Show AUTHORS ANDBOOKS Stockton Divided Between City and Country Life + WALL STREET AND POEMS 4 STEDJtIAN HAS SUCCESSFULLY COMBINED THE TWO t The Story of Neufelds Twelveyear Captivity at Khartoum Survived Sufferings That Few Have Endured En-dured A New Novel By the Author Au-thor of Aylwin Special Corresponoence New York Feb 18Ir Frank R Stockton is again making a kind of transient home in this city as lie is apt to do for two or three months each winter He is devoted to a country life and in his commodious home at Convent Con-vent Station near Morristown N J he has all the interior comfort and wide pleasant outlook that a man could require re-quire to keep him in the temper to write cheerful and humorous stories But Mr Stockton is no recluse he likes company and social diversion and moreover he was born in Philadelphia and through his lioyhood and his early manhood lived pretty constantly in the city so a term of strict city life now and then remains rather a necessity with him He is far from losing all connections with It even when he is at his country home for it is only the ordinary or-dinary daily journey of the suburbaner I away But he cannot then so certainly Tje counted on to appear at social functions func-tions and the various literary entertainments I enter-tainments and gatherings for which he is always in request When he is staying stay-ing in ar vI eq is for example one of I the most faithful of the members of th < > Authors club appearing at the fortnightly social meetings about as I unfailingly as anyone but after he las got back home there must be come rather special occasion to insure his I presence I once heard of his saying that the city is no place in which to find stories and when you think of it the small part that the city and strict city life have in his stories is quite remarkable re-markable They are for the most Dart of the suburbs the country and the sea There Is no really good portrait of Mr I Stockton that I have ever seen Observed Ob-served neat by his living face has a j p tullar and positive interest there fe distinct character in it and extremes extreme-s But much of this gets lost I in the pictures IN It is perhaps not generally suspected that the recent boom in Wall street has had a direct effect upon literature A f = w evenings ago a friend of Edmund Ed-mund Clarence Stedmans explained his absence from an entertainment at which he was expected by saying that since the great tear of business in Wall street came on Mr Stedman went home so completely tired out at night that he had to deny himself evening diversions diver-sions For upward of thirty years nOir nO-ir Stedman has been in active business i busi-ness in Wail street as a broker keeping keep-ing office hours and following the turns of the market with the scrupulousness of any other business He has had the fortune of his classnow a delightful How of prosperity and now a grizzling wrinkling turn of adversity The latest lat-est tide apparently is prosperous and for myself I hope there will be no departure de-parture from that for the amiable poet henceforward to the end On leaving college fort five years ago Mr Sted man became editor of a newsnaner in Norwich Conn Later he conducted ant a-nt > v saaper at Winsted in the same state Then he made trial of fortune as an author in New York The venture ven-ture ended as such ventures usually end by the adventurers settling down to regular work on some newspaper Mr Stedman was an editorial writer for a time and then through the first three years of the civil war a correspondent I corre-spondent in the Held Finding little satisfaction for genuine literary asuir ations in all this he finally took up his present calling as one that promised prom-ised a comfortable and possibly a generous gen-erous livelihood because of the shortness short-ness of the stock brokers business day fair leisure for literary work From calculations of this sortand they have been made by many unother literary man beside Mr Stedman there is apt to follow some disaoDOint I inent Business in its occupation and exhaustion of the mind if not of the I hands so inevitably outruns the stated business hours that the oreallotment I for writing and study is never fully and often scarcely at all realized Mr Ste man I have no doubt has found It so But he has no just reason to I feel otherwise than cheerful when he makes review of what he has been able I to accomplish as an author since he went into Wall street Beside producing produc-Ing the larger and perhaps more notable not-able part of his poetry he has produced three of the perhaps ten or a dozen really distinguished books in literary criticism by Americans writers and in addition he has done some large and important tasks as an editor of volumes and series of volumes Mr Stedmans present home as I think I may have mentioned in this orespondence is at Bronxville a nearby suburb where he has for neighbors neigh-bors Mr Will H Lowe and other artists and authors It is not so far out but that he is often seen at the Centurv and Authors clubs and various literary liter-ary and social gatherings He is a small man with an abundance of now almost white hair and beard a pair of lively black or at least very dark eyes and a fairly youthful lightness of step and movement I have just been accorded as a special spe-cial favor a glimpse into the manuscript manu-script of Charles Neufelds story of his twelve years horrible captivity at Om durman Neufeld it will be remembered remember-ed is the GermanEnglishman who was set free from the khalifas fetters and prison last September by Kitcheners final overthrow of the dervishes and capture of Omdurman or Khartoum Within a week of his getting back fb Cairo after being set at liberty he began be-gan to dictate the narrative of his twelve years of suffering and this is the story I have just read The arrangements ar-rangements for its publication in this country are I think not yet fully completed com-pleted but it will undoubtedly be putout put-out in book form both here and in England some time this spring If there were any room to doubt the fait one would find it impossible to believe that there still survived in the world a people who had the disposition and the power to practice upon a man through so long