Contents

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LEARN ONE THING
EVERY DAY

SEPTEMBER 1 1918

SERIAL NO. 162

THE
MENTOR

MAKERS OF MODERN
AMERICAN FICTION
(MEN)

By
ARTHUR B. MAURICE

DEPARTMENT OF
LITERATURE

VOLUME 6
NUMBER 14

TWENTY CENTS A COPY

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FICTION

There is a popular notion that anyone can write a story. A good novel is easy
reading, and it seems, on that account, to be easy writing. Many a reader, in the
comfortable enjoyment of good fiction, misses the genius of it altogether. He is like the
skeptical young man who could see nothing difficult in the art of sculpture. “All you need
to do,” he said, “is to get a block of marble, then take a hammer and chisel, and knock off
the parts you don’t want.” So stated, sculpture does seem very simple. But, after all,
there is some importance in knowing what parts of the marble to knock off.

Many of us feel, at times, an inward stir that prompts us to express ourselves in the
written word. We are quite sure that we could write a novel or a play. That we don’t
do so is simply because we are so busy—or something else. “I could write plays as well as
Shakespeare if I’d a mind to,” said someone years ago to Charles Lamb. “Yes,” answered
the gentle humorist, “anyone could write plays as well as Shakespeare—if he had the mind to.”

Some take their pen in hand to prove to themselves how easy it all is. When they
have tried out several of the productions that they have dashed off so readily, they
sometimes discover that what was easy writing for them was hard reading for others, and
the wise ones then come to realize that the good fiction that makes such easy reading is
often the finished and refined product of double and re-doubled labor.

For those that are determined to win their way in fiction, the means for study and
observation are ample. There are many books on the art of writing to inform and
guide the aspiring author, and there is a wealth of fiction literature ever at hand to supply
him with examples of good story writing. In a helpful, informing book on the technique
of fiction, Professor Charles F. Horne makes clear the essential elements of the novel—which
he finds to be six in number: (1) Plot, (2) Motive or Verisimilitude, truth to life,
(3) Character Portrayal, (4) Emotional Quality—Sentiment, Passion, (5) Background,
(6) Style. “A novel,” Professor Horne writes, “cannot consist simply of a fixed picture,
a description of a man in repose. It must show him acting and acted upon. In other
words, it deals with man in his relation to his environment. Hence it must have two essentials:
the man and his movements; that is, the characters and the story. The causes
and effects of these two essentials give us two more. The man can only move as he is
swayed internally by his emotions; and the movement can only be seen externally in its
effect on his surroundings, his background. These four form the positive elements or
content of the novel, and they must be presented under the limitations set by man’s experience
of life or verisimilitude, and by his modes of conveying ideas, his style of speech.”

W. D. M.

The Mentor Association

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Entered as second-class matter, March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879.
Copyright, 1918, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

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MAKERS OF MODERN AMERICAN FICTION

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BOOTH TARKINGTON

Booth Tarkington
ONE

Towards the close of the last century Booth Tarkington
wrote “The Gentleman from Indiana.” It
is as the Gentleman from Indiana that Mr. Tarkington
has been widely known ever since. There was
a time, some fifteen or twenty years ago, when every native
Hoosier was supposed to have the manuscript
of a “Best-Selling” novel concealed somewhere
about his person. Some of the
authors died, and some of them went into
other occupations, and the state has managed
to live the belief down. But Mr.
Tarkington remains the most conspicuous
living figure linking Indiana with letters.

Born in Indianapolis on July 29, 1869,
he studied at Phillips-Exeter, and later at
Princeton. In both places he was recognized
as one likely to go far. Princeton
he entered as a junior, but “made” the
editorial boards of both college publications,
the Tiger and the Lit—his sketches
for the former being rather better than his
literary contributions to the latter. He
wrote the play for the Triangle Club, and,
at graduation, was voted the most popular
and promising man in the Class of 1893.
There followed, however, lean years, when
the prophecies seemed unlikely of fulfillment.
That was a period, when, like the
John Harkless of his own story (“The
Gentleman from Indiana”), he was figuratively
“sitting on a rail fence in Indiana.”
Always a hard worker, he toiled unremittingly
at invention and rewriting,
only to have the manuscripts that he submitted
with bright hopes come back to
him with disheartening regularity. That
was the story of the five or six years after
1893. His first tale to be sold was
“Cherry,” a whimsical romance of the
country about Princeton and undergraduate
life at the College of New Jersey
in pre-Revolutionary days. Accepted by
Harper’s, it was not published until long
after. Then, suddenly, success came. Almost
simultaneously “The Gentleman from
Indiana” and “Monsieur Beaucaire” appeared,
the first a full-length novel of
mid-western life, the second a charming
little romance of eighteenth-century manners
at Bath when Beau Nash reigned and
a Prince of the Blood came over from
France in the guise of a barber in the
French Minister’s train. The recognition
won with those two books has widened
with the years. After the “Gentleman”
and “Beaucaire” came “The Two Van
Revels,” the germ of which had been a
short tale of two thousand words written
in the author’s undergraduate days. As
a result of a brief fling at political life
Mr. Tarkington wrote the stories collected
under the title “In the Arena.” That was
followed by “The Conquest of Canaan,”
the story of a discredited boy who leaves
his native town under a shadow, and returns
to win its reluctant admiration.
The years spent about that time in
Europe suggested “The Guest of Quesnay,”
and two shorter stories with scenes
laid in Italy, “The Beautiful Lady,” and
“Mine Own People.” The chief distinction
of “The Flirt,” in which the author
returned to the Indiana setting of the
earlier books, was the picture of the
heroine’s impish brother, Hedrick Madison.
“The Turmoil,” dealing with the
evolution of one of the great mid-western
cities, showed Mr. Tarkington in the full
maturity of his power. After that book
he struck a new and rich vein in his
sketches delineating boy life, the stories
dealing with Penrod Schofield and William
Sylvanus Baxter having found a response
in every corner of the land. Mr. Tarkington
has also to his credit considerable
achievement as a playwright. “The Man
From Home,” written in collaboration
with Harry Leon Wilson, was one of the
most successful plays of the American
stage of recent years. Other plays from
his pen are “Cameo Kirby,” “Springtime,”
“Mister Antonio,” “The Country
Cousin,” and “Seventeen.” Calling Indianapolis
his home town, Mr. Tarkington
spends much of his time at Kennebunkport,
Maine, and usually passes a month
or two every year in Princeton, New
Jersey.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER A. JULEY

