then he smiled and dug his spurs into the horse.”

The one objection to this latter method is the necessity of saying, more or less bluntly: “But I must now explain that years before this man and woman

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 had been lovers.” Now, above all else, a short story should possess unity. With this quality of paramount importance, any retrospection is apt to mar the artistic handling. But even this objection may be overcome by the use of suggestive conversation that gives the reader enough of a clue to enable him to understand the situation.

Remember, then, that readers are a busy people, who would have their stories served in condensed pellets if they could, and that to win their approbation you must begin well along in your tale, where enough complications are to be found to catch the interest. In writing, as nowhere else, can be seen the truth of the trite old proverb, “Well begun is half done.”

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 at any time and is of equal literary value. Readers expect a Christmas story in the December magazine, an Independence Day story in the July number, and seasonable fiction at all times. A great many writers overlook this fact altogether. Christmas stories are usually weak in plot; they have been done with a regularity that has exhausted all ideas. A fairly original Yule-tide story, offered during the summer months, or a good Fourth of July tale, submitted during the first quarter of the year, stands a very good chance of acceptance. If you will remember that stories should be submitted from three to six months before the issue of the magazine in which they should appear, you will be stealing a march on less experienced and less observing writers.

In considering the type of character of stories, a second side of the question of timeliness also plays a part. Like clothes, stories follow the fashions. Yesterday dialect stories were the style; the day before romantic fiction; the day before that, bald realism. To-day the

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 THE STORY PROPER

ideal short story is the relation of an isolated incident. In a novel you may introduce your heroine in one chapter and your hero in another, and then shift scenes and seasons with bewildering rapidity to the very end. There is a runaway, perhaps, in which the man saves the girl's life. There is a forest in which the lovers get lost together. There is an automobile wreck that drives them to a farmer's house for supper. But each of these leads up to the climax the inevitable marriage of the two.

Now, any one of these counter-incidents would make a short story, but all of them together lack the fundamental requisite of brief fiction unity. The ideal short story begins in one place and ends in that place. It begins with a certain number of characters and ends

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The New International Encyclopædia/Sierra Nevada (Spain)

SIERRA NEVADA, (Snowy Range). A mountain range of Southern Spain,

extending from the centre of the Province of Granada about 60 miles eastward into the Province of Almeria, its crest being about 28 miles from the Mediterranean coast (Map:, D 4). It forms a part of the mountain system separating the valley of the Guadalquivir from the southern coast, and is the highest elevation of the Iberian Peninsula. Its greatest height is near the western end, where the peak of Mulahacén has an altitude of 11,420 feet, and that of Veleta 11,385 feet. Eastward it merges gradually into a lower plateau region. It sends out numerous spurs inclosing deep valleys, and on the north falls in wild and rocky precipices toward the Jenil River, on whose banks lies the city of Granada. The range consists mainly of mica slate, and though the low valleys are covered with a rich vegetation, the bulk of the mountain consists of naked rocks. It is covered with snow a great part of the year, and on the Veleta there are permanent glaciers, the southernmost of Europe.


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 stories that border on history claim recognition. To-morrow the style may change. By keeping a close watch on what is in vogue, you can more easily please the editor.

Some one has said that there is a place for every story, good, bad or indifferent, that is written. To a great extent, this statement is true. At the top stand the best magazines; at the bottom, the little pamphlet publications that do not pay for contributions. Between these extremes lie hundreds of magazines, papers, syndicates, etc., that purchase stories. Just below the best magazines are the literary weeklies. The religious papers and magazines brighten their pages with fiction. The juvenile publications pay excellent prices. The household and domestic journals run serials and short stories. Even the class publications give space to fiction. Hundreds of newspapers throughout the country offer good markets. The several syndicates purchase liberally and pay well. For no class of work is the market as wide as for the short story.

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 with that number. It is an incident by itself, isolated from the other happenings of everyday life.

It may be any length, provided it is not too ungainly to crowd between the covers of a magazine, or too tiny to demand a place at all. Generally speaking, a short story should run between 1,000 and 6,000 words.

Length, of course, is largely a matter of demand rather than of choice. You can't tell some stories in less than 5,000 words without condensing them so sharply as to destroy utterly their charm, and you can't stretch others above 1,500 words without padding them unduly. As in all other things, the ones that do not come close to either extreme are most apt to prove acceptable.

Whatever the length, the ideal short story is one complete chapter. Above all else, it is a unit; and any plot that necessitates chapter divisions is faulty and had better be discarded.

Many of the stories that are sliced up in this fashion by beginners, however, really possess unity. The divisions are

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 In 1840 (ever-memorable year), while at Giessen, Liebig published his famous and epoch-making work on agricultural chemistry, Die organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie. Although Davy, thirty years before, had published a work on Agricultural Chemistry, it was not until Liebig's book made its appearance that any great stride was made in the scientific principles of agriculture. This book is one of those few works which stand out from all others on the subjects of which they treat. It is undoubtedly the most important work on agriculture ever given to the world as the result of one man's researches and ideas. From the land of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schiller, and other philosophers, it is not surprising that we have such a far-reaching and philosophic work as Liebig's Die organische Chemie given to us.

That an increase of solubility in bones and other phosphates would be attended by an increased productive power in the crop, was the idea of Liebig. He, in 1840, recommended, in lieu of bones, the use of the substance long well known to chemists as the acid or superphosphate of lime, which is producible from bones and other phosphates by the action of oil of vitriol or sulphuric acid. Practice has since shown the great advantage of Liebig's suggestion.

