The latest popular advertising exploit in which the publishing genius is expend

Editions

ing its powers, is the preparaAutographed tion of autographed editions of books whose large-figured sales can, with security, be anticipated. There has always been a peculiar fascination in the aspect of the signed book and there are still enough autograph collectors in the world to make the popular author's signature salable. Last year the publishers of "Lady Rose's Daughter" issued a limited autographed edition of 350 copies. It was exhausted in two days. "The Marriage of William Ashe" appeared in a two-volumed edition of 972 signed copies and lasted ten days. This was not so quick, it is true, but we doubt not that had there been 2000 of the sets they would nevertheless have disappeared within a reasonable length of time. Once it was an honor to be presented with an autographed book, it being generally given by the author as a mark of personal friendship, but now conditions of friendship are scarcely required, since money can procure the same thing, in effect at least. There is a phase of the question that might be viewed with sentiment, but in the conflict between sentiment and dollars it is the fashion of the day for the dollars to win.

John Knox QuatroCentenary

* * *

This is a year of anniversaries. Since it is in vogue to remember the birthdays of all the world's great men, if it chances that their birthdays are known, it keeps one busy with the contemplation of the subject, lest someone be neglected. We have, during the present twelve months, to recall, among others, John Knox, the hero of the English Reformation, the four hundredth anniversary of whose birth falls in the present year. Knox was indeed a character not only of force but of picturesqueness, and whenever we think of him we seem to see him in imagination denouncing the lightsome Queen of the Scots. It is W. M. Taylor, who in his "Life of John Knox" says,

Without Knox, humanly speaking, the Reformation would not have been at all, or at least would not have been what it actually became.

.. He was a true patriot and ever willing to sacrifice himself in the welfare of his country. And he was raised to the white heat

Pennsylvania-Germans in Fiction

The Pennsylvania Germans are in favor with the novelists. Since "Tillie: a Mennonite Maid" enjoyed so large a popularity and one so profitable to the author, the field has been invaded by numerous other writers to whom the last-named success, in particular, doubtless appealed. The newest of these aspiring conquerors is Professor L. T. Pattee, whose "House of the Black Ring" promises to place this commonly-regarded stolid and unimaginative people in a new light by viewing them under the influence of the superstitions that grow up among them.

was an actress and later a journalist, and in the latter capacity she met Mr. Charles Norris Williamson, editor of "Black and White," the English paper which he founded. The Williamsons are very fond of traveling, and Mr. Williamson's skill in running an automobile made possible the tour out of which grew "The Lightning Conductor." The new story, "The Princess Passes," is again a tale of travel and again many of the episodes centre. about the automobile.

A New Novelist Appears

A. M. WILLIAMSON
Author of The Princess Passes." Etc.

Walter S. Cramp, author of "Psyche," is a Philadelphian by birth and a shipbuilder by inheritance and training, his father and uncles comprising the well-known Philadelphia ship-building firm. Within the past few years, however, Mr. Cramp has had time and opportunity for travel and, being very desirous of studying in detail the history of Rome, ancient, mediæval and modern, he has lately been living in Italy and the northern part of Africa. He has devoted especial attention to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, and out of this study has grown

The Difficulties

of Uncut Pages

The inconveniences of uncut leaves in books and magazines are leading to indignant protests in the columns of some of the English papers. We can only trust that America will take up the matter in serious spirit, so that the faults of the absurd practice will be forcibly presented to the publishers and a general complaint on the part of the public may ensue. We do not need to dwell upon the ordinary troubles caused by uncut leaves. We are all familiar with the woman reader in the street-car, who, in just the most interesting portion of a story has to pause and fumble for a hairpin, or, lacking the proper kind, wire hairpins being somewhat out of date, has to scramble about in a hand satchel for a visiting card in order to ruin it. and perhaps the book as well, in an effort to part the leaves. Your thoughtful reader may have sufficient foresight to arm himself or herself with a small bookmarker, and men can call into service a pocket-knife, but how much pleasanter to

Jules Verne

Jules Verne, the famous writer of boys' tales, died at his home, in Amiens, France, on March 24. As one paper The death of puts it, this narrator of marvelous tales divides honors with but one thing in Amiens and that is the Cathedral, the pictures of which are to be found, side by side with those of the author in all the shop windows.

M. Verne was no stylist; the French Academy refused to elect him to membership because his characters were puppets and he lacked the refinements of literature in all his work. But the many boys, as well as the many grown persons, who

have read his stories care little for this. He had a field and he worked it to advantage, and "Around the World in Eighty Days," "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "From the Earth to the Moon" have furnished hours and hours of amusement and dreams for the countless number of young brains that have fed so avidiously upon them. M. Verne's ingenuity, his imagination, the vigor with which he set forth his tales and the sense of realism with which he endowed them, compensated for the rhetorical failings, and who shall say that these wonder stories have not, now and then, proved inspiration to the embryonic scientist?

A PrizeFighter Hero

* * *

"The Game," Mr. Jack London's new story, now running in the "Metropolitan" and to be published in book form some time in June, is another of those frank portrayals of Mr. London's exaltation of the brute in man. The study presents a young fellow struggling for the sake of the girl that he loves, against the compelling fascination of the Ring, in which he has won success. In the first part of the tale, the only part that has appeared so far, the reader is almost won to the point of conviction by the author's forceful plea, put into the mouth of the hero, in favor of those qualities of health and vigor which the enthusiast claims are developed by the generally abhorred profession of the prize fighter.

"I tell you," says Joe, "it is good, and healthy, too. Look at me. I have to live clean to be in condition like this. I live cleaner than anybody you know-baths, rub-downs, exercise, regular hours, good food and no makin' a pig of myself, no drinking, no smoking, nothing that'll hurt me. Why, I live cleaner than you, Genevieve-I don't mean soap and water, but look here. Feel this."

He pressed the ends of her fingers into his hard arm-muscles until she winced from the hurt.

"Hard all over, like that," he went on. "Now that's what I call clean. Every bit of flesh an' blood an' muscle is clean right down to the bones-an' they're clean, too. No soap an' water only on the skin, but clean all the way in. I tell you, it feels clean. It knows it's clean itself. When I wake up in the morning, an' go to work, every drop of blood and bit of meat is shouting right out that it is clean."

Mr. London can do this sort of thing well, and "The Game" promises to be one of his most masterly bits of work.

From a drawing by Stuart Boyd

In the "London Bookman