The ideal editor must be a colossal, composite figure, one to whom no man of whatever age, race or color, is a stranger; one whose mobility of character and elasticity of temperament expands or contracts as occasion demands, without deflecting in the least from the law of perfect harmony. He must know how to smile encouragement, frown disapproval, or, at an instant's notice bow deferentially and attend with utmost courtesy to wearisome stories of stupid patrons, or listen to the fantastic schemes of radical reformers and, with apparent seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful watch lest the fire-brand agitator commit serious public mischief. The ideal editor of the popular press must be the quintescence of tact; an adroit strategist, a sagacious chief executive, keenly critical, ably judicial, broad, generous, sympathetic, hospitable, aye, charitable, magnanimous, ready to forgive and forget, patient and long-suffering when subjected to the competitive lash of adverse criticism, bearing calumny rather with quiet dignity than stooping to low and vulgar forms of retaliation. BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH, in _Sunday Times Magazine._ NOVEMBER 28. CALIFORNIA TO IRELAND. Great! Erect! Majestic! Free! Thrilled with life from sea to sea. See the Motherland uphold To the sky her Green and Gold. LAURENCE BRANNICK. NOVEMBER 29. And the books! Without final data at hand, I incline to believe that by the time the war came along to give us a new text, California had already, in a dozen years, doubled the volume of American literature. In the same way, of course, that it was doubled again--for our war literature was not mostly written upon the battle-field. In half a century this current has not ceased. It is a lean month even now which does not see, somewhere, some sort of book about California. It is certain that as much literature (using the word as it is used) has been written of California as of all the other states together. This means, of course, only matter in which the State is an essential, not an incident. CHARLES F. LUMMIS, in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West, June_, 1902. NOVEMBER 30. By a queer sequence of circumstances, the essays, begun in the _Lark_, were continued in the _Queen_, and, if you have read these two papers, you will know that one magazine is as remote in character from the other as San Francisco is from London. But each has happened to fare far afield in search of readers, and between them I may have converted a few to my optimistic view of every-day incident. To educate the British Matron and Young Person was, perhaps, no more difficult than to open the eyes of the California Native Son. The fogs that fall over the Thames are not very different to the mists that drive in through the Golden Gate, after all! GELETT BURGESS, in _The Romance of the Commonplace._ DECEMBER 1.