Show a rs t 0 I New York Oct 26The literary event of the moment is the Cyrano de I Bergerne boom France where it has its fountain head is some distance I orr and the boom has had to have a little time to get across the Atlantic I but 1t Is her h full tide at last There were those who said it would never I reach us arguing that Parisian enthll slasm remained for the most part exclusively I ex-clusively Parisian and died about I where they were born But these are non disproved prophets Richard Mansfield i dli tedth r field played the play to a crowded I house the first nightabout three weeks agoand has been playing It to crowded houses ever since And the dramatic critics while writIng In many Instances from a manifest predisposition predisposi-tion to look coldly em a play that Paris had gone wild over have been forced onp and all to say that Mr iIansfields presentation marled an epoch and that the play as well as the playing was extraordinary 1eanwhileand this is still more of a wonder for as a thing for private reading a play as a rule sells but meagerlythe American publishers of the play are finding It a rare commodity There are two English versions on the market one In verse by Gladys Thomas who is ROStand the authors sisterInlaw assisted by Mary F Gulllemard and one in prOSe by Miss Gertrude Hall The former Is made in England and the American publisher of 1t found his first importation importa-tion taken up almost before it landed and before a second could be obtained he had n shop full of orders The publishers pub-lishers of Miss Halls version have had a similar felicity of distressorders and orders far ahead of the goods wherewith where-with to fill them So far as the publishers and booksellers book-sellers arc concerned the whole business busi-ness Is a surprise They foresaw nothing noth-ing like It In the natural conservatism of their temperaments they argued Its only a play and a French play a that and there has been so much talk about it that people over here are sick of the very name The first order ot one of the largest book jobbers in the country was for but fie copies Shortly Short-ly however he telegraphed for 250 copies and the net day for 250 more All this Is good solid inspiration for the auUlorfor he has his share even In the American publications and pre sentationand we are not surprised to learn that he is now deep In the composition com-position of two new plays Whoever knows Cy Varman whether wheth-er in person or by his writings will wish well to the new book The Story of the Railroad which he has just I I published through the ApJletons It Is his third book two collections of railroad rail-road stories having been Dubllshed previously by the Scribners Though to I mak the record strict there is still an earlier book of Warmansa curiously chaotic but vivid and interesting Life of Creede Jim Creede the Indian hunter adventurer and prospector just the hero to appeal to rWarman This book was printed at the authors expense 1 ex-pense and in some measure circulated but it was never really published Two or three of the better chapters afterwards after-wards found separate publication in periodicals The element of Interest in them was the same as In Warmans later worknamely the manifestation of a writer whom even the feeling of aDen a-Den in the hand could not distract from being perfectly himself It Is often clear that 4 pen Isnt the easiest of implements to Warman but with I all its occasional unwieldiness it can never culte throw him out from still I being Varman and Varman whether in his writings or out of them is always I al-ways a man you like Just now he Is a little out of the line of meeting for he Is living up at London Ontario lIe finds it friendly to work UD there and inexpensive and he is not above either of these considerations Four or five years ago the second was perhaps less important to him than It Is now for he was then receiving a royalty of 10 a day on his song Sweet Marie But popular songs are good only while they I laSt and Sweet Marie ig now less fruitful to either Warman who sup I plied the words only or the man who wrote the music It was at the time when Marie was most generous that Warman made a long tour of Europe and the east On his return he settled set-tled In Washington and it was from there that he removed into the Dominion Do-minion Like all other men who do a truly original thing Varman has set a fashion fash-Ion Every few months there turns up here in rep York some old locomotive engineer from the Rockies who knew Cy rarman out thar when he was little moren a kid and who wants to do you some poems and stories in the War man mannerwith of course certain manifestly needed Improvements Most of these followers seem to think that the secret of It all lies In the external I adventure or experience but anyone who knows Varman must realize that I it Is primarily in the man He gives I you as much diversion in a private talk or a hurried personal letter as In his I pUblished writings and he has had just as diverting experiences in the more familiar parts or America and Europe the parts where nothing new ordinarily ordi-narily haDJensas on the frontier The poet laureate of England Mr Austin is getting called rather smartly to account for having said the other day In a public address that poets asa as-a rule have but small erudition Nevertheless there Is fall ground for the statement and Mr Austin might even have gone farther and said that authors In general except those who write on learned subjects are as a rule men of small erudition Of course common superstition confuses writing I with 1 learning and regards anyone who writes an article or book as necessarily necessar-ily learned but no one knows better than the