I do not deny that there are several bright and clever young men and women who have done excellent literary work in the magazines and will undoubtedly live to do even better in the future. I know of two or three who are, according to my way of thinking, better entitled to mention than some of the English authors whom I have named; but the woman whom I have in mind is the one recent acquisition to American letters, who draws truthful pictures from a proper point of view, writes fully as well to-day as she did six years ago, and has, moreover, given us one good novel. I do not know of a single other bright young American writer--and very clever some of them are, too--of whom nearly as much as this can be fairly said. If the names of Hamlin Garland or Edward Bellamy occur to any of my readers it should be remembered that they sprang up by the wayside and are not the product of the rich magazine soil. In bringing my modest preachment to a close, it is with a hope that my readers will pardon any errors of humor into which I may have fallen, or at least find in them a reasonable excuse for my effrontery in offering advice while I am still under ninety-seven years of age. I hope that I have done full justice to the established literary dynasty which began with Robert Bonner and of which Mr. Johnson is now the acknowledged head. And let my last word be one of thankfulness because that dynasty has at least kept our national literature clean--as clean as a whistle or a pipe-stem. AND OTHER TALES THE POETS’ STRIKE. It was just three o’clock on a warm day in August, and the deep silence that prevailed in the Franklin Square Prose and Verse Foundry indicated plainly that something unusual had happened. The great trip-hammer in the basement was silent; there was no whir of machinery on the upper floors; and in the vast, deserted dialect department the busy file was still. It was only in the business office that any signs of life were visible, and there the chiefs of the great establishment were gathered in anxious consultation. Their stern, determined faces indicated that they had taken a stand and had resolved to maintain it, no matter what might happen. From the street came the faint sound of newsboys crying extras. By nightfall the tidings would be carried to the remotest corners of the town. The poets of the Franklin Square Foundry had been ordered out on strike! Well might the heads of the various departments look grave, for never before in the history of the factory had there been a strike in its literary department. Down in Pearl Street the poets were congregated in groups, talking over the situation and casting ominous glances at the great window, through which they could faintly distinguish the forms of the men against whose tyranny they had rebelled.