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 the various tissues of plants. He taught that the carbonic acid of the atmosphere was the principal source of the carbon in plants; that their hydrogen came from water, their nitrogen from ammonia present in the air and soil. The sulphur, which is an ingredient in the protoplasm ("the basis of life") of living plants, comes solely from the sulphates and sulphur compounds contained in the soil; and, finally, that the mineral ingredients found in the ashes of plants come from the soil in which they grow. Liebig further demonstrated that plants cannot live without these mineral ingredients, and that the humus of the soil is incapable of forming the sole nutrient material for plants.

Liebig says in his book (p. 174):—

Liebig's theory was a revolutionary movement on the accepted ideas of scientific agriculture which dawned at the commencement of the nineteenth century.

He supported his theory by well-conducted experiments, showing that fields containing an excess of humus


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 false, and are the result of the writer's idea that they make his story more presentable. The scene may be the same and no interruption to the action have taken place.

Young writers have a habit of using a series of stars or dashes to indicate the lapse of time in their stories. There is no reason for this, other than that the plot is wrongly constructed or that the writers err flatly. The craze for chapter divisions is a senseless one, and comes from a study of the novel.

Perhaps the most common error of the young writer is the unconscious padding by the use of remarks, comments, stray bits of information, or morals entirely foreign to the plot. The proper way to tell a short story is to draw a line from the striking introductory sentence straight to the climax, and never, by a hair's breadth, deviate from that line. Remarks and comments are for the editorial, information for the essay and scientific article, and morals for the religious article. A salable short story is nothing more nor less than a good plot

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 draped enough to soften the naked crudities without hiding the general beauty of form.

No two stories are alike in structure. For this reason, it is impossible to give specific advice as to the telling. But if you have something with a laugh, a tear, or a thrill, and go about presenting it in a straightforward, natural manner, without hurrying or lagging overmuch, you are pretty sure to produce a story that will sell.

It seems to be the fate of most writers to have a tendency either to take up a great deal too much time in telling their story, or to do it admirably nearly to the end and then seemingly to tire and hurry through to the climax. You will find, most likely, that in writing a story you have a habit of completing it in 1,000 words, or even less, or else taking five or six times that many. In either case, you can easily discover your weakness and strive to correct it.

After you have acquired a little ease in your composition, you will find that there are a dozen ways of telling the same

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 story, and that your way is apt to be the one that comes to you most easily.

Now, it may be worth while, financially, to try an experiment. After you have your plot well in mind, pick up some magazine and study the structure of its predominating stories. Then adapt your style to that of the magazine, and write your story with the idea that it must follow precisely the model you have chosen. It seems to me that in this way you have a story exactly fitted to a certain line of publications rather than one adapted, almost, to anything published.

You will find, however, that on at least one point all editors are agreed; that is, that conversation is always preferable to description. It is a good plan to go through a completed story and substitute the former for the latter wherever possible. I think I can offer no more forcible advice than that of the writer who said: “It is not necessary to say that a woman is a snarling, grumpy person. Bring in the old lady and let her snarl.”

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The New International Encyclopædia/Sierra Nevada (California)

SIERRA NEVADA,. A mountain range in eastern California, forming the divide between the Great American Basin and the valley of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers (Map:, D 3). It is a tilted plateau 80 miles wide and extending in a north-northwest direction, 400 or 500 miles according as the range is considered to end at Lassen Peak or at the northern State boundary. In the south it turns westward and merges with the Coast Range, and in the north it is continued into Oregon as the Cascade Mountains. It consists of a granitic core exposed in the higher portions, flanked by metamorphic slates, and in the lower western slopes by later marine deposits ranging from Carboniferous to Cretaceous. North of Lassen Peak, in the northern part of the State, these formations disappear under the great Oregon lava flow, so that here the Cascade Mountains may be said to begin, although the name Sierra Nevada is often extended up to the State boundary so as to include Mount Shasta. The average elevation of the crest is 10,000 feet in the southern half and somewhat less in the north. The range falls abruptly on the east to the valley floor of the Great Basin, 5000 feet below, while on the west it has a wider and more gradual slope. The Sierra Nevada, whose greatest elevation but slightly exceeds that of the Rocky Mountains, appears much more massive and impressive than the latter range, as it rises from a much lower level. The number of peaks, however, is not as great as in Colorado, though there are at least 14 peaks over 12,000 feet high. The highest peaks are clustered near the southern end, and here Mount Whitney, the highest point in the United States proper, attains an altitude of 14,898 feet. Other high points are Fisherman Peak, 14,448 feet; Mount Corcoran, 14,093 feet; Mount Kaweah, 14,000 feet; Mount Brewer, 13,886 feet; Mount Lyell, in the Yosemite Park, 13,042 feet; and iii the extreme north Mount Shasta, with an altitude of 14,380 feet. The higher portions of the range are covered with perpetual snow, and the northern slopes of some of the peaks are occupied by glaciers. The snowfall is heavy on the western slope, and feeds a large number of streams flowing to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. These streams have cut up the slope into deep valleys, some of which, notably

the Yosemite Valley, are remarkable for their scenery. The Sierra Nevada is covered to a height of 8000 feet with dense forests of coniferous trees, which yield to deciduous on the lower western slope. The western slope, above the deciduous zone, is the exclusive habitat of the ‘big trees’ (Sequoia gigantea). Though it is a practically unbroken divide, there are several passes leading across the range at altitudes of 4000 to 7000 feet. Of these the Truckee Pass in the north and the Tehachapi Pass in the south are traversed by railroads.


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 But no matter how you tell your story, it must follow the general rule of leading up to a climax. In its broadest sense, this may be illustrated by recalling a good detective or mystery story. It is this very thing that makes the poorly educated read stories; the very thing that makes some people turn to the last chapter in a book before reading the others; the very thing that makes a child urge you to go on and on in telling a story—merely the desire to see how it all comes out, to know why this character did that and that one this, all through the narrative. It is really inborn curiosity, and if a story did not hold out the promise of a denouement or climax very few would read it.

