of provincial editor is almost always one that is drifted into and almost never one that is reached by choice of pre-determination) he is apt to marvel at his own stupidity in not having foreseen the inevitable and in having failed to choose at the start some less alluring, more humdrum calling one of the many which have served so well early companions of no better brains than his own. Then, to add a touch which falls little short of tragic, there steals before him the shadow of some bright, clever comrade who has fallen out of the race, a man of wit and genius, perhaps, of well-stored mind and apt phrase, who some way lost his grip, to find himself, after years of influence and respect, unable to make a new place and thankful to do the humblest hack-work if only there be enough of it to bring him his daily bread. The Bohemia of the metropolis is full of these failures, so the provincial editor is told. They are the commonplaces of its byways. This he can easily believe. For he himself has seen more than one case where a man of parts seemed to grow so fitted to his particular place that, when rudely jostled out of it, there were left in him no resources of adaptability on which to draw.

In short, as the provincial editor ages, he realizes, as no one can in anticipation, especially the young man who is drifting, how much it means ultimately to fall on a calling that, while peculiarly exhausting to mental vitality, seduces by fairly good pay for early untrained effort, only to disappoint by the lack in reserve of a commensurate reward for trained skill and experience. He appreciates, too, that this is a case of condition, not of theory. The business of publishing a provincial newspaper has in it no such margin of profit as to warrant a salary list above a certain point. The demands for increase of plant and force, to meet the requirements of expansion and hold even the provincial field, outrun the immediate returns from better equipment. It is always a case of "catching up," of being ready for a circulation and advertising patronage just ahead, only to find when these are reached that the next advance must be anticipated. The provincial editor can himself see so many different ways of spending money, from some improvement in plant or ser

vice to the hiring of another reporterthere is always need of another reporterways far more directly profitable than an increase of salary for himself and the more literary of his assistants (the people who like literary excellence are the old subscribers who have always taken the paper and always will take it), that he would himself hesitate to "give himself a raise" were it a matter left to his own decision. Indeed, the closeness of the provincial editor to the business office (omitting of course the rare cases in which proprietor and editor are one and the same person) has its own peculiar disadvantages. The provincial newspaper machine is so big that its necessities are as thoroughly impressed upon the editor and his assistants as upon the manager himself. On the other hand, the machine is not big enough to divide in operation and make of the business and editorial forces two distinct power-wheels, causing continual friction by the superior impinging upon the inferior. There is occasional friction, as everywhere; but, to drop the metaphor, there is no such constant antagonism or pressure of dominance as (so it is often claimed) develops conditions in metropolitan journalism almost intolerable, in instances, to men of high ideals. The provincial editor is too close to the business-office to be strictly a professional man, if journalism be a profession. He is not far enough in the business office, though he be a small stockholder―he seldom has money enough to be a large stockholder, even if the rare chance come his way-to be strictly a man of business. His position is anomalous-half journalist and half publisher. He is always looking longingly across the line of separation, indulging the hope of being practically if not actually manager as well as editor. This is not a sordid ambition, as he says to himself, but something desired as an opportunity to make this or that change in the direction of higher journalism, a ieform he now excuses himself from attempting, because it would be going out of his province. He lacks that singleness of aim in the work directly in hand which -as he looks at it-the metropolitan journalist must have from the hopelessness of an ambition (the conditions of metropolitan journalism being what they

are) ever to become, short of a miracle, more than a member of the staff. He sees, when he reckons up the chances calmly, that the control of a good provincial newspaper property is about the last thing those who have it will sell, more because of the prestige and power attaching to it than for the mere profit there is in it. Yet the desire never dies in him—it means so much to him, and is so constantly strengthened by the conditions and limitations of his calling-of owning the newspaper which he edits, a desire which is nourished by his friendly closeness to the management. He is thus never in the state of mind of the salaried professional man, the clergyman, the teacher, or the college professor, of having made up his mind to a salary for life with the one possibility of a better salary as the only change in condition to be hoped for.

The peculiarities of his status have not a little to do with the failure of the provincial editor to take the step up from journalism into literature. That he has small time to devote to literature proper; that his daily toil is peculiarly exhausting; that the very necessity of doing so much hasty routine writing every day unfits him for the practice of an art and develops the capacity for mediocrity-all these and other like conditions of his calling are obvious disqualifications for acquiring that distinction of style or nourishing that nobility and originality of thought which differentiate clever hackwork from literature. Yet they are not of themselves fatal obstacles. Others have surmounted them. In the salad days of the provincial editor those others are often in his thoughts. Few young men, from college at least, drift into the provincial sanctum unimpelled by the secretly cherished ambition of proving the exception to the rule and becoming, say a Eugene Field or a Charles Dudley Warner. Indeed the fact that the latter's "Summer in a Garden”—the book which first gave Mr. Warner his fame-is simply a revised edition of certain newspaper editorials which had attracted local attention, is often appealed to in a discussion of the old question, Literature vs. Journalism, as proof that the line of separation may be easily crossed. No wonder, with these and like examples before him, that the

journalistic neophyte of certain gifts, which may or may not prove literary according as they develop, feels that their development is largely a matter of will, and that he has the will.

