Life — April 18, 1907 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

If your engine trouble has its source in ignition, there’s one sure remedy, A WITHERBEE BATTERY Whether your engine is an automobile or marine type, so long asit requires a spark for ignition, a Witherbee Battery is absolutely essen- tial. You cannot get the maximum power, the maximum service, the smooth running qualities and the absence of vibration with any gaso- line motor unless its ignition is perfect. ‘A high-priced engine with poor ignition gives you less power and service than a cheap engine with perfect ignition. The Witherbee Battery Supplies Perfect Ignition Write for Booklet No. 11; it tells of ignition troubles, the causes and remedies. It's free, and. valuable to every owner of & mutor WITHERBEE IGNITER COMPANY 541 WEST 43d STREET, NEW YORK CITY Branches: Chicago, 1426 Michigan Ave. Baltimore, 510 Costinental Bldg. Detroit, 260 Jeferion Ave. WANTED-—One or two persons in each town able to present a subscription proposition of unusual merit to their immediate| friends. A very few names bring handsome returns. Full information and particulars upon application to LIFE, 17 West 3lst Street, New York Sys Sp a he eee Zoo 2 OA v J u an aversion to dictation. Others may pour forth prose to a stenographer—“nobody yet, of course, ever dictated lilting verse but not she. “Rewriting, revising, amend- ing and editing—at these she is untiring; but all the work must be done by herself and in longhand.”” * * * IESE slanderous remarks are the more insidious because they are couched in terms of apparent praise. We are prepared to hurl them back to their author, who doubtless wrote them tongue in cheek, pen in hand. “TI can’t think where people get these storics, or why they should care to fabricate them,” said Miss W s a matter of fact, I always dic- tate work to a stenographer, both prose and ‘lilting verse.’ I never rewrite, revise, amend or edit anything. Not from choice, you understand, but simply because what- ever I can do I can do best at first impulse, andany revision takes out whatever of good may have been in the original draft. I have just finished a novelette which I dictated at the rate of 8,000 words per day. I gave it no revision or amendments, and it is pro- nounced by a competent editor to be the best work I have ever done.” After this, we are prepared to wager that Miss Wells can dictate a small thing, like a sonnet, while doing her sewing. * * * HY live laborious days in the throes of creation when a little spontaneous, talk to your stenographer will do? Why “play the sedulous ape,” @ Ja Stevenson, only to have your lucubration smell of the lamp in these days of the electric light? Renan, waiting an hour for the right word; Henry James, toiling terribly to achieve a splendid obscurity; Hearn and Hewlett tossing away their first rough drafts, to be- gin all over again; Zola, with his pitiful, paltry 500 words a day. How absurd they all seem. Guy Boothby, beloved of the British populace, knew how to turn the trick. In an easy chair, phonograph in hand, fiction- making became a pastime. We have be- fore us at this moment a photograph of Mr. Boothby in his “study.” It is a striking picture of modern literary achievement, and we have attached thereto a long-for- gotten paragraph, quite out of tune with our times, from the works of one Matthew Ameld: ‘Style is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.” HIE recent death of Ferdinand Brune- titre has led some of the literary re- viewers to express the opinion that the Revue des Deux Mondes, of which he was the editor, is the greatest periodical of its kind in the world. It did not, however, comicbooks.com