In writing your story, therefore, you must keep this always in mind. Little suggestions whet the reader's appetite and make him eager to go on. These, however, should not be broad. “Little did she think that ere the setting of another sun a great calamity would be upon them.” This method lacks delicacy and is certain to create disgust.

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 Strike out along new lines, that your reader may never guess how the story is to end, and then lead him on, step by step, till the climax comes, sharp and clear, like the snap of a whip.

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I Lost My Heart in Honolulu

Westward Ho! I'm restless there to go Where the warm Hawaiian breezes blow Where dark eyes glow, oh! beautiful Island,

Waikiki! Your beach beseeches me, There is a reason I confess, Come on, give a guess, Some girl? Yes!

I lost my heart in Honolulu, Where the moonbeams kiss the ocean There's the shrine of my devotion, One wondrous night, one wondrous maiden, Down on the glist'ning coral strand I just held her hand, understand, Oh! midnight scene of tropic splendor, Undreamed of dreams, love glances tender, Had I a thousand hearts to lose, I'd lose them all in Honolulu.

Westward Ho! In quest of her I go While the ukalale wails its tune I'll honeymoon with my Kiluau.

Homeward Ho! By way of old Frisco, The ukalale laid aside, Baby now her pride, Hail! my bride!

I lost my heart in Honolulu, Where the moonbeams kiss the ocean There's the shrine of my devotion, One wondrous night, one wondrous maiden, Down on the glist'ning coral strand I just held her hand, understand, Oh! midnight scene of tropic splendor, Undreamed of dreams, love glances tender, Had I a thousand hearts to lose, I'd lose them all in Honolulu.

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 CONCLUSION AND CLIMAX

your story is ended, stop. Don't ramble on and tell how the man built a magnificent home and how the two turtle doves lived there for years and years. Lead your reader up to the engagement and drop the curtain abruptly on the scene of bliss. The chances are that later a flurry in stocks swallowed up all the man's wealth and that the white hands of the girl turned brown and chapped over the wash board. But if you stop at the proper place, your reader will never think of the possibility of such things.

If you tack on a remark after your story is ended, it will ruin it all. Amateurs have a habit of closing a love story something like this:

“She looked up at him, with the love

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 did not produce more than fields in which this ingredient was deficient. Although Liebig's theory of plant nutrition was essentially a mineral theory, yet he understood that organic matter (humus) decomposes in a soil, giving rise to carbonic acid and ammonia; and these gaseous bodies are also valuable plant foods. Liebig fully established the following important laws of husbandry:—

These laws of Liebig form the basis of modern scientific agriculture.

Liebig was the first to treat bones with "Schwefelsäure" or sulphuric acid in order to make the calcium phosphates soluble (superphosphate); and the late Sir John B. Lawes was the first to commence the manufacture of superphosphate on a large scale, both from bones and mineral phosphates.

From these early beginnings an enormous industry


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 light in her eyes, and said, ever so softly, ‘Yes.’ Then he put his arms around her, and drew her close, and pressed kiss after kiss on her eager lips. And finally, just at twilight, the two walked back to the village, busily planning a little cottage for the future.”

Now, properly this story ends with the word "Yes." What follows is anticlimax, and is the kind of writing that has given rise to the phrase, “sickly sentimentality.”

In the story suggested by the foregoing conclusions, all the ideas are centered on the winning of the girl's hand. Earlier in the tale, perhaps, there has been another lover, and complications and desperate moves. Everything has led up to the proposal and acceptance. All through, the reader has seen what is coming, and has hoped and feared with the hero. The conclusion of all this has been the single word, “Yes.” This, then, is the climax.

Let us look for a moment at what this climax accomplishes. First, it ends definitely the element of suspense. Sec-

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 ondly, it decides the destinies of the characters. Thirdly, it is the severing of all connection with the plot. Fourthly, it is a logical explanation of the cause of all the previous action. Fifthly, it is really the point of the whole story. It may be said, therefore, to fulfill all the requirements.

A climax should never drag. It should come clear and sharp, like the snap of a whip. You should then be able to finish your story before the sound has died out, before the impression it leaves has been counterbalanced by tedious and dull explanations.

The climax in what is known as the “surprise story” is invariably false. Though it may amuse, it does so through the ingenuity of the writer rather than through a logical appeal to the sensibilities. It is clever, but not artistic, to write that a man followed you home one night, and slunk in the shadows when you stopped, and that he ran toward you suddenly, at your doorstep, and you saw—only your Newfoundland dog; or that after smoking the drugged

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 cigar, and allowing the pocketbook to slip to the floor as you became unconscious, you—suddenly awoke and found it was all a dream; or that in the middle of the night, by some intuitive process, you felt certain that some assailant near at hand was about to murder you in cold blood, and that you lay there quivering—until you fell asleep and woke the next morning to laugh over your active imagination. The climax in all these stories is false, and will not pass muster with a critical editor.

The single good point about this class is that its stories seldom deal with real tragedy. In spite of all the hue and cry for realistic fiction, it is the stories with happy endings that sell. True, the best magazines give space to tragic stories, but they do it, not because tragedy appeals to them, but because the telling is too artistic to risk rejection; in other words, the manner overbalances the matter. But these stories are written by experienced authors, whose positions are secure. The beginner should shun the sad ending.

