edged assistance to Mr. Roosevelt. "Mr. Steffens was a pessimist," said Mr. Jacob A. Riis, who first met him at Police Headquarters and beside whom he worked, "while I was an optimist. I believed in the police force, while Mr. Steffens believed it guilty till proven innocent. Nothing escaped him. Publicity was his motto. Mr. Roosevelt believed and believes in publicity more than legislation to start the ball rolling in the right direction; recently he said to me that it was the only real remedy for trusts and corruption. Mr. Steffens turned on the lime-light and showed crime which hides in dark places. His work for the Post gave promise of all the strength shown in his late articles. They are having the effect, too, which their writer desired."

The effect of all this, on his own fortunes, was that Mr. Steffens, who only a few before "had not been wanted" years was made assistant-city editor of the Post. And Mr. Wright, city editor, diametrically opposed to many of his ideas and of an opposite temperament, realising his genuineness, earnestness, and ability gave him as free a rein as possible. But not alone in his articles from Police Headquarters had Mr. Steffens drawn attention to himself-weekly there had appeared in the Post stories of the East Side, particularly of the Jews, their quaint customs and celebration of days; and also labour news of the city, faithful reporting of strikes telling the whole truth without any partial leaning to Labour or Capital, although the paper for which he wrote was called a "capitalistic organ." "It was then I learned," says Mr. Steffens, "that there never was a strike where one side was all in the right or all in the wrong." His stories, fiction and otherise, laid in the foreign quarters of the metropolis became a feature of the Post. He wrote two articles for Scribner's for the series "Great Business Enterprises," one on high building as a business; and the other on newspapers as a business. About that time the editors of McClure's Magazine accepted from him stories laid in his peculiar field (some fiction) concerning police and politics. Gradually Mr. Steffens was working his way as he had planned from newspapers into the magazines.

Mr.

He always contended that newspaper reporting should be made a stepping stone into magazine and kindred walk, or to some kind of specialisation in journalism, literature or business. When Mr. Wright became Editor of the Commercial Advertiser, and Mr. Steffens City Editor, he emphasised this and instilled ambition into his reportorial staff. Then was tried an experiment in journalism of so audacious and revolutionary a character, that even Mr. Wright, who had given Mr. Steffens his head, was doubtful of its expediency. Steffens endeavoured to abolish the traditional way of handling a "story." There was to be no Commercial Advertiser style as there is a Sun style and a Herald style. Every reporter was encouraged to develop an individual style. In consequence Mr. Steffens got rid of as many old newspaper men on the Commercial Advertiser as possible; discouraged the employing of any but novices with unformed ideas of the way of writing a newspaper article; and stepped out of the beaten path by asking for the development of all the human interest and atmos

phere of an incident, to present to the reader a graphic pictorial impression first, thus to win his sympathy and interest, while still stating the cold bare facts without any reportorial license or leanings. It created the keenest rivalry in the office. Every man tried to tell the best story, and after the last edition had come off the presses they sat around and criticised goodnaturedly each other's work. Mr. Steffens during his régime developed six magazine men or bookmakers. Many after he became, in the fall of 1901, Managing Editor of McClure's Magazine, went into other fields, and now few of his old men remain on the Commercial Advertiser. Those who

do, still instil into their articles some of Mr. Steffens's ideas in handling a story.

Mr. S. S. McClure was abroad when Mr. Steffens became Managing Editor of McClure's and on his return in the spring of 1903 scathingly discountenanced him on his management. He said he did not know the first thing about managing a magazine. "Well, how may I learn?" asked Mr. Steffens. "Get out and see the country," replied Mr. McClure,

"travel, go abroad and observe people, conditions and things." "And Mr. McClure was right," said Mr. Steffens. "A man cannot be a successful editor who sits forever in his office." He accordingly mapped out a route and started on the discovery of the United States. In every city and town he talked with the politicians, business men and editors and asked them what they knew of interest and what was new. The editor of the Kansas City Star said, "Of course you have heard of Joe Folk?" He hadn't, and all through the West politicians and editors asked the same question. When he arrived in Chicago it was the same query: "Of course you have heard of Joe Folk?" He determined to see Joe Folk and learn what he was doing. Taking without delay a train for St. Louis, he talked with Mr. Folk, and employed a local newspaper_man, Mr. Whitmore, familiar with St. Louis, to write a story of the deplorable condition of the city's government and the fight Mr. Folk was making against it. Mr. McClure liked the subject, but was dissatisfied with its treatment. He thought it could be enlarged upon and certain points emphasised. Mr. Steffens collaborated with Mr. Whitmore, with the result the first article, "Tweed Days in St. Louis." "As in my subsequent articles I did no detective work. I got corruption from corruptionists, bribery from those who bribed and were bribed. I interviewed successfully political bosses, politicians and business men. I find the latter class in every city largely responsible, most frequently in a criminal way, for bad conditions; encouraging and abetting them. From politicial bosses I got a great deal of help. I interested them by drawing comparison between the way 'things' are done in their city and New York and other cities. None of these men are loth to tell something of what they know. As a matter of fact they have a strange pride in what they do.