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

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Robert W. Chambers
TWO

What impresses one most about Mr. Robert W.
Chambers is his amazing versatility. In addition
to being a popular novelist, he is an expert on rare
rugs; an artist, and so well qualified a judge of fine
art that he can talk intelligently to the curators and directors of
museums about the old masters on exhibition there; equipped
with an understanding of Chinese and
Japanese antiques so that he can detect
forgeries in that art; an authority on
mediæval armor; a lover of outdoors, of
horses, dogs, and an ardent collector of
butterflies; and, in addition, a thorough
man of the world, who knows Paris and
Petrograd, and many of the out-of-the-way
corners of the earth. These are the
qualities that come to mind readily, but
the list is far from complete. The longer
one knows Mr. Chambers, the more varied
the knowledge he finds in him.

Out of such rich mental resources Mr.
Chambers draws his material for fiction.
He writes two novels a year for a large
public that eagerly devours them. Mr.
Chambers’ life is a full and active
one.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York,
on May 26, 1865, and in his youth he
aspired to be a painter. He studied art in
Paris at Julien’s Studio from 1886 to 1893,
then returned to New York, and for a
while contributed illustrations to the current
publications. Then one day a novel,
“In the Quarter,” appeared with his name
as author. From that time on his life was
given largely to writing fiction, and the
record of the years has been a brilliant
one. In 1893 he published the haunting,
uncanny, but fascinating “The King in
Yellow,” a collection of stories of art life.
He turned to France first as a background
for romance. At irregular intervals from
1894 to 1903 appeared “The Red Republic,”
“Lorraine,” “Ashes of Empire,”
and “Maids of Paradise.” They all had
the France-Prussian War as their setting,
and dashing young Americans as their
heroes. Then in 1901 with “Cardigan”
and other books he gave expression in
fiction to the spirit of the American Revolution.
It has not been simply as an
historical or a semi-historical novelist,
however, that Mr. Chambers has made his
widest appeal. In the foibles, extravagances,
superficialities and eccentricities
of contemporary American society, he has
found his richest vein. It does not matter
whether the background of a particular
tale be New York, or Washington, or
Palm Beach. The underlying social and
ethical problems are of real importance.
Marriage, the giving or selling in marriage,
the reasons of heredity that make for or
against a certain marriage: these are
fundamentals common to all humanity.
In “The Younger Set” and “The Firing
Line” hero and heroine have unwisely
married, and the story hinges largely on
problems raised subsequently by divorce.
In “The Fighting Chance” (1906), and
“The Danger Mark” (1909) the problem
is that of unfitness to marry. In the
former it is the man who inherits a craving
for alcohol, and the woman for sentimental
philandering; in the latter the woman is
given to intemperance and the man to
excessive gallantry. In one of his later
books, “The Hidden Children” (1915), Mr.
Chambers returns to a favorite setting of
the earlier years, upper New York of the
Colonial period.

On a basis of solid fact, it would seem
impossible for one man to do all this work.
Where does he ever find time to do it?
The answer lies in the fact that Mr.
Chambers keeps regular hours—office
hours, almost—for his writing, all of which
is done in long hand. At that he is not a
rapid writer, frequent revision is essential,
and a passion for the verification of
details consumes much time. Yet the
bulk and excellence of the accomplished
performance remains an established fact;
and in many ways it is little less than
marvelous.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY PACH BROS.

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

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Richard Harding Davis
THREE

In 1890 there appeared in Scribner’s Magazine a short
story entitled “Gallegher.” It gave an account of
a smart young office boy employed on one of the
newspapers, who succeeded in “beating the town”
by bringing home a big, sporting story to his paper. It was
held at once as one of the best newspaper tales ever printed.
When the name of the author, Richard
Harding Davis, was mentioned, the reading
public recognized him as the son of
Rebecca Harding Davis, a fiction writer
of established reputation. Davis’ fifty-two
years of life were full of color and
manly achievement. He was a novelist,
short story writer, war correspondent,
editor and playwright. He began as
newspaper reporter, a pursuit most natural,
for his father, L. Clarke Davis, was
a brilliant journalist and editor.

Richard Harding Davis was born in
Philadelphia in 1864, and attended
the Episcopal Academy and afterwards
Lehigh and Johns-Hopkins Universities.
In his college days he was weak in mathematics,
but strong in all that made life
full, joyous and vital. He entered eagerly
into sports and wrote stories for the
Lehigh magazines.

