A very witty novelist, author of a novel, by the way, said an awfully bright thing to me the other day. He was speaking of the way that certain houses had of sending you a postal saying your manuscript would receive attention. “That,” said he, “keys you up to concert pitch. But there isn’t any concert generally. Your manuscript is refunded: that’s all.” I had to laugh, it was so witty. A well known poet told me the other day that an editor should be a judge of good poetry. Said he, “when an editor cuts two or three lines out of your sonnet to a wild flower or a wild animal, or anything whatever, and retains the distinguishing label, it is like passing off XX milk for the XXX article and the real connoisseur is justly indignant. An honest and self respecting poet wishes to give full measure in his sonnets and it is an injury to his moral character that the editor works when he palms off ten or a dozen for the usual fourteen or fifteen lines of a sonnet.” Poets are not practical. Why didn’t he write that out himself and sell it for a dollar a line instead of giving me the chance? I’m an editor myself in a small way. I ask celebrated authors, actors, preachers, presidents, doctors, lawyers, generals, naval officers and the like to send in any old thing they happen to have on the hook and then I have it beautifully illustrated and print it just as it is; no matter how bad it is, I never change a line. It’s a matter of principal—not to say of interest. For above all things I wish to be honest and successful. EDWARD W. TOK. “IF LOVE WERE ALL.” (THE PRISONER OF ZENDA.) If Love were all! Sore smitten at the start, “Alas, is Love not all in all?” we cry, And lost in wretched egoism try Only to heal the individual smart. Then at Life’s summons from our dreams we start And seek, lest Life’s great stakes should pass us by, What labor nearest to our hands may lie, So half-knowingly, find our nobler part. Love is not all for us; perchance some few Love leadeth by the hand to higher ways— What matter since for us he is not king?— And some, more blessed yet, their labor through, Still in the golden glory of their days Shall garner love at a ripe harvesting. ELIZABETH C. CARDOZO. SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SOUL EASEMENT AND WISDOM INCIDENTALLY. Dr. Robertson Nicoll, of London, England, a good Scot, is the present day discoverer of Scotch genius, and Ian Maclaren is largely the creation of his splendid audacity of prophecy and executive ability.