Adventure, December 3, 1920 — page 160: what you’re looking at

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

‘150 | stories and very few who would vote to drop the stories if we didn’t have to. And if we’re going to have stories at all we have to have a considerable number of them to make it a story magazine, one that can hold its own or better with any of the others. So when it comes to dropping seme of them each issue in order to give more space to the departments you have to do quite a little considering. UST the same, what we in the office are trying to do is to turn out just the kind ' of magazine you readers want. Which is not just philanthropy on our part, but plain busi- ness and hard common sense, though I guess you know, too, that we want to please you just because we want to. If we ceuld get a sufficiently heavy vote from you to be thoroughly representative of the wishes of all of you on whether to drop some steries out of each issue and take more space for the departments, we’d certainly adopt the course indicated by that vote. But there’s one factor that makes me doubt the fairness of that vete. Maybe I’m wrong, but I have a hunch that if a man is a department fan at all he’s likely to be a very rabid one; it gets him where he lives. While if he’s a story fan, he may like the stories better than those of any other magazine, yet isn’t so likely to get “het up” about it. That is, the department fan is mere likely to take the trouble to send in his vote than is the story fan. There is also the point that many readers never write to any magazine about anything, though I’ll tell the world there are fewer of them on our maga- zine than on any other I know. These, though they might have strong preferences, would not be heard from or represented in the voting. I’d like to have a full vote from you. Or even a fairly full one. Maybe later we can print a blank form in the magazine that can be torn out and mailed in. Then we’d have a pretty good idea as to whether to cut down on stories and enlarge on departments. Will you be thinking it over? Now for our Texas comrade and the matter of “Ask Adventure” books: Burkburnett, Texas. I would like to make a suggestion in regards to the Camp-Fire of Adventure. I have bought or secured every issue obtainable since volume one, number one, and it is my opinion that ‘‘Camp- Fire” and mostof all the ‘“Ask Adventure’”’ section are the greatest drawing cards you have, not merely from an advertising and circulation point of view but from a matter of service. ..\4 WOULD suggest that you obtain copies of all queries written in to the different departments ether with the replies and what further inform- ation was vouchsafed by the editor. Have them bound with convenient references and indexed and sold at nominal price. They could either be put ; Adventure up in the form of pamphlets or separate countings or conditions or bound together in one large volume. To publish each and every one would of course cause a great amount of repetition and unnecessary printing besides robbing the volume of correctness and making the whole most uninteresting. This however, could be done away with by a little in- telligent editing. You know that nearly every question asked can be and possibly has been an- swered in three or four different ways, by collecting all together it would be of more service to the readers and also relieve the editors from covering the some ground over and over again. My idea would be to gather all information queries, etc., in one volume which could be bound well and cheaply. Then if necessary have separ- ate pamphlets printed covering each country, sec- tion, or condition stich as Eastern U. S., Western U. S., Gold mining, trapping, etc. Titles to be published in “Camp-Fire.”’ HOSE desiring information on a given subject could look up title in ‘‘Camp-Fire,” send for whichever seem to apply and then, if further in- formation is desired, could write in to editor. This would enable a man to get all information at once, give him a chance to look over other opportunities he perhaps.hasn’t thought of and would eliminate over half your correspondence. The whole volume would be for those who do not know just what they want or are merely curious and interested in such mafters. I believe it would be well to enlarge “Ask Ad- venture” even at the expense of a story or two. Nine-tenths of the readers, I think, turn to this before looking at the rest of the book. Stories can be had anywhere, but this is something new and interesting —C. P. THoMAs. FOLLOWING Camp-Fire custom, A. W. Calliseg stands up and introduces himself on the occasion of his first story ih our maga- zine: Rosebank, Staten Island, N. Y. ~ It is hard to write about oneseli—and then the very things one might tell would seem fulsome and simply bore one’s audience. Yet I have had many real story-book adventures by sea and by land, belonged to the alpine club and did a lot of climbing, almost losing my life on a glacier, and a lot of similar stuff. I work it into my stories, but in my case it is truth not fiction. But by far my most interesting experiences have been my friendships—in many instances very close ones—with interesting men. Roosevelt and I were boys together, my father’s country place being at Oyster Bay. I know and have known intimately such men as Kipling, Lord Brice, Dean Howells, Peary, Stanley, von Helmholtz, John Bige- low and his son Poultney, John Hay, Fighting Bob Evans and a host of others. I know Oscar Strauss, Herbert Hoover and George Wickersham; I have known Grover Cleveland, and know Wilson and Tait. MY_PRELIMINARY bow before the Camp- Fire audience is a rather perturbed one, as to most I am an unknown quantity, for although the ~ author of many stories short and long, they have usually been of a nature which unfitted them for this particular magazine. —GOmicoook a(E@)