Besides they consider me 'on the level' because I do not discriminate but expose them, business men and judges alike. Then I never tell all of the truth. I don't have to one-tenth is sufficient to make any decent man rise feeling outraged.

"If a police captain receives $20,000 as grafter a month, I say that much a year. People are incredulous. If there was a steal of $1,000,000 I say $500,000. Not once have I told anywhere near all I know and can prove. It is not necessary. The effect is gained just as well. Every article I have written has been an understatement. And that, perhaps, is why the politicians do not complain, but often approve of them as 'fair.' Senator Finn's comment on 'Pittsburg, a City Ashamed,' I hear, was 'correct and well written.' I cut 'Philadelphia Corrupt and Contented' from 30,000 words to a few thousand." Mr. Steffens has been invited often by other cities to expose their rings, but although he has studied Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit and others, he will not do so at present. Odd to say, although he has attacked and exposed high and low, he has not once been called to account by mouth or letter, except in the case of a man in Minneapolis, whom he did not mention by name but only by office, and who took offense at being called a politician. On the contrary he has received hundreds of letters giving him information. One well-known politician actually followed him to Chicago, from Chicago to New York, and back to Chicago to talk to him and give him some information and "pointers." Another thing Mr. Steffens has remarked is that although none takes umbrage at the truth you tell about them the smallest untruth, no matter how trivial creates the greatest offense. "Bathhouse John" of Chicago felt outraged because a local newspaper man said he was born in a little village out in Illinois.

T

HIRTY years ago there was a magazine published in New York called the Galaxy. It was edited by W. C. and F. P. Church. It was absorbed by the Atlantic about a quarter of a century ago; but during its brief and brilliant career it published many of the essays which Mr. Henry James afterward collected into his French Poets and Novelists; and it contained the chief of the papers which the late Grant White made into his volume on Words and Their Uses. It was hospitable to the novels of Charles Reade and of Mr. Justin McCarthy; and it also published a series of papers by the latter dealing with the chief literary personalities of Great Britain. One of these papers on "George Eliot and George Lewes" was printed in the Galaxy for June, 1869.

In this paper, written on this side of

the Atlantic, Mr. McCarthy asserted that "Charles Reade is more generally and more warmly admired here than in England." And he went on to ask: “Am I wrong in supposing that the reverse is the case with regard to the authoress of Romola and The Mill on the Floss? All American critics, and all American readers of taste, have doubtless testified practically their recognition of the genius of this extraordinary woman; but there seems to me to be relatively less admiration for her in New York than in London. The general verdict of English [i.e. British] criticism would, I feel no doubt, place George Eliot on a higher pedestal than Charles Dickens." It may be noted that both Dickens and George Eliot were alive when this was written. Mr. McCarthy included in his remarks a statement that he regarded George Eliot "as the greatest living novelist of England,"

and a criticism of Charles Reade's style as having "masculine force and clearness," although it was "terribly irregular and rough."

Charles Reade impressed a recent reviewer of a recent biography of him as "a giant baby, impulsive, peevish, frantic, violent, strong-headed, soft-hearted by turns." This impression may not be absolutely accurate, but it emphasises certain of his peculiarities. One of these peculiarities not included was a willingness to talk about himself and an extreme frankness in declaring his own merits. He was infuriated by this article of Mr. McCarthy's and he was wounded that it had appeared in a periodical which he had supposed to be friendly to him. As soon as he had read the article he wrote a letter to the editors of the Galaxy,-a letter which Col. W. C. Church published not long ago. Probably no more characteristic epistle ever proceeded from the pen of an exacerbated author :

2 Albert Terrace, Knightsbridge,

June 8, 1869.

Dear Sir: You side with fools and liars against me. You have published, without a word of disclaimer, a diatribe in which George Eliot is described as the first of English novelists, and her style, which is in reality a mediocre, monotonous style, with no music and no beauty in it, is described as perfect, and my style, which on proper occasions, is polished beyond the conception of George Eliot, or any such writer, is condemned wholesale as sadly rugged, &c. And this in a monthly which contains a story by me. It does appear strange to me that you, who have got the cock salmon, should allow this ass * * * to tell your readers that the trout is a bigger fish than the cock salmon.

Now hear the real truth. George Eliot is a writer of the second class, who has the advantage of being better read than most novelists. She has also keen powers of observation and reasoning.