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The New International Encyclopædia/Sievers, Eduard

SIEVERS, zē'vẽrs, Author:Eduard Sievers (1850—). A German philologist, born at Lippoldsberg, Prussia. He was educated at Leipzig and Berlin, and became professor extraordinarius of Germanic and Romance philology at Jena in 1871, receiving a full professorship there five years later. In 1883 he went to Tübingen, and in 1887 to Halle, whence he was called in 1892 to Leipzig. Among the numerous contributions of Sievers to Germanic philology, may be mentioned his editions of Tatian (2d ed. 1892), the Heliand (1878), and, in collaboration with Steinmeyer, Die althochdeutschen Glossen (4 vols., 1879-98), besides the Oxforder Benediktinerregel (1887). His original works on Germanics include Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis (1875), Angelsächsische Grammatik (3d ed. 1898), and Zum angelsächsischen Vokalismus (1900). He also made important contributions to metrics in his Altgermanische Metrik (1892) and his Metrische Studien (1901-02), dealing with Hebrew metres, while his Grundzüge der Phonetik (5th ed. 1901) is one of the standard works on phonetics. In 1891 he became an editor of Paul and Branne's Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Litteratur, and contributed to Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (Strassburg, 1891 et seq.) the sections on runes, Gothic language and literature, and Germanic metre.


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 has been built up in every civilized country of the globe, but especially in England.

Liebig, like his own compatriot Heinrich Heine, could handle the weapon of satire with consummate skill, attacked England in the following words: "England is robbing all other countries of the conditions of their fertility. Already, in her eagerness for bones, she has turned up the battlefields of Leipzig and Waterloo, and of the Crimea; already from the catacombs of Sicily she has carried away the skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she removes from the shores of other countries to her own the manurial equivalent of three millions and a half of men, whom she takes from us the means of supporting, and squanders down her sewers to the sea. Like a vampire she hangs upon the neck of Europe, nay, of the entire world, and sucks the heartblood from nations without a thought of justice towards them, without a shadow of lasting advantage for herself."

His work revolutionized agriculture, and made a science of it. He says in his Familiar Letters on Chemistry that "chemistry leads man into the domain of those latent forces, whose power controls the whole material world, and on whose operation is dependent the production of the most important necessaries of life and society. … No science like chemistry offers to man such a multitude of subjects for thought and reflection, and such stores


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 The true story should also be avoided. Here, again, it is the conclusion that causes a good share of the trouble. In real life, it is next to impossible to find a narrative that ends as you and the editor would wish. To make it artistic at all, you must put in a generous seasoning of the untrue and transform the climax altogether.

The conclusion of any story is worthy of the very best efforts of a writer. It is really the story itself, for it embraces the climax, or culmination of the plot. Nine times out of ten, your whole story may be discovered by reading your last paragraph or two. It takes but a glance at this point to indicate its nature.

If you will keep always in mind the fact that the editor studies your conclusions to see whether the story proper is worth an examination, it is probable that you will see to it that this part has merit. It is the conclusion, remember, that leaves the taste in the reader's mouth, and makes him decide whether or not the story is worth while. If you end tritely, he will characterize your

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 whole composition as trite; if you round off your story artistically, he will be apt to consider all that has gone before as artistic.

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 of knowledge imbued with the charms of never-ending freshness; none is more calculated to awaken the talent for observation, or to sharpen the intellect in the strict method of applying proof for the establishment of a truth, or in the inquiry into the cause and effect of a phenomenon."

Concerning his great labours in the domain of agriculture, he says: "Does not chemistry promise that instead of seven grains we shall be enabled to raise eight or more on the same soil?"

Great men work not only by their deeds, but also by their personal lives. Liebig laboured by the influence of his own example to destroy a prejudice which restrained most agriculturalists from devoting themselves to the study of scientific farming.

In 1845 the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt conferred upon him the title of baron, and in 1852, as already stated, he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the University of Munich.

His researches were not only confined to scientific agriculture, but physiology, pathology, and organic chemistry owe much to his indefatigability. His influence in chemistry was great—being one of the world's most famous chemists—and to his numerous pupils he was their "guide, philosopher, and friend." He satirized the work of other leading men, as the following remark bears evidence. In 1867 Liebig being asked by Dumas


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100 why he had abandoned organic chemistry, replied that "now, with the theory of substitution as a foundation, the edifice may be built up by workmen: masters are no longer needed."

Although he had his own views on most subjects, he was always open to correction. He said: "In the history of the evolution of any science, the researches of a given period of time furnish certain general relations which every moment are changed and improved upon by new discoveries. Thus an endeavour arises to arrange the new-discovered facts and to find the common bond by which they are linked together."

Liebig's definition of a compound radicle holds good to this day, although his definition of organic chemistry—as the study of the compound radicles—has been superseded by that of Schorlemmer, who defines organic chemistry as that branch of the science which treats of "the hydrocarbons and their derivatives."

Liebig predicted the organic ammonias, and discovered chloroform—the invaluable liquid which was first introduced into medicine by Sir James Simpson in 1848. He also discovered chloral and aldehyde. Liebig established the molecular formula of citric acid, and proved that it was tribasic; and in the year 1838 appeared his classical memoir on the constitution of organic acids, showing that the doctrine of basicity could be applied to them as well as to the acids of inorganic chemistry.


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 THE PLACING OF THE STORY

the ability to sell a story nearly as high as the ability to write one. Unless you can dispose of your manuscript, after you have spent hours over it, your work counts for nothing. I have seen a great many young writers, some of pronounced ability, who have given up the literary profession because they were unable to sell their work. For this reason, I say that the selling is well nigh as important as the writing.

To place a story to good advantage, you must know the market through and through. It is not enough to know that the leading ten-cent magazines use love stories. You must know wherein those found in McClure's differ from those in Munsey's, in Everybody's, in The Cosmopolitan, in every other magazine that

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 has a personality. You must know the shades of difference that separate The Youth’s Companion and St. Nicholas; Harper’s, and The Smart Set; The Woman’s Home Companion and The Ladies’ Home Journal. When you begin to detect the points in which the editorial needs and whims differ, you are in a position to become acquainted with the literary market.

