Life — April 2, 1898 — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

> LIFE: will save four hundred and fifteen thousand dollars a year on sig- natures alone, What a pity that, through their vanity, our triple- plate writers should have killed the goose that laid such Klon- dikean eggs ! Late gossip from London tells us that Mr, Henry James is about to make a tour of the world. We are assured that this famous author is in the best of health, hence his trip isnot, as we had at first feared, in search of vigor. It is more than likely that this most conscientious of our authors is off in search of a word. . . . ICHARD LEGALLIENNE’S new volume of poems, attractively named ‘If I Were Fitzsimmons,” will be limited to an edition of one copy, to be publicly presented, with due ceremony, by Sir Walter Besant to the author himself, We cannot vouch for the truth of the recently made to us, that Mr. Marion Crawford is prostrated by the fact that of the twelve hundred volumes put forth by the publishers of the United States last autumn, he was himself the author of but half of them, In any event, we hope it is not true. Mr, Crawford has done much for the world, not only from the fictional, but from the sociol ral point of view, He has given work to the unemployed in great measure, and we should be sorry to hear, for more reasons than one, that anything was amiss with him. After all, it is no disg: that one should have written no more than six hundred volumes in asingle year. In the whole history of letters there have been few authors who have produced as many as two books a day, and we trust that Mr, Crawford, noting this fact, will not refuse to be comforted. atemeut . . * OUNG authors who meet with success are always interesting to the reading public. It gives us pleas- ure, therefore, to be able to record the fact that Mr. Stephen Crane never writes without a chameleon upon his desk. Ie first maps out his story, writes it simply, and then, with the aid of the chameleon, puts in his adjec- tives. [It is a good plan, and we recommend it to the large number of writers of colorless fiction who are supplying us with our literary provender to-day. Mr. Crane feeds his cha- meleon on pigments which he mixes himself, and which, we are told, the amusing little creature devours with avidity, In this connection we wish to say that we have reason to believe that Mr. Crane has declined the offer of a certain “ colored-cartoon ” paper in New York to accept the position of Painter-in-Chiet on its staff. We are also able todeny emphat ly that this talented writer has accepted an offer from Major Pond of ten thousand dollars a week to give a series of readings in the South before exclusively colored audiences. v ess of young Mr. Tennyson's biography of his illus- trious parent has, we understand, inspired the Dickens famil embark on new enterprises. We have heard much of late about Dickens from his various children, but nothing that has as yet appeared will compare, we are sure, with the new book prop- erly entitled “ Pop!” which is soon to appear in one of our most popular magazines. * * * R. BUNSEY, the talented publishe not issue more than seven new weekl coming year, and his monthly maga limited to eighteen, for a quarter, sample copies, for which ther ovelist, will s during the * ines will be His half-cent books, or two are going well—particularly the isagreatdemand. The only new are the seven- hakespeare, and the new edition of Milton, carefully edited by his staff, which will be placed on the market, bound in cloth, at the extremely low price of three for a ceut, To make people laugh is always a worthy ambition, and we congratulate Mr. Bunsey upon his success. He is not a Mark Twain, of course. Nobody but Mark Twain is, Bat Grimaldi—the lameuted—must be turning over in his grave like au electric fan as his spirit thinks of Mr. Bunsey’s contributions to a laughter-loving world, The Story on a Watteau Fan. HE was the fairest little shepherdess in the world—1 shoutd say out of the world, for the rose-tinted scene in which she stood could no more exist than her own ideal lovelin or the impossible fower-decked sheep she was supposed to tend. From the top of her beribboned crook to the tip of her tiny slipper she represented an artist's gay fantasy, lighted with just one touch of human longing in her lovely cyes. I did not wonder at her companion’s devotion as, side by side, they stood in their picture-world of light and color, A fitting mate, this shepherd, garbed in a fashion whose beauty yielded no point to mere utility The first sound I heard was the music of a lute, then the