a period such barbarities barbari-ties as Neufeld suffered He was not simply confined the beastliest of prisons pris-ons but part of the time he Was chained chain-ed and all of the time he was fettered there and the thing continued as I have said for twelve years When Neu feld was captured by the followers of the mahdi In the spring of 1SS7 he had gone south from Cairo on a private trading expedition But he had pre I > n t Ii Y viously been in the service til the British Brit-ish and he chanced to have on his person per-son at the moment a recent and somewhat some-what equivocal letter from the British general Stevenson His capturers therefore believed or affected to believe I be-lieve there Is as Iremember the record rec-ord some question of their entire honesty hon-esty In this that he was a British agent and It was on this theory that they sought to justify their severity with him He had numerous companions com-panions in his confinement and torments I tor-ments most of them held like himself on political accounts Many of them were important men from native tribes that had > acted with the British and had been left to the mercy df the dervishes der-vishes when the British withdrew from the Soudan There have been remarkable feats of I production among the writers of romantic ro-mantic stories but given a certain facility I fa-cility of invention and not too much care for form and expression and one I can always see in a way how the thing is done There is no occasion to stop and gather information once you have I got your start you slant as Stevenson Steven-son used to call it the thing runs on I and it becomes merely a question of how fast you can drive your pen or If you dictate how fast your amanuensis I can take you Much more amazing than any of these is the achievement of the man who produces descriptive I biographical and historical works and I even dictionaries at the rate of a volume vol-ume of 100000 words in the course of a few weeks Naturally the learned master mas-ter of this miraculous swiftness is a ot1 ss I Chicago man In the last six or seven years he has produced twentyseven volumesfour to five of them dictionaries I diction-aries a number of them histories none of them books that could be written straightaway without stopping to gather I gath-er materialand in addition has made numerous translations and has written writ-ten numerous short stories special articles ar-ticles editorials and reviews The name of the wonder Is C M Stevans one that must by now be very well known to quite a large body of readers as it is well known to various publishers and editors here and in Chicago Mr Stevans was for a number of years a teacher then he became an editor and literary manager and complied com-plied a number of miscellaneous works not Included in the count given above An intimate friend of his gave me the other day a very interesting account of some of the most extraordinary of his performances His first piece of rapid writing said this friend was Uncle Jeremiah Jere-miah at the Worlds Fair 60000 words He did the fair during the wayor part of itand wrote at night He was three weeks getting it up handing his copy to the printers each day Half a million mil-lion copies of this book have been sold but it was not at all in Mr Stevens general line and he did not publish it over his own name but over the penname pen-name Quondam Its sequel Uncle Jeremiah m the South he wrote in conjunction con-junction with his wife a newspaperwoman newspaper-woman when they were on their wedding wed-ding journey They traveled down the Mississippi to New Orleans and up the coast to New York visiting all the large towns and writing the 65000 words which the book contains in about five weeks During the last presidential campaign Mr Stevans got up six campaign t cam-paign books inside of two months I working from 7 oclock every morning until 1 or 2 at night He hasnt slept since in consequence however His History of Spain in America SOOOO words he wrote in six weuks no clipping clip-ping oToopymg His Buccaneers 000 wordstook seven weeks of research and writingthis too being entirely original and covering all that has been recorded about these holy terrors of the deep But his greatest feats have been done on the work which he has in hand at the present moment History of the I World In this work he frequently dictates dic-tates 12000 words in a day keeping two I expert stenographers busy I It is scarcely a surprise to learn that i Mr WattsDunton having got so favorable fav-orable a reception for his novel Ayl I win is now bringing into shape for publication another ancient tale of his Authors may not be very keen businessmen I business-men but it must be a very simpleminded I simple-minded author indeed who has not learned by now that the first tide of a I distinct literary success is a perfectly I I reliable element so long as it is in full I 1I0wfor floating early constructions of I imperfect buoyancy A well known American novelist once said to a literary 1 I lit-erary youth who was striving hard but had still to positively arrive Yes save your old manuscripts one can I never tell when they will come in And this I should guess had come to be the general working rule with authors I at least with the authors of fiction But the authors havent discovered the value of it wholly by their own cleverness clever-ness It is not infrequent to hear publishers I pub-lishers speak disparagingly and even with a kind of high moral disdain of a novelist who having put out a good and highly popular work follows it with one not good and almost beyond the strength of his newly won popularity popular-ity to sustain But it is after all the publishers themselves who provoke and encourage this sort of proceeding They bid against each other so fiercely for the sake of getting on their list what seems to be a telling name that the author in competition has to be a very extraordinary man not to empty his desk of about every old thing it contains con-tains So as I say it is in nowise surprising sur-prising that under the quickening influence in-fluence of the success of Aylwin Mr AVattsDunton has discovered that he has by him another fine novel and has resolved that the public shall be kept out of it no longer I I E C MARTIX I |