If you write stories, it is your business to make a systematic and thorough study of magazines that use short fiction. You must learn to note whether action, complications, character drawing, style, humor, or any one of a dozen other qualities is responsible for the acceptance and publication of every story you read. If you find stories that lack plot altogether, you must discover what feature takes its place. It is only in this way that you can become fully acquainted with the magazines.

Too many young writers consider the ease with which a story may be written, rather than its adaptability for any magazine. A great number of students in

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 high schools and colleges write fiction which is praised by classmates and teachers, and which may really be good from an artistic standpoint, but which is entirely out of line with the needs of any magazine. I have seen stories that were offered to such publications as The Youth’s Companion and St. Nicholas, in which the boys played pranks that would shock the good mothers and fathers of proper children. These stories were about boys, however, and for this reason their writers imagined them fitted for the publications to which they were sent. They had absolutely no chance of acceptance, and a study of the magazines would have shown the folly of submitting such manuscripts.

Not only must you know the market but you must know your own work. You must be able to distinguish between a story adapted to Harper’s and The Century, and one that is fit only for the newspapers and syndicates. You must judge your own work honestly and without prejudice.

A story fresh from your brain will

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 sound better than one that has been laid aside for a day or two. You will be able to pass upon its merits more impartially if you put it away until your enthusiasm cools. You will also find that it is good practice to read your stories aloud to some other person before you submit them to any magazine. The defects and crude portions will become discernible in a way they never would otherwise, particularly if your hearer is capable of criticising.

A good critic is of inestimable value. I would rather have an unbiased, honest opinion of my story, from some one who was capable of judging it, than all the praise in the world. As a matter of fact, the friends who laud your work usually do not appreciate either the defects or the merits. An unprejudiced criticism of your story will benefit you more than anything else in this matter of choosing a market.

The question of timeliness is one that should be studied. A story that fits the season has a much better chance of acceptance than one which may be used

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 It was Liebig who actually discovered bromine from the liquor of the salt works. He saturated the liquor with chlorine, and by distillation obtained a quantity of a dark red liquid. He thought it was the chloride of iodine, but did not examine it. It was on the shelf in his laboratory, and there it remained for several months. In 1826, Balard, of Montpellier, discovered bromine, and in Liebig's laboratory this very same bromine was labelled "liquid chloride of iodine." He was only twenty-three when the incident occurred, but he resolved in future never to take anything for granted, or to accept theories which were not well supported by trustworthy experiments.

Liebig was a man of untiring labour, always at work, early and late, and his discoveries and philosophy have proved of the highest importance to mankind. His mind was open to correction; he once said that "there is no harm in a man committing mistakes, but great harm indeed in his committing none, for he is sure not to have worked."

Liebig's books on Animal Chemistry (1842), Researches on the Chemistry of Food (1847), The Natural Laws of Husbandry (1862), etc., have been translated into most of the languages of Europe.

Liebig often visited England, and attended several meetings of the British Association. In 1837 he was requested by the Association to draw up a report on the


text:
Take Me Back to My Louisiana Home

I strolled one day by a window, that looked out on the street, and I paused for a moment to listen, to a strain of music so sweet, someone was playing Dixie, that dear old southern air, and far from home and friendless, it held me spellbound there,

I could not see the singer, I only heard the song, But it seemed as though they knew me and were cheering me along, And as I paused to listen the music seemed to say, It is summertime in Dixie and all is bright and gay.

Birds are singing in the trees, branches bowing to the breeze, flowers fair fill the air, ev'ry where I roam, Land of honey and of bee, There my sweetheart waits for me, Way down south in the land of cotton. Take me back to my Louisiana home.

I stepped up close to the window, and looked at the singer there, woith the golden sunlight falling, like a crown on her golden hair. Her face was turned toward me, and my heart stood still with joy, for she was my Dixie sweetheart, and I her Dixie boy,

I ought to've known 'twas Jessie the moment she began, For there's no girl north of Mobile, Can sing like Jessie can, She sings for me alone now we've both come back to stay, It is summertime in Dixie and today's our wedding day.

Birds are singing in the trees, branches bowing to the breeze, flowers fair fill the air, ev'ry where I roam, Land of honey and of bee, There my sweetheart waits for me, Way down south in the land of cotton. Take me back to my Louisiana home.

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 You will meet rebuffs in placing your work, lots of them. You will grow discouraged, no doubt, before you dispose of your manuscript. But if you have not the bull-dog tenacity to stick to it, to meet each returning manuscript with a smile, and to go on hoping and believing in yourself, you have no business in the literary profession. Nor should rejections discourage you. “The story, or the article, or the poem,” says Albert Bigelow Paine, “may come back again and again. The author may rewrite it over and over; but if he perseveres, and the offering is genuine, it will find its place and welcome at last. I have had stories and poems returned to me as many as fifteen times, only to place them at last in a better market than I had hoped for in the beginning. The author who gives up after one rejection, or two, or ten, is unworthy of the name.”

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 progress of organic chemistry, which he did; and in the same year, speaking of radicles, he said that "in mineral chemistry the radicles are simple; in organic chemistry the radicles are compound—voilà toute la différence."

Liebig was not content to merely formulate generalizations and leave the details of work to others; he brought his philosophy down to the level of the average mind; and by inventing the extractum carnis Liebigis, or Liebig's Extract of Meat, he gave to the world an article of vast importance to the invalid and housewife.

He received most of the honours that are usually awarded to men of science, such as the Copley medal of the Royal Society, and the associateship of the Académie des Sciences (l'Institut de France). He will ever be remembered for his work in agricultural chemistry and combustion analysis, both of which are unique in the annals of chemistry.