In 1887 he began newspaper work on
the Philadelphia Record, also occasionally
contributing to the Press and other Philadelphia
papers. His first big assignment
was in connection with the Johnstown
Flood in 1889. It was in the Press office
that Davis discovered the original Gallegher—the
office boy who was immortalized
in Davis’ famous story, just as the mongrel
dog was vindicated in Davis’ later story
“The Bar Sinister.” In 1889 he made a
trip to London as correspondent to the
Philadelphia Telegraph, and while there
wrote of the Whitechapel murders in a
way that attracted attention. He got his
first job in New York in this way. In
London he came to know Arthur Brisbane,
who was then English correspondent of
the New York Sun, and afterward editor
of the Evening Sun. On his return to
America he sought a newspaper job in
New York, and Brisbane took him on the
Evening Sun. His first experience was
strikingly characteristic. A bunco man
accosted him near the ferry. Davis gave
him some marked money, then had him
arrested and walked him boldly into the
Evening Sun office, showed him up for the
crook he was—and then wrote him up in
the form of a news story for the paper.
Aside from his regular assignments as a
reporter, Davis busied himself with pictures
of various types of New York life.
Among these the most famous were the
Van Bibber stories, in which Davis presented
types of New York society. In
1891 Davis went to Harper’s Weekly and
remained there for three years as managing
editor. Then he became a free lance.
It was not necessary for him to “hold
down a job.” All magazines and book
publishers were eager for his work. His
first engagement as war correspondent was
on the battlefields of the Greco-Turkish
War. He was a prominent figure among
newspaper correspondents in all the great
wars that followed. He made a genuine
sensation by his war letters written from
Cuba during the Spanish-American War
of 1898. In that war Davis formed a
friendship with Theodore Roosevelt that
remained firm through life.

In 1898, with the publication of “Soldiers
of Fortune” in Scribner’s Magazine,
the reputation of Davis as a novelist
became established, and, thereafter, the
fiction that flowed from his pen found an
eager and growing audience. His extensive
travels enabled him to set his stories
in widely varied scenes. “Soldiers of
Fortune” told of revolution and political
intrigue in a South American republic.
That also was the vein and atmosphere of
“Captain Macklin” and later of “The
White Mice.” In “The Exiles” he invaded
Morocco for his background and
characters. Later, in “The King’s Jackal,”
he laid his scenes in Tangier. “Ranson’s
Folly” is a story of American army life—afterwards
dramatized, as was “Soldiers
of Fortune.” “Princess Aline” is a romantic
story of the “Graustark” kind.
Besides fiction, Davis wrote many books
of adventure and travel impression, such
as “Rulers of the Mediterranean,” “Three
Gringos in Venezuela,” “The West from
a Car Window,” “A Year from a Reporter’s
Note Book,” “The Congo and
Coasts of Africa.” His later books, based
on war correspondence, include “With the
French,” “Somewhere in France,” and
“With the Allies.”

We have named scarcely half the titles
of Davis’ work. He was busy always with
his pen, and, as one of his fellow craftsmen
in literature observed, he “never penned a
dull line.” In all his stories he left a
record of his sturdy Americanism and his
passionate devotion to a just cause, wherever
he found it.

He died suddenly of heart disease on April
12, 1916. The loss to literature was
great and was keenly felt in a history-making
time like this that demands an
eloquent chronicler. Davis will always be
remembered as one of the most buoyant,
brave, heroic and industrious workers in
the field of American literature, a man
who saw life fully and clearly, and who
reflected it truly, in healthy, ringing, inspiring
tones.

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JACK LONDON

Jack London
FOUR

Jack London’s stories were written largely out of
his own life. If they were not actual experiences
cast in fiction form, they were narratives spun out
of the fiber of his own experiences. Life was never
certain for London. He was always on the go, and his life
was an ever vigorous, vital present, with the future undetermined
and unguessed. He was born in
San Francisco on January 12, 1876. When
he was eleven years old he left his ranch
in the Livermore Valley and set out to
satisfy his longing for a knowledge of the
world and an expression of himself. He
first went to Oakland, where, in the public
library, he came under the romantic influence
of such fiction writers as Washington
Irving, Ouida and others. Out of
Irving’s “Alhambra” he built castles in
the air for himself, and launched upon a
great literary career with a strong under-current
of romance and an irresistible
longing for adventure. He left home and
joined the oyster pirates in San Francisco
Bay. Then, tiring of the excitement of
piracy, he turned with equal enthusiasm
to the prosecution of it by joining the
Fish Patrol, and was entrusted with the
arrest of some who were his former comrades.
Thrilling accounts of this life appeared
under the title of “Tales of a Fish
Patrol.” In them is a wild buccaneer
spirit, and the savor of the sea. Those of
us that read the “Sea Wolf” can find there
a passionate expression of the author’s
own experiences before the mast while seal
hunting in Behring Sea or along the coast
of Japan. It is full of strong appealing
character and strange sea lore. The same
wild breath of adventure is to be found in
“The Mutiny of the Elsinore,” in which
London describes thrilling experiences in a
trip around the Horn. London was a
worker, and labored hard among the
rougher elements of life—with longshoremen
and shovellers in San Francisco; in
factories and on the decks of coastwise
vessels. He was as good a tramp, too, as
he was a laboring man. He walked the
Continent over from ocean to ocean,
gathering the materials for a “vast understanding
of the common man.” Out of
these experiences came “The Road,”
which is an appealing record of sympathy
with the vagrant poor, and an absorbing
narrative of adventurous journeying.

