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Show PROSE AM) POETRY. : Tha Tast Number of Manuscripts of Struggling Authors Submitted to the Century Magazine. SOME OP THE WORLD'S LEATHER. Stanley's Remedy for Slavery-Making a Speech Conkling's Generosity. Daring the past two years from 8,300 to 9,000 manuscripts were annually sub-Kitted sub-Kitted to The Century Magazine for publication. This is an increase over previous years, and does not iucludo the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of propositions propo-sitions submitted with regard to articles. arti-cles. As there has been an increase in . tho number of periodicals published in America of late years, and as the newspapers news-papers are publishing more contributions than ever by writers not on the regular Btaff, it is evident that there has been an increase in literary activity at least in proportion to the increase in population. Now out of 9,000 manuscripts a year The Century can only possibly print 400 or less. It follows that editing a maga- ' sine in not unlike walking into a garden of flowers and gathering a single bou-qubt.' bou-qubt.' In other words, not to accept an article, a story, a poem, is not necMsari- , ly to "reject" it. There may be weeds in tho garden there must bo weeds in ' the garden but the fact that a particular particu-lar blossom is not gathered into the monthly bouquet does not prove that the editor regarded the blossom as a weed, and therefore passed it by. It would be impossible to sweep all ' the flowers into a single handful. The "rejected" or "declined" are naturally prone to gibe at sympathetic or apologetic apolo-getic words from editorial sources, so we present the above simile with considerable consid-erable diffidence. There is truth in it, nevertheless! And it would probably be i much easier for editors to make up a i number of bouquets from tho flowers at their disposal than to gather the single ope for which alone they have room. |