Two years after the Franco-Prussian War and the reconstitution of the German Empire, Baron Justus von Liebig died on 18th April 1873, at the age of sixty-nine years, leaving the products of his genius to aid the progress of humanity.

He was "honoured and respected by every student of science, and loved by each of the band of ardent natures whom he had trained and set forth to battle for the good of their race." As a teacher he was unsurpassed, and a brave array of great thinkers sprang up as if by magic,


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ARNING is a simple remedy for many cases of prevention as well as cure. A few general directions will apply to darning in all its various phases. Neatness and the careful selection of materials most appropriate for the work are the chief requirements for successful darning. Whether the material to be darned is cotton, silk or wool the darning thread should correspond in thickness and color to the thread in the fabric, and the needle should be neither too coarse nor too fine.

FOR REENFORC1NG worn places before the hole has come through, particular care should be taken to make the work as inconspicuous as possible. A thread or raveling of the material will do better than one of sewing silk, as the latter, no matter how well matched in color, will be sure to have a luster that will bring the stitches into prominence. The drawn thread need not be long; short ones can be worked in just as well.

Baste the part to be mended over a piece of medium stiff, glazed paper, or table oilcloth. Use a needle as fine as the thread will permit. Darn back and forth with as fine stitches as possible, following the grain of the goods and keeping the threads loose so that they will not draw. (Ill. 347.) The ends of the threads are not fastened, but are clipped off close to the garment when the work is finished.

A RUNNING DARN is used when the garment is worn too thin to be mended satisfactorily by reenforcing. Insert the needle a short distance from the edge of the worn or thin part, and parallel with the thread of the weave. Run it under a few threads and over a few, to the opposite side of the worn place. (Ill. 348.) Returning, run the needle over the threads that were taken up, and under those over which it passed in the first row. Continue the process until the whole thin surface has been given a new body. In Illustration 348, white thread was used in order to show the stitches.

When the part to be mended requires still more body than can be given by the running darn, a piece of the material may be laid on the wrong side, and while applying the running darn, this piece is occasionally caught up by the needle to hold the piece securely in position.

A WOVEN DARN is necessary when a hole has been worn through the material. The threads in this case are woven both lengthwise and crosswise with the weave of the garment. (Ill. 349.) Baste the part with the hole over a piece of paper or table oilcloth taking care not to draw it out of shape nor to let it bag. Do not trim off the frayed or worn edges. The unevenness around the edge, which these frayed ends create in the process of darning,

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Rh helps to make the darned place less conspicuous. The lengthwise threads are run in first. Starting well in from the edge of the hole at one side, take up a few small stitches, cross over to the opposite side and again run a few stitches into the edge. Keep the threads taut, but not tight enough to pull. Returning, leave a tiny loop at the turning-point, to allow for shrinkage of the darning threads. Continue back and forth till the hole has been covered. Now begin the crosswise threads in the same way; darn over and under the lengthwise stitches, alternating with each return thread. (Ill. 349.) The frayed edges are caught in the weave as they happen to come, and are firmly secured between the latticed threads. (Ill. 349.)

STOCKINGS are darned on the right side to keep a smooth surface next the foot. A darning-egg or ball, held in the left hand, is slipped under the hole, with the stocking stretched smoothly, but not tightly, over it. The darning is done with the right hand. In a woven darn the darning threads in a stocking usually run up and down with the rib, and then across, but when the hole is at the knee or heel, where greater elasticity is desired, the threads are run across diagonally.

A BROKEN STITCH or two in a stocking can be easily remedied if attended to at once. With a silk thread, pick up the broken stitches and draw the edges together, and by a web-like weaving close the hole.

A DROPPED STITCH is more easily remedied by the use of a crochet-hook than by darning. Slip a fine crochet-hook through the little loop at the lower end of the hole; catch up the first thread and pull it through the loop. Continue until every dropped thread has been caught, then securely fasten the last loop at the end with a few sewing stitches. Illustration 350 shows the position of the crochet-hook picking up dropped stitches.

TO SET IN A PIECE WITH THE BALL STITCH is a way of extending the usefulness of the stocking when the hole is too large to be neatly darned. For this purpose keep on hand the leg portions of stockings of which the feet have been worn out.

Baste the part to be mended over a piece of paper and trim off the ragged edge. Cut a piece from a stocking-leg, matching it in color and texture, with the ribs running like those in the stocking, and conforming in shape to the hole, but a trifle smaller.

Baste this piece into position on the paper and join the two edges, the needle passing in close stitches, alternating, over one edge and under the opposite, until the piece has been securely and neatly worked into position. (Ill. 351.) The stitch in this method will be seen to form a kind of lacing, and is called the "ball-stitch". It must be done evenly and closely, but not tightly enough to raise the edges. (Ill. 351.)

AN UNDERLAID PIECE DARNED IN is a better method of closing a hole when the stocking or garment is very loosely woven

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 due to his great enthusiasm and influence on the minds of men.

Concerning Liebig's great power as a teacher, we may say with Cicero: "Quod munus reipublicæ afferre majus meliusve possumus quam si docemus atque erudimus juventutem."


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 with a dry dock of the largest size, and extensive repair shops. There is also a dockyard and torpedo arsenal at La Plata, an artillery depot at Zárate, above Buenos Aires, and naval depots on the island of Martin Garcia and at Tigre, on the Luján river.