London tried schooling at different
times in his early life, working between
hours to pay for his education. After
several months of stern, hard application,
in which he covered about three years’
preparatory work, he entered the University
of California. The strain, however,
of work and study combined was too
much for him, and after three months he
had to give up. Turning to things quite
different, and with a desperate hope that
he might find fresh inspiration in a new
kind of life, he set off for the widely advertised
Klondike to seek for gold. In
the Klondike “nobody talks; everybody
thinks; you get your true perspective; I
got mine,” he says. After a year of hard
toil in the north, London returned home
and assumed the burden of supporting his
family, his father having died while he
was away. He wrote story upon story, and
finally gained acceptance and success. As
book after book came out, the public grew
to know and recognize Jack London as one
of the strongest figures in American fiction.

He passed away on November 22, 1916,
in the full swing of his intellectual vigor,
and it will be long before his splendid
achievement is forgotten, or the last
of his books is consigned to the high shelves
that spell oblivion. No matter how sparing
one may be in the use of the word
genius, for him it could be claimed. His
name is one of the few among those of the
writing men of our time with which the
magic word is, without hesitation, to be
linked. There was genius in his invention,
in his imagery, in his nervous style. To
him was given to know the moods of
Arctic wastes and California valleys. The
struggles of his own soul and mind and
body he dissected and portrayed in “Martin
Eden” (1909) and “John Barleycorn”
(1913). He was practically the only
American writer to invade magnificently
the prize-ring as a field for romantic narrative.
Its seamy side, its sordid corruption,
its driftage, as well as its brutal
heroism, are reflected in such tales as
“The Game,” “The Abysmal Brute,” “The
Shadow and the Flash,” and “The Mexican.”
“The Call of the Wild” (1903)
challenges the very best dog-stories of all
time. “The Sea Wolf” (1904) is an epic
of salt brine, and creaking rigging, and
man’s inhumanity to man, and the “blond
masters of the world.” There followed
“Burning Daylight” (1910), and “The
Valley of the Moon” (1913), and “The
Mutiny of the Elsinore” (1914), which is
“The Sea Wolf” “in a lower key,” and “The
Strength of the Strong” (1914), and a
dozen more. Whatever the field, there
was a sureness of touch, and a power of
graphic description that made the man
always a figure and a force.

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REX BEACH

Rex Beach
FIVE

It was in Alaska—the field of “The Forerunner,” the
Kipling poem that was for so many years lost and
entirely forgotten by its author, the field of Robert
W. Service’s “Songs of a Sourdough,” the field of
so many of the tales of Jack London and Stewart Edward
White, that Rex Beach first found literary expression. He did
not set out in life to be a literary man.
He was a husky youth, full of vitality and,
even in his teens, a giant in strength. He
was born in Atwood, Michigan, September
1, 1877, and he left his native place
for the city of Chicago when he was eighteen
years of age. He meant to study law,
but, as he said, he “had no money—therefore
had to find a place to eat.” In those
days the athletic associations of several of
the large cities maintained football teams
of giant gladiators to entertain the multitude.
Young Beach had seen just one
game of football, but when he presented
himself, his physical architecture was so
imposing that he was engaged without
hesitation, as tackle, by the athletic association
football manager. The college
teams used to play an annual series with
these huge professionals. Later they gave
it up, because the “truck-horse professionals”
hired by the athletic associations
could not be hurt by anything short of an
ax, while the college players, as Beach
said, were apt to “tear under the wing.”
Beach played through the season, taking
part in the games by which his team
won the championship of America. Then,
being desirous of eating regularly, he attached
himself to the athletic association’s
swimming team and broke an indoor
record at water polo. That was in 1897,
when the Klondike excitement broke out.
He stampeded with the rest. It was the
spirit of adventure and no thought of
finding material for fiction that took him
to the Yukon.

With two partners from Chicago, Beach
was dumped off the boat at Rampart, on the
Yukon, one rainy night. The three hadn’t
a dollar amongst them, but they had plenty
of goods. Then things began to happen.
“We prepared to become exorbitantly
rich,” in the words of Beach, “but it
was a bad winter. There were fifteen
hundred rough-necks in town, very little
food and plenty of scurvy. I soon found
that my strength was my legs. I could
stampede with anybody. So I stampeded
faithfully whenever I heard of a gold
strike, all that winter.” He became dissatisfied
with his two Chicago partners,
because they preferred to sit around the
cabin cooking tasty messes to tearing
through blizzards at the tail of a dog team.
They wanted to wait for their million dollars
until spring, but Beach wanted his by
Christmas at the latest. And so he set
off, and quickly fell under the spell of the
Yukon. The glare of the white Arctic
night, the toil of the long trail, the complicated
struggle for existence, the reversion
to primitive passions inevitable in a
new civilization in process of formation,
made an imperative call to him, and held
him fascinated. The life about him moved
him to write, and before long he was embarked
on a literary career. “Pardners,”
his first story, appeared in 1904, and this
was followed by the novel that gave him
reputation—“The Spoilers,” which appeared
in 1906. Then came “The Barrier”
in 1907, and “The Silver Horde” in 1909.
They are all virile stories of Alaskan life
that have stirred many thousands of
readers. Some have gone into dramatic
form, “The Barrier” having attained a
new and distinguished success as a film
picture. In “The Ne’er Do Well” and in
“The Net” Beach sought Southern scenes,
the former novel having Panama as its
background, and “The Net” New Orleans
during the Mafia days. “The Auction
Block,” published in 1914, deals with the
favorite activities of modern Metropolitan
life, and the sale of young girls into the
marriage tie.

