Show UNDER HIS WIFES NAME How a Discarded Writer Continued to Sell His Stuff A brief marriage notice which Iran I-ran across recently In a Northwestern newspaper reminded me of a very curious curi-ous story said an old reporter who likes to prowl through the exchanges A good many years ago when I was a mere youngster myself one of the star hack writers in the profession was a man named well call him Nawton which Is near enough for the purposes of the yarn He was a phenomenally versatile chap and could do almost anything from a leading editorial to a column of Jokes but he had a most cantakerous disposition and what was worse was a confirmed dipsomaniac He was tolerated for a long lime on account ac-count of his extraordinary usefulness but between his sprees and his quarrels quar-rels he was eventually barred in almost every oillco in the Northwest With that he lost his grip entirely had a brief career ns corner drunkard and then suddenly disappeared from view It was vaguely reported that he had been hurt in a runaway accident and died In some hospital but nobody took the trouble to Inciulre At It afterward turned out he had received spinal injuries in-juries that made him a cripple tom life and at the time he was supposed to be deld was stowed away in a back bedroom bed-room of a cheap boardinghouse in Boston Bos-ton His mind was as active as ever and as he was In desperate straits financially he conceived the ruse of grinding out some copy and getting his wife to sell It under her maiden name as her own production Ho coached her thoroughly for her interviews inter-views with the editors and the scheme worked to a charm To my certain knowledge they lived in that way for eight or nine years and during the entire en-tire time the secret never leaked out Nnwtons infirmities had broken him of the drink habit but he remained a bedridden bed-ridden invalid paralyzed In both legs He used to scribble his matter on rough paper in bed and his wife would make a careful copy after which she would take or mall it to the publishers Ho wrote sketches verses stories essays a little of everything In short and I think his incognito becathe eventually a sort of monomania Anyhow he took extraordinary pains to preserve It and even now live facts of his latter life are known to but very few He died suddenly sud-denly in 1S9J or 1895 and his wlfo went ant West to her parents The publishers publish-ers to whom she had been selling manuscript man-uscript for so long couldnt understand why she suddenly ceased to write and tiled to persuade her to keep on In a modest way she had built up quite a reputation Although there have been plenty of cases of marketing manuscripts manu-scripts through a third party I think this Is the only one on record in which the mask was kept up for any length of time It was Mrs Nawtons wedding notice I read the other day She has married some wealthy business man of Minnesota New Orleans Times Democrat |