Education.—Primary education is free and secular, and is compulsory for children of 6 to 14 years. In the national capital and territories it is supervised by a national council of education with the assistance of local school boards; in the 14 provinces it is under provincial control. Secondary instruction is also free, but is not compulsory. It is under the control of the national government, which in 1902 maintained 19 colleges. Of these colleges four are in Buenos Aires, one in each province, and one in Concepción del Uruguay. For the instruction of teachers the republic has 28 normal schools, as follows: three in the national capital; one in Paraná, three (regional) in Corrientes, San Luis and Catamarca; 14 for female teachers in the provincial capitals; and seven for either sex in the larger towns of the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Córdoba and San Luis. The normal schools, maintained by the state on a secular basis, were founded by President Sarmiento, who engaged experienced teachers in the United States to direct them; their work is excellent; notably, their model primary schools. For higher and professional education there are two national universities at Buenos Aires and Córdoba, and three provincial universities, at La Plata, Santa Fé and Paraná, which comprise faculties of law, medicine and engineering, in addition to the usual courses in arts and science. To meet the needs of technical and industrial education there are a school of mines at San Juan, a school of viticulture at Mendoza, an agronomic and veterinary school at La Plata, several agricultural and pastoral schools, and commercial schools in Buenos Aires, Rosario, Bahia Blanca and Concordia. Schools of art and conservatories of music are also maintained in the large cities, where there are, besides, many private schools. Secular education has been vigorously opposed by strict churchmen, and efforts have been made to maintain separate schools under church control. The national government has founded several scholarships (some in art) for study abroad. The total school population of Argentina in 1900 (6 to 14 years) was 994,089, of which 45% attended school, and 13% of those not attending were able to read and write. The illiterate school population was about 41%, and of those of 15 years and over 54% were illiterate. Of the whole population over 6 years, 50·5% were illiterate.

Religion.—The Argentine constitution recognizes the Roman Catholic religion as that of the state, but tolerates all others. The state controls all ecclesiastical appointments, decides on the passing or rejection of all decrees of the Holy See, and provides an annual subsidy for maintenance of the churches and clergy. Churches and chapels are founded and maintained by religious orders and private gift as well. At the head of the Argentine hierarchy are one archbishop and five suffragan bishops, who have five seminaries for the education of the priesthood. From statistics of 1895 it appears that in each 1000 of population 991 are Roman Catholics, 7 Protestants, and 2 Jews, the Jews being entirely of Russian origin, sent into the republic since 1891 by the Jewish Colonization Association under the provisions of the Hirsch legacy; from 1895 to 1908 the number of Jews in Argentina increased from 6085 to about 30,000.

Finance.—The revenue of the republic is derived mainly from customs and excise, and the largest item of expenditure is the service of the public debt. Since 1891 the national budgets have been calculated in both gold and currency, and both receipts and expenditures have been carried out in this dual system. The collection of a part of the import duties in gold has served to give the government the gold it requires for certain expenditures, but it has complicated returns and accounts and increased the burden of taxation. According to a compilation of statistical returns published by Dr. Francisco Latzina in 1901, the national revenues and expenditures for the 37 years from 1864 to 1900, inclusive, reduced to a common standard, show a total deficit for that period of $408,260,795 gold, which has been met by external and internal loans, and by a continued increase in the scope and rate of taxation. The growth of the annual budget is shown by a comparison of the following years:—

The bane of Argentine finance has been the extravagant and unscrupulous use of national credit for the promotion of schemes calculated to benefit individuals rather than the public. The large increase in military expenditures during the disputes with Chile also proved a heavy burden, and in the continued strife with Brazil for naval superiority this burden could not fail to be increased greatly. A very considerable percentage of Argentina’s population of five to six millions is hopelessly poor and unprogressive, and cannot be expected to bear its share of the burden. To meet these expenditures there are a high tariff on imported merchandise, and excise and stamp taxes of a far-reaching and often vexatious character. Nothing is permitted to escape taxation, and duplicated taxes on the same thing are frequent. In Argentina these burdens bear heavily upon the labouring classes, and in years of depression they send away by thousands immigrants unable to meet the high costs of living. For the year 1900 the total expenditures of the national government, 14 provincial governments, and 16 principal cities, were estimated to have been $208,811,925 paper, which is equivalent to $91,877,247 gold, or (at $5.04 per pound stg.) to £18,229,612, 10s. The population that year was estimated to be 4,794,149, from which it is seen that the annual costs of government were no less than £3,16s. for each man, woman, and child in the republic. About 71% of this charge was on account of national expenditures, and 29% provincial and municipal expenditures. Had the expenses of all the small towns and rural communities been included, the total would be in excess of $20 gold, or £4, per capita.

In 1889 the public debt of the republic amounted to about £24,000,000, but the financial difficulties which immediately followed that year, and the continuance of excessive expenditures, forced the debt up to approximately £128,000,000 during the next ten years. In the year 1905 the outstanding and authorized debt of the republic was as follows:—

The paper currency forms an important part of the internal debt, and has been a fruitful source of trouble to the country. Few countries have suffered more from a depreciated currency than Argentina. During the era of so-called “prosperity” between 1881 and 1890 an enormous amount of bank notes were issued under various authorizations, especially that of the “free banking law” of 1887. During this period the bank-note circulation was increased to $161,700,000, and two mortgage banks—the National Hypothecary Bank and the Provincial Mortgage Bank (of Buenos Aires)—flooded the country with $509,000,000 of cedulas (hypothecary bonds). When the crash came and the national treasury was found to be without resources to meet current expenses, further issues of $110,000,000 in currency were made. The free-banking law which permitted the issue of notes by provincial banks was primarily responsible for this situation. Under the provisions of this law the provinces were authorized to borrow specie abroad and deposit the same with the national government as security for their issues. These loans aggregated £27,000,000. The Celman administration, in violation of the trust, then sold the specie and squandered the proceeds, leaving the provincial bank notes without guarantee and value. The national government has since assumed responsibility for all these provincial loans abroad. As on previous occasions, the great depreciation in the value of the currency has led to a repudiation of part of its nominal value. This depreciation reached its maximum in October 1891 ($460.82 paper for $100 gold), and remained between that figure and $264 during the next six years. To check these prejudicial fluctuations and to prevent too great a fall in the price of gold (to repeat a popular misconception), a

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text: Biographies of Scientific Men/Liebig

title: Biographies of Scientific Men/Liebig


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FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012

 * Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

{{SECTION|SEC. 1.|SECTION 1}}. SHORT TITLE.