Mr. Beach was christened “Rex E.
Beach,” and he retained the middle initial
for some time, but when correspondents
who had read his books sent letters to him
in which they addressed him as “Rev. E.
Beach,” he dropped the middle initial.
He lives in New York City and has a
summer residence at Landing, Lake Hopatcong,
[Pg 13]N. J.

[Pg 14]

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Stewart Edward White
SIX

Readers often link the name of Jack London and
Stewart Edward White. The men were of the same
literary stature, though different from each other in
almost every respect. Both found inspiration
in the same theme—the struggle of man with primeval forces.
In their technique we find the difference. There is a sharp
contrast between the fire of Jack London
and the held-in strength of Stewart Edward
White. White was once asked if it
was not possible to lay hold of the heart
and imagination of the public through a
novel which had no human love interest
in it—whether man matched against nature
was not, after all, the eternal drama.
White considered for a moment and then
said: “In the main, that is correct. Only
I should say that the one great drama is
that of the individual man’s struggles
toward perfect adjustment with his environment.
According as he comes into
correspondence and harmony with his environment,
by that much does he succeed.
That is what an environment is for. It
may be financial, natural, sexual, political,
and so on. The sex element is important,
of course—very important. But it is not
the only element by any means; nor is it
necessarily an element that exercises an
instant influence on the great drama. Anyone
who so depicts it is violating the
truth. Other elements of the great drama
are as important—self-preservation, for
example, is a very simple and even more
important instinct than that of the propagation
of the race. Properly presented,
these other elements, being essentially
vital, are of as much interest to the great
public as the relation of the sexes.” These
words express clearly the trend of Stewart
Edward White’s work.

From the beginning, Mr. White’s career
has been one of prompt recognition and
well-ordered prosperity. He was born at
Grand Rapids, Michigan, on March 12,
1873. He attended no school until he was
sixteen years of age, and yet, far from being
behind his schoolmates, he entered the
high school in the junior class with boys
of his own age and graduated at eighteen,
president of his class. He excelled in
athletics and held the long distance running
record of his school. He graduated
a few years later from the University of
Michigan, and then spent two years in
the Columbia Law School, New York.

With private tutors, and then amidst
the best university surroundings, Stewart
Edward White’s education was obtained
under advantageous auspices. He read
and traveled a great deal, and had time
to indulge his love of outdoor life. His
first production was a story entitled “A
Man and His Dog,” and under the advice
of Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia,
he offered it for publication. It
was bought by Short Stories for $15. This
was Mr. White’s first income from literary
work. Then, after a trip to the Hudson
Bay country, he wrote a story entitled
“The Claim Jumpers,” which was
published in 1901 and met with an encouraging
reception. “The Westerners,”
which was finished later, was bought for
serial publication for about $500. This
was a distinct advance in his literary
affairs, and when “The Blazed Trail” was
published in 1902, Mr. White came truly
into his own. “The Blazed Trail” was
written in a lumber camp in the depth
of a western winter, and it was composed
during the early hours from four A. M. till
eight, before he put on his snow-shoes for
a day’s lumbering. “The Conjurer’s
House” came out in 1903, and in that
same year “The Forest,” which Mr. White
regards as one of the most instructive
books he has written. It is the story of a
canoe trip. The immediate success of
“The Forest” led to the writing of “The
Mountains,” which told the adventures of
a camping trip in the Sierras. Then “The
Mystery,” “Camp and Trail,” “The
River Man,” “The Rules of the Game,”
“The Call of the North,” “The Rediscovered
Country,” “The Adventures of Bobby
Orde,” “The Gray Dawn,” “The Leopard
Woman,” and other books followed. In
all his books he told the vigorous story of
life in its primitive forms. “Gold” is a
picture of the madness of ’49. “The
Dawn” is a story of California, “The
Leopard Woman” a romance of the African
wilds. In his later books, Africa became
to Mr. White a very real and commanding
subject—and one that still holds him in
its lure.

Mr. White produces his books fast and
in highly finished form. He is essentially
a realist. Human achievement, with all
its vital interest and meaning, laid hold
early on his imagination and gave to his
stories their all-pervading sense of truth
to life. As a critic has said, “One puts
down a book by him with a feeling of
having read through experiences, dramatic
and full of romance, yet never breaking
the bounds of probability—and that is fine
art.” Mr. White’s home is in Santa Barbara,
California, and his field of active
experience includes a substantial part of
the whole surface of the earth.

Mr. White entered the U. S. Service
shortly after war was declared. The picture
on the opposite side of this sheet
shows him in uniform as Major of
U. S. Field Artillery.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 6, No. 14, SERIAL No. 162
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

[Pg 15]

THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1918,
by The Mentor Association, Inc.

HARLEKENDEN HOUSE, THE HOME OF WINSTON CHURCHILL, CORNISH, N. H.

MAKERS OF MODERN AMERICAN FICTION
(MEN)

By ARTHUR B. MAURICE

Former Editor of The Bookman, author of “New York of the Novelists”

MENTOR GRAVURES

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS · BOOTH TARKINGTON · STEWART EDWARD WHITE
JACK LONDON · ROBERT W. CHAMBERS · REX BEACH

EDITORIAL NOTE.—In this number of The Mentor the men that are making modern American fiction are considered.
The women fiction writers will be considered in a later number.

