Some authors have been dreaming of a time when they could control the entire literary output of the United States in the same way that the Standard Oil Company controls kerosene, or the chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers directs his men. He can tie up any railroad with a snap of his finger if his men are not treated squarely. In such a literary dreamland an author might do one-third of his present work and get far more pay than now. Publishers and editors would not then have a superfluity of matter. They would then have to bow to the authors' trust before the desired material could be obtained. It might be claimed that if writers would pool their issues, put their manuscripts into a common stock, allow the publisher to select from them at a good round figure, and after a certain lapse of time burn all the rejected ones,--there would be less work and more money for all authors. Of course, it would be necessary to have a committee to decide when an author wrote well enough to be admitted to the pool, and also to determine what greater portion of the common fund the authors of specially meritorious work should receive. Such a scheme certainly does work with sugar, kerosene, starch, and numberless other articles; but it is more than doubtful if it would prevail in literature. Some authors would be too desirous of seeing themselves constantly before the public. They could not be prevailed upon to limit the output of their brain, and they would be conceited enough to demand that everything appear in print. It is well to lay aside thoughts of such a Utopia until we have secured an authors' protective association of wide membership, with permanent headquarters, legal counsel, and agents to learn the publishing business and expose unfair methods. Let writers remember that Greece, in spite of her AEschylus, Sophocles, Xenophon, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle, perished because her independent states would not combine against a common foe. _John Braincraft._ LOUISVILLE, Ky. NEWSPAPER COOKERY. In a late number of a popular periodical, Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, while telling of her childhood a half-century ago, incidentally remarks: "I should have as soon thought of smoking my father's pipe as of reading his newspaper. There were no papers at all for women and children, if I except the _Court Journal_ for women of rank." Just when cookery and household affairs became a part of the newspaper's province, I do not know, nor is it my purpose to give its history. My earliest recollection of anything in this line is connected with _Hearth and Home_, an illustrated paper, the forerunner of the many household periodicals of to-day. A leading feature was "Mrs. Hunnibee's Diary," furnished by Mrs. Lyman, afterward on the staff of the _New York Tribune_. Her work was a worthy model for us to follow. Let us look at the work as it is, and as it ought to be.