writers themselves how much this ingenious apprehension of them flatters them Few writers have read I more widely and more passionatelY than Mr Andrew Lang he is one of I those who seem to know something oC about every subject yet even he has disclaimed that he was a scholar He knows he has said what a scholar is and no character more holds his admiration admi-ration but it is one to which he himself = him-self be adds could never attain I am sure that no less would be the confession confes-sion oC ninetenths of the wellknown writers of the day if they should express ex-press themselves on the sUbject I know that some of them find that the reading habit is something or an obstruction ob-struction to them in their writing They often have quite a fight of it to put by the diversIon of reading the book that some other man has written and buckle down and write their own I havel known writers who did not dare open a book In the morning lest it would so intensify a certain reluctance which I they had always to contend against on I first turning to their writing as to knock them out of their whole das work Herbert E Hamblen the author of On Many Seas and The General Managers Story 15 out with a npw booka book of adventure for boys This makes the third volume within two or three years from a man who four years ao had probably not the least thought of becoming an author He was faithfully running a steam engine in the upper part of the city but he found opportunity in the intervals of his work to tell a lot of good stories drawn for I the most part from his own experience experi-ence and among the men who heard these stories was one who recognized in I them a wealth of literary material This was Mr Booth now of the publishing pub-lishing house of MacMillan Co but I then in charge of a charity library upon up-on the east side where Hamblen came often to tall with him One day Mr Booth said Why do you waste your I time telling these stories to me Go home and write them out and they I may make you a fortune A few days later Hamblen presented himself under a load of manuscript and such manu scriptno capitals no punctuation no order simply a wild torrent caught by I the pen as It tumbled through the authors au-thors mind Mr Booth who had literary liter-ary craft took the mass In hand and painfully went over the whole whipping whip-ping it into shape but carefully conserving con-serving at the same time all its individuality Indi-viduality and freshness This done he urged the manuscript on the MacMil lane for publication They at once recognized rec-ognized the exceptional interest of it and the manuscript went to the printers print-ers And thus It was that the popular book On Many Seas got written and publshed The General Managers StOry followed soon after written In much the same way But since It vas published Mr Hlmblen has taken a little more definitely to literature and lis writing now more or less for periodicals periodi-cals He still tends his steam engine though and has not made the mistake oC supposing that success in one or two literary ventures Insures a writer a living liv-ing by his pen 1 A literary success or two Indeedas I have taken occasion to say in this correspondence beforeIs a very insecure Inse-cure basis on which to rear a purpose of devotIng ones self wholly to literature liter-ature Only a day Or two ago r was talkln with a Titer who has had Jubllshed within the last Swo years in three of the most important magazines and has published a book of short stories that has had the highest high-est praise from the most influential or reviewers and he told me that he had not sold one stOry In nearly a rear that everything he had written in the last 10 or 12 months had been as he phrased It turned down Some authors contend that this Is a I hardship peculiar to authorshIP In America but that Is altogether a mistake mis-take The same thing happens In Eng land I have been told by a man who certainly is not misinformed that within the last year or two an English writer of the first eminence so far as the quality of his work is concerned and not a new man either had addressed ad-dressed envelopes at the merest pittance pit-tance of a price per thousand to get bread for himself and his family To the struggling young author It must seem that Mr Frank Stockton has reached about as serene and bounteous boun-teous an attitude as the path of literature litera-ture ever conducts a man to Each morning at 9 or 10 oclock Mr Stockton Stock-ton sits down and begins a slow comfortable com-fortable talk with his stenographer Ho kEEPS it UDDausing now and then to dIscuss a little the aptness ofa word or phrase or to get into another chair or to give his legs an easier crossun til 12 or 1 and there so far as the wodd at large sees the days work ends In the afternoon Mr Stockton goes for a drive or a walk and In the evening he visits or receives his friends Moreover most of the words he has spoken during that three hours easy talk he supposedly sells at not less than u cents apiece for serial publication alonebOok rights are an additional story Could any job be what we call softer No wonder exSenator In glis exclaimed once when Mr Stockton told him that he was at his writing only three or four hours a day You sybarIte sybar-Ite But there is something back or It aU It certainly Isnt as he sits there talking to his stenographer that Mr Stockton makes his story he Is merely giving it then about Its last expression expres-sion The making or it must be done largely In those hours when Mr Stockton Stock-ton calls himself not at work and indeed in-deed you are convinced or this when you see the manhe half shows that he I is making stories any time you encounter encoun-ter him E C MARTIN c |