Now and again we are privileged to touch hands with some
literary figure of the older generation, who was of the earth
when Poe and his Virginia lived in the Fordham cottage;
when Fenimore Cooper, returned from his long stay in Europe,
was disputing with his neighbors on the shores of Lake
Oneida, when Irving was looking down upon the noble Hudson
from the slopes of his Sunnyside estate; and Holmes was babbling wise
philosophy over his coffee cup at the Boston breakfast table. But
there are not many of these links with the past left, and the number
is diminishing rapidly. Far beyond the Biblical three-score and ten, Mr.
William Dean Howells, as the dean of our literature, is a figure upholding
its richest traditions; turning three-score and ten is Mr. James Lane[Pg 16]
Allen, whose name recalls the rare style and the
throbbing life of the books dealing with the Blue
Grass region of Kentucky. They are almost the
last of the surviving great literary figures of yesterday.
These men and their work have been
covered in Mentor Number 25, “American
Novelists.” The writing men of today, the men
with whom this article has to do, are for the most
part those that have not traveled beyond late
youth or early middle age. Their hats were flung
into the ring in the present century; or, at the
earliest, in the nineties of the last century. Finding
the field of the novelist a broader one than it
was in their fathers’ time, they have blithely ventured,
in their search for themes and material, to
the four corners of the real or the imaginary earth.
The following pages present a general review of the
work of our well known fiction writers of the day.
The works of Owen Wister, Winston Churchill,
Thomas Nelson Page and George W. Cable are
also considered fully in Mentor Number 25, so
we lead off this article with a simple mention of
these distinguished story-writers. In Wister’s
work there is a primal bigness and strength and, in
certain passages, great tenderness and romantic
charm. Two of his best
known books, “The Virginian”
and “Lady Baltimore,” reveal these qualities.

JAMES LANE ALLEN

From photograph, copyright by Paul
Thompson, N. Y.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Press Illustrating Service

JACK LONDON

Bust, by Finn Haakon Frolich, unveiled
in Honolulu, after London
had made his cruise in the Snark

Mr. Winston Churchill began with the somewhat
trivial “The Celebrity” (1898), regarded when it
appeared as a satirical hit at the personality of
Richard Harding Davis. Books that followed
were, “Richard Carvel,” “The Crisis,” “The
Crossing,” “A Far Country,” “Coniston,” “Mr.
Crewe’s Career,” “The Inside of the Cup,” “The
Dwelling-Place of Light.” It is to a splendid persistence,
an inexhaustible patience, a rigid adherence
to his own ideals both in style and substance, that
Winston Churchill owes the high position among
American contemporary writers of fiction that he
holds and has held for nearly two decades. Thomas
Nelson Page and George W. Cable attained fame
long ago as interpreters, in fiction, of Southern life,
Mr. Page by his tender and beautiful “Marse
Chan,” “Meh Lady” and other stories, Mr.[Pg 17]
Cable by his romances of “Old Creole Days”
and “John March, Southerner.”

Bradley studios, N. Y.

JOHN FOX, Jr.

Norris’ Realism and McCutcheon’s Romanticism

More than fifteen years have passed since Frank Norris
died, yet no one has yet come to take quite his place as
an apostle of American realism. Before he fell under the
spell of Émile Zola, with “McTeague,” and began his
Trilogy of the Wheat, he had been the most ardent of
romanticists. His earliest ventures in literature were
tales of love and chivalry, written when he was a boy in
his teens in Paris. “McTeague” was begun in the undergraduate
days at the University of California. It began
to assume shape in his year of student work at Harvard;
but was elaborated and polished for four years
before the public was allowed to see it. In the meantime
“Moran of the Lady Letty” had been dashed off
in an interval of relaxation, and became Norris’ first
published book. Then came to Norris what he considered
“the big idea,” that summed up at once American
life and American prosperity. He would write the
Trilogy of the Wheat. In the first book, “The Octopus,”
he told of the fields and elevators of the Far West.
“The Pit” showed the wheat as the symbol of mad
speculation. With “The Wolf,” to picture the lives of
the consumers in the Eastern States and in Europe,
the Trilogy was to end. But before the tale was
written Frank Norris died, at thirty-two years of age.

GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON

A few years ago, Mr. George Barr McCutcheon was
asked the question, “Where is Graustark?” Whimsically
he attempted to jot down on paper directions for
journeying to the imaginary mountain kingdom, starting
from a railway station in Indiana. Someone rather
ill-naturedly suggested that Mr. McCutcheon had originally discovered this country
in Anthony Hope’s “The Prisoner of Zenda.” But then someone else pointed out that
Anthony Hope in turn had found his inspiration in
Stevenson’s “Prince Otto,” and that R. L. S. himself
had certainly owed something to the Gerolstein
of M. Eugène Sue’s “The Mysteries of Paris.” So
neither the exact whereabouts of Graustark nor its
ultimate source is of great importance. What
really counts is that hundreds of thousands of
readers have found delight in following the adventures
of Mr. McCutcheon’s stately heroines and
somewhat irreverent heroes.

BOOTH TARKINGTON

From a late picture taken at his summer
home in Maine

Every one of his romantic tales has met with
generous welcome—“Graustark,” “Beverly of
Graustark,” “Truxton King” and “The Prince
of Graustark.”