She has no imagination of the higher kind, and no power of construction, nor dramatic power. She has a little humour, whereas most women have none; and a little pathos. she has neither pathos nor humour enough to make anybody laugh nor anybody cry.

But

Her style is grave, sober, and thoughtful; but it lacks fire, tune, and variety.

She has been adroit enough to disavow the sensational, yet to use it as far as her feeble

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powers would let her. Her greatest quality of all is living with an anonymous writer, who has bought the English press for a time and puffed her into a condition she cannot maintain, and is gradually losing.

Why lend yourself to a venal English lie? This George Eliot is all very well as long as she confines herself to the life and character she saw with her own eyes down in Warwickshire when she was young. But the moment imagination is required she is done. Let any man read true books about the Middle Ages and then read Romola-he will at once be struck with two things: That the records of the Middle Ages are a grand romance full of noble material and character and situation, and that this unhappy scribbler of novels has so dealt with that gigantic theme as to dwarf it to her own size. When you have waded through the watery waste of Romola, what remains upon the mind?

A little Florence, a faint description of petty politics not worth mentioning. A little Savonarola depicted, not sculptured. A young lady called Romola, who is not mediæval at all, but a delicate-minded young woman of the nineteenth century and no other. And a hero who is Mr. George Lewes.

Now read a mediæval novel by Scott, or even The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. Do these works miss all the grand features of the Middle Ages as this poor unimaginative scribbler has done; or do they transport you out of this ignorant present into a ruder and more romantic age? Verbum sapienti.

I will only add that in all her best novels the best idea is stolen from me and her thefts are not confined to ideas and situations; they go as far as similes, descriptions, and lines of text. Believe me, the pupil is never above her

master.

This last fact coupled with the persistent detraction I meet from my fair pupil's satellites in the English press will, I hope, excuse this burst of bile.

Seriously, however, and setting my personal feelings out of the question, do not you underrate the judgment of the American public in this case; nor overrate the judgment of the English press.

The public is an incorruptible judge; the press is a corruptible judge, and peculiar facilities were offered in G. Eliot's case for buying the English press, and they have been purchased and repurchased accordingly. I am yours, very truly, CHARLES READE.

Two years or so after this letter had been written the London periodical called Once a Week was purchased by Mr. James Rice; and in its pages in January, 1872, appeared the opening chapters of an anonymous serial story called "ReadyMoney Mortiboy." The secret of the collaboration to which this novel was due, was kept very carefully; and there was much wonder as to the identity of the new writer. Mr. Justin McCarthy, who had then returned to England, wrote to an American paper for which he was the London correspondent, that some critics believed "Ready-Money Mortiboy" to be the work of Charles Reade, and that if this was not the fact the new writer had been strongly influenced by Reade.

In the same number of Once a Week in which appeared the first chapters of the first story which the editor was writing in collaboration with his friend, Walter Besant, there appeared also the first of a series of wood-cut cartoon-portraits of celebrities of the day, drawn by Mr. F. Waddy. The first of these was a sketch of the Tichborne claimant and the fourth was a portrait of Charles Reade,this being the earliest of the series to deal with a man of letters. The cartoon-portraits were none of them malicious; and the articles that accompanied the sketches were frankly complimentary. That devoted to Charles Reade might fairly be termed flattery. Indeed it had obviously been written by a strong admirer of the masculine story-teller; and it dwelt at length upon the comparison between him and George Eliot, which had filled so much space in the letter Reade had written nearly three years earlier to the editors of the Galaxy. For a reason which will be given later this article deserves reproduction here in full; and the accompanying cartoon also:

CHARLES READE.

The first of our series of cartoon portraits of men of letters appears in the present number. The subject of it, Mr. Charles Reade, is the youngest son of the late John Reade, Esquire, of Ipsden House, Oxfordshire. Mr. Reade is an Oxford man (he took his B.A. degree in 1835), and is a Doctor of Civil Law, and a fellow of Magdalen College in that university. He was called to the bar by the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn in 1843. We have put Charles Reade first on our list

for the two following reasons-because (1) he is the greatest living English writer of fiction; (2) his two splendid stories, A Good Fight and Foul Play, did so much for the success of Once a Week.

A Good Fight, with three volumes of new matter added to it, was subsequently called The Cloister and the Hearth.

Charles Reade's earliest stories were followed, in 1856, by that powerful work of his genius, It Is Never too Late to Mend. The book created a great sensation: was read by everybody effected its author's purpose-viz., compelled the public to insist that the Model Prisons' system should be looked searchingly into.

From the publication of Peg Woffington, Charles Reade has continued to apply his great talents to the work of writing novels and dramas; with what success, every reader of fiction knows.

The annexed complete list of his writings will give a correct idea of the extent of his productions in the difficult field of the Literature of Imagination, in which he has chosen to exercise his genius.

STORIES IN ORDER OF PRODUCTION.