Certainly as a provincial editor the neophyte finds many conditions in his favor bidding fair to further his purpose. He has, as was said at the start, a certain standing from his position in the community which is distinctly literary in character, one that betokens an undiscriminating anticipation-if that be not too strong a word-of literary possibilities in him. He naturally gravitates toward association with those of more or less acknowledged literary tastes, and feels whatever stimulus there may be in their companionship. If his turn be for story-telling, or (more probably) for essay-writing, he finds an infinite variety of human nature in the then unhackneyed contacts with all sorts and conditions of men whom selfinterest brings every day to consult the editor. It is all fresh and very interesting, and he soon does a sketch or writes a bit of satirical moralizing which finds local favor. Perhaps it catches the exchange editor's eye and is copied into some metropolitan journal. Then he is emboldened to try his luck with the magazines, usually with indifferent success. If, however, he have but one thing accepted, how he pats himself on the back and puts new fervor into his resolve to do something worth the while! But it is a killing pace to keep, and his distractions are many. The freshness wears off the often-repeated experiences, and it is harder and harder to find the unexpected thing to say or the unique point of view to take. The provincial editor is not often a specialist, as are not a few metropolitan journalists, following some particular line of political or sociological comment. He must be ready with his comment on every passing event, mingling with amusing incongruity his offhand finalities on the latest fad in theology, the newest thing on the stage, the most recent development of a tariff discussion or labor struggle, and the career of some great man, American, European, or Oriental.

Once it was different. Once the provincial newspaper could wait until its metropolitan contemporaries came

life might come to run in ruts, because it is so specialized. People find it an effort to talk about or to be interested in the things which do not personally concern them. They have the news of the world brought to them every morning and every evening, and yet many turn aside from it with indifference because there is nothing in it of direct personal concern, affecting their business or their pleasures. The art of journalism is the art of interesting people in the things in which they would feel no interest otherwise. It is the art of taking them out of themselves and their own special absorptions and giving them something foreign to themselves to think about. It puts ideas as well as happenings into the daily chronicle and stimulates curiosity on a thousand broadening

matters which else would never be heard of. So far as this work is well done it cannot but be of service in retarding the set toward specialism. But well done it cannot be while all sense of proportion is lost in the unwieldy expansion of the modern newspaper.

The function, then, of the provincial editor is to tell the world's story and the local story in a space still somewhat limited compared with that of the metropolitan daily. His art is the art of entertaining condensation. His own interest is the interest of achieving the seemingly impossible. His outlook is that of the man who preserves the true sense of proportion. He finds his reward or disappointment as he approaches his own ideal or falls far short of it.

N meditating the other day on one of the most familiar lines in Tennyson:

"An infant crying in the night,"

I decided that insufficient attention had been given to it by physiologists, phonologists, music-teachers, elocutionists, singers, and public speakers. Even those men and women who are fortunate enough to possess, like Marion Crawford's Roman singer, a throat of iron, do not dare to shout and shriek continuously for the space of two hours; whilst the average adult, if he roared for fifteen minutes, would probably be hoarse for two days, and might seriously, perhaps permanently, injure his vocal cords. Yet a tender infant, with a throat as soft as water, can yell all night fortissimo, and not only do himself no injury, but in the morning be fresh as a fox-hound, and not only be able, but quite willing, even eager, to continue. What is the secret of the baby's voice production? It seems to be a matter worth serious investigation. In emission of tone the infant unconsciously has a system that makes the Italian method appear crude. If singing masters could discover what it is, and teach it, all present methods of vocal study would be revolutionized.

In addition to my other enterprises, such as the founding of the Fano Club, Faerie Queene Club, and the Ignoble. Prize, I now undertake the organization of the Asolo Club. Individuals will qualify by visiting Asolo and sending me a picture post-card from that delectable mountain. Very few Americans go to Asolo, yet no town is more easily reached, provided one first reaches Italy. Every one who sees Italy visits Venice. Now the tourist may breakfast in Venice, spend the day in Asolo, and dine in Venice at the conventional evening hour. In the year 1838, a twenty-six-year-old English pedestrian, named Robert Browning, climbed the

little mountain and gazed with rapture on the tiny town of Asolo. Enchanted with the place, it haunted his memory, and there he laid the scenes of "Pippa Passes." At the age of seventy-seven, in the year 1889, he spent the summer there, bought a house, in which he intended to live in subsequent summer seasons; but in the following December he died in Venice. His last volume of poems, published on the day of his death, was called punningly "Asolando," and was dedicated to Katharine Bronson, the charming American woman who lived in Asolo. On May 7, 1912, the centenary of Browning's birth was elaborately celebrated in the town immortalized by Pippa; and the street on which Browning lived in 1889 had its name formally changed to Via Roberto Browning. His son, incurably ill, was the chief personage at the centenary exercises, and died two months later in the house bought by his father. One of his most pious deeds was to purchase the old silkmill, where Pippa worked, and found there a charity lace school, in honor of the poet.

We visited Asolo in 1904, and looking on the names registered in the queer old book at the inn, I found only one American-and that was Maud Watrous, who lived directly across the street from us in New Haven! She is now the wife of a gallant English officer, Colonel Grazebrook, but if by any chance she should see these lines, she will discover that she is a charter member of the Asolo Club, and entitled to all its rights and privileges. For membership is retroactive.

I owe the founding of this club to Sarah Redington, of Santa Barbara, who had previously qualified for Fano membership. On October 24, she, accompanied by Frances Taylor of San Francisco, entered the sacred precincts of Asolo, where with appropriately solemn ceremonies they established this flourishing institution, which already contains a half dozen mem