 * This Act may be cited as the "FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012"

{{SECTION|SEC. 2.|SECTION 2}}. FIVE-YEAR EXTENSION OF FISA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008.

 * (a) .—
 * Section 403(b) of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (Public Law 110–261; 122 Stat. 2474) is amended—
 * (1) in paragraph (1), by striking “December 31, 2012” and inserting “December 31, 2017”; and
 * (2) in paragraph (2) in the material preceding subparagraph (A), by striking “December 31, 2012” and inserting “December 31, 2017”.

 * (b) .—
 * The heading of section 404(b)(1) of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (Public Law 110–261; 122 Stat. 2476) is amended by striking “December 31, 2012” and inserting “December 31, 2017”.

Approved December 30, 2012.

Legislative History

 * CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 157 (2011):
 * Sep. 12, considered and passed House.
 * Dec. 28, considered and passed Senate.
 * Dec. 28, considered and passed Senate.


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148 or knitted, in which case the use of a darning-egg would give it a baggy appearance. Do not trim off the ragged edges. Cut the underlying piece a trifle larger than the hole, but conforming to it in shape and matching it in color and texture. Baste the piece on the paper first, and then lay the hole over it. Or the torn piece may be stretched over an embroidery hoop and the patch basted to it. Run the darning-needle back and forth (Ill.tion [sic] 352), over and under the lapped edges, closely weaving them together, keeping down all the loose ends. Illustration 352 shows the right side of the finished darn, a black thread having been used in the illustration to show the stitches.

STOTING is a process of mending much used by tailors, especially on closely woven or very heavy cloth that does not fray. The first illustration, Illustration 353, shows the cut, and in Illustration 354 is shown the position of the needle and thread in the process of stoting. Use either a thread drawn from the cloth, or a hair to do the stoting.

The part to be mended is basted smoothly over a piece of paper. The needle is inserted about half an inch from the torn edge, and run between the threads of the cloth, across the cut, to half an inch on the opposite side, and drawn through. Reinserting it, run the needle back on a somewhat slanting line and continue until the cut has been closed. Then repeat the same process, running the threads in the opposite direction. When pressed, this mending can hardly be noticed, but stoting can only be done over a clean cut or tear. On material that is not thick enough for the needle to pass between the weave, it must be done on the wrong side as lightly as possible.

MENDING TISSUE, or TAILOR'S TISSUE, as it is sometimes called, is a great convenience in cases of awkward rents or tears where patching would be undesirable. It is a semi-transparent substance, resembling the thin rubber used in dress shields. It melts under a hot iron and acts like a glue, holding the torn fibers together.

A TRIANGULAR TEAR should be mended immediately, before the edges have had a chance to fray. The torn part of the garment should be laid, wrong side up, over an ironing-board. Push the torn edges together, bringing them as nearly as possible to their original position.

Lay a square piece of the mending tissue large enough to completely cover it over the tear and a piece of the cloth over the tissue. Baste the cloth piece in position, but do not let the basting threads run through the mending tissue or they can not be easily drawn out. Then run a hot iron over it all several times until the two pieces and the ragged edges are nicely stuck together. Cut away all superfluous material around the edges. Illustration 355 shows a satisfactory result of this method of mending on the right side of the material.

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Rh A PATCH may also be set in with mendiog tissue in cases where it is undesirable to have any stitches showing. The hole is trimmed to a square or oblong shape, and a piece cut the same shape, but a seam's width wider all around. Lay the garment over an ironing-board, as directed above, and, between the edges of the hole and the lapped edge of the patch lay strips of the mending tissue. Be careful not to have any of the tissue extending beyond the torn edge on the right side, as it will make an ugly mark after being pressed. Illustration 356 shows a hole neatly mended by this method.

A PATCH is generally used for mending flannel or heavy woven underwear, particularly if the garment is too much worn to warrant the time and work necessary for a careful darn.

A FLANNEL PATCH is a piece of the material basted on the wrong side of the worn or torn part and catch-stitched to the garment with small stitches all around the edge. The worn place, or the ragged edge of the hole, is then cut away from the right side, and the edge catch-stitched all around in the same manner. (Ill. 357.)

A HEMMED PATCH is used—unless the hole is so small that it can be neatly darned—for mending material that requires frequent laundering, such as muslin underwear, bedding or household linen. If the material is striped or figured, the patch should be cut so that the lines will match. Pin the patch into position on the underside of the piece to be mended. Crease a seam all around and baste it down. Now cut out the worn part, allowing a narrow seam at the edge. Clip the edge a trifle at each corner, turn in the seam, and baste it down. Then with fine stitches sew the patch down all around on both sides of the material. (Ills. 358 and 359.)

AN OVERHANDED PATCH is used on material that is seldom washed, and where the raw edge on the wrong side is not objectionable. The sewing in this patch is not so noticeable as in the hemmed patch, for it has but one line of stitches. In cutting the patch be sure to match the stripe or figure. The piece should be large enough to cover the hole well when it is basted over it with tailors' tacks. (Directions for tailors' tacks are given on page 85.) When the patch has been basted and cut apart, it will be seen that

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