But Graustark, if the first string to Mr. McCutcheon’s
bow, is far from being the only one.
Quite as wide in its popular appeal as any of the
Graustark tales was “Brewster’s Millions,” with
its curious starting problem. “Nedra” dealt with[Pg 18]
a desert island. “The Rose in the Ring” was the story
of a circus. Other books not to be overlooked are “Jane
Cable,” “The Daughter of Anderson Crow,” “The
Man from Brodney’s,” and in shorter form, “The Day
of the Dog,” “The Purple Parasol,” “Cowardice
Court” and “The Alternative.”

OWEN JOHNSON

John Fox and Harold McGrath

Someone recently spoke of John Fox, Jr., as a writer
who never misses fire. Certainly he has staked a definite
claim to the Cumberland Range and the primitive
people who dwell in its valleys and along its mountainsides.
As early as 1894, “A Mountain Europa”
appeared. It was followed by “A Cumberland Vendetta,”
“Hell-for-Sartain,” “The Kentuckians,” “Crittendon,”
and “Blue Grass and Rhododendrons.” But
it was not until 1903, with “The Little Shepherd of
Kingdom Come,” that Mr. Fox came fully into his
own. Incidentally, his fellow-craftsman, Mr. George
Barr McCutcheon, considers the title the best title in all American fiction. The high
standard established in “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” has been maintained
in “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” and “The Heart of the Hills.” Into that imaginary
Central Europe which lies somewhere east of Dresden, west of Warsaw, and
north of the Balkans, Harold McGrath went for such early books as “Arms and the
Woman” and “The Puppet Crown.” Those tales were in the first rank among the
thousands of stories that about that time were being written about the fanciful kingdoms
and principalities, and the natural gift for story spinning that the author showed
then has been in evidence in his subsequent tales in other fields. From among the
twenty odd books that now bear his name, it is not easy to make a selection. Perhaps
those most conspicuous on the score of popularity have been “The Man on the Box,”
“Half a Rogue,” “The Goose Girl,” “The Carpet of Bagdad,”
and “The Voice in the Fog.”

BRAND WHITLOCK

THOMAS DIXON

A Group of Popular Story-Tellers

While still an undergraduate, Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams
wrote several of the tales that went to make up his first
published volume, “Princeton Stories.” In his second volume,
“The Stolen Story and Other Stories,” Mr. Williams
struck an entirely new note. Of
the tale from which the book
drew its title, Richard Harding
Davis, himself the author of
“Gallegher,” once said that it
was “the very best of American
yarns of newspaper life.” Two
others of the collection of striking
ingenuity were “The Great Secretary
of State Interview” and
“The Cub Reporter and the King
of Spain.” Among Jesse Lynch
Williams’ later books are “The
Day-Dreamer,” “My Lost Duchess,”
and “The Married Life of
the Frederick Carrolls.”

[Pg 19]

THEODORE DREISER

It was along the road of anonymity that Basil King finally
found the way to pronounced success. In “Griselda,” “Let
Not Man Put Asunder,” “In the Garden of Charity,” “The
Steps of Honor,” and “The Giant’s Strength” he had won recognition
as an accomplished story-teller. But still his audience
was a comparatively limited one. Then, in 1910, appeared
“The Inner Shrine,” a story of Franco-American life. It was
read from one end of the land to the other, and greatly
piqued curiosity as to the authorship, which, for many months,
was carefully concealed. A dozen different names were suggested
and accepted before it became an open secret that the
story was the work of Basil King. The success of “The
Inner Shrine” was perhaps largely
responsible for the success of
the subsequent “The Wild Olive”
and “The Street Called Straight.”

From photograph, copyright by Paul
Thompson, N. Y.

JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS

In by-gone years it was Brand Whitlock, the Mayor
of Toledo; in recent times it has been Brand Whitlock, the
American Minister to Belgium, that has obscured Brand
Whitlock, novelist. Yet despite the height he has attained
in the fields of politics and of diplomacy, he is, and is likely
always to remain, at heart a man of letters. Some day it
may be given to him to “write the book as he sees it, for
the God of things as they are.” Meanwhile he claims
recognition here on the basis of such works of fiction as
“The Thirteenth District,” “The Happy Average,” “The
Turn of the Balance,” and “The Gold Brick,” a collection
of short stories that appeared in 1910.

Campbell studios, N. Y.

LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

Samuel Hopkins Adams’ first essay in the field of sustained
fiction was “The Mystery,” written in 1905, in collaboration
with Stewart Edward White. The following year appeared
“The Flying Death,” a tale of Montauk Point. Subsequent
novels by Mr. Adams have been “Average Jones,” “The
Secret of Lonesome Cave,”
“Little Miss Grouch,” and
“The Clarion,” the last
named being a story involving
newspaper life and the sinister
influence of the tainted money
of patent medicine advertisers
on the liberty of the press.

From photograph, copyright by Pach
Brothers, N. Y.

IRVING BACHELLER

Despite a career of literary
activity that goes back twenty
years, it is almost entirely to
the books of the past four or
five years that Rupert Hughes owes his present position as
a popular novelist. In this later work, in such books as
“What Will People Say?” “Empty Pockets” and “We
Can’t Have Everything,” he has found his theme in modern
Gotham: New York in the grip of the latest follies,
the insensate, all-day and all-night pursuit of pleasure, the
dance, the eating and drinking, and the squandering. Mr.
Hughes’ novels reveal a range of knowledge of even the remote
corners of the great city that has been painstakingly[Pg 20]
acquired, and that is used with the sense of selection of the accomplished story-teller.
Only a few months beyond undergraduate life Owen Johnson published “Arrows
of the Almighty” and “In the Name of Liberty.” They were read by a limited
audience, mildly applauded, and then forgotten. Later, showing the Balzacian influence,
came “Max Fargus,” dealing with the seamy side of New York law offices.
In the point of material success, it could hardly be considered an improvement on the
earlier books. Then, one day, in a whimsical mood,
the author turned back to memories of his schoolboy
years in Lawrenceville. The road that led to success
and recognition had been found. From one end of
the land to the other, growing boys, and boys that
had grown up, and boys with gray beards laughed
over every fresh exploit of “The Prodigious Hickey,”
and “Dink Stover,” and “Doc McNooder,” and “The
Tennessee Shad,” and “The Triumphant Egghead,”
and “Brian de Boru Finnegan.” Motor parties traveling
between New York and Philadelphia acquired
the habit of breaking the journey at Lawrenceville
for the purpose of visiting “The Jigger Shop,” where
Hungry Smeed established the Great Pancake record.
Then Mr. Johnson took one of his heroes from the
school to the university, and “Stover of Yale” was
the most talked-of book of a month. Turning to a
broader field, the author found, in the turbulent life
of twentieth-century New York, the background for
“The Sixty-first Second,” “The Salamander,”
“Making Money,” “The Woman Gives,” and “Virtuous
Wives.”

Courtesy Charles Scribner’s Sons

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

It is no disparagement of Edwin Lefevre as a workman
to say that one short story, written at a single
sitting before breakfast, is of more permanent importance
than all the rest of his production combined.
For that story is “The Woman and Her Bonds,”
which, without any hesitation, is to be ranked among
the really big short tales of American fiction. It is
the first of the collection known as “Wall Street Stories,” a book which brought to
Mr. Lefevre quick recognition. Wall Street is the author’s particular field, and many
of his characters are easily recognized by those in intimate
touch with the money mart of the Western world. Besides
“Wall Street Stories,” Mr. Lefevre has written “Samson
Rock of Wall Street,” “The Golden Flood,” and “To the
Last Penny.”

Dreiser and Dixon

From photograph by Florence M. Hendershot, Chicago

HAMLIN GARLAND

A vigorous, if undeniably crude, figure in contemporary
American fiction, is Theodore Dreiser. Lacking style and
literary distinction, frequently bordering on the ridiculous,
he nevertheless, by a rigid devotion to a certain kind of
realism that omits no details, has built up a following that
chooses to regard him as something of a great man. His
first book, written a dozen years or more ago, was “Sister
Carrie.” It introduced a soiled, unsentimental, rather sordid,
but pathetic and very human heroine. After a career
in Chicago, Sister Carrie made her way to New York, and
eventually climbed to comfortable heights of worldly success.[Pg 21]
“Jennie Gerhardt”
(1911) was in much the
same vein and manner.
“The Financier” (1912)
gave a picture of American
business life as it was or
as Mr. Dreiser conceived
it to be during the Civil
War and the Reconstruction
Period. Whatever its
merits or demerits may be,
“The Genius,” his latest
novel, owes its chief prominence
to its much debated
morality.

Press Illustrating Service

RUPERT HUGHES AND MRS. HUGHES IN THEIR LONG ISLAND HOME

After a life of activity
in many fields, Thomas
Dixon entered the writing
lists with “The Leopard’s
Spots” (1902), in which,
powerfully if somewhat
unevenly, he depicted conditions
in certain states of the South under the carpet-bag
and negro domination of the late sixties. Following up the
same phase of history, he introduced, in “The Clansman,”
the Kluklux Klan, and showed the work accomplished by
that mysterious organization in bringing about the redemption
of the afflicted district. Among Mr. Dixon’s
later books are “The Traitor,” “The One Woman,” and
“The Sins of the Father.”

CAPT. RUPERT HUGHES

Harrison and Bacheller

Henry Sydnor Harrison’s first novel, “Captivating Mary
Carstairs,” was published anonymously, but in 1911
“Queed” appeared under the author’s own name, and at
once took a place in the front rank of the year’s successful
novels. There was a reminiscence
of Dickens in the
tale. Queed, “the little doctor,”
as he is known to his associates in the story, is
redeemed from over-acute egotism through the agency
of two young women. At two years’ intervals following
“Queed,” came “V. V.’s Eyes” and “Angela’s Business.”

ERNEST POOLE

Back in the nineties of the last century there was a
corner of New York City known as Monkey Hill. It was
in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, and crowning it,
standing far back from the street, was a kind of chalet
that served as a club for certain writing men. Among
these men was Irving Bacheller, and to pleasant evenings
in the club may be traced “Eben Holden” (1900),
the most popular of Mr. Bacheller’s many popular
books. As early as 1893, he had written “The Master
of Silence;” “The Still House of Darrow” appeared in
1894. But it was “Eben Holden” that made the author’s
name for a time a household word. That book was[Pg 22]
followed by “D’ri and I,” “Darrel of the Blessed Isles,”
and “Vergilius,” a tale of ancient Rome. In his later
books, such as “Keeping Up With Lizzie” and “Charge It,”
Mr. Bacheller plays whimsically with the problems of
modern extravagance. His latest novel is “The Light in
the Clearing.”

ZANE GREY

Fiction Notes in Varied Keys

If one novel can make a novelist, Ernest Poole earned
the right to be considered one of the makers of modern
American fiction when he wrote “The Harbor” (1915).
Although the end of the story was somewhat marred by
over-insistence on sociological problems, in the first part of
the book the author struck a reminiscent note as charming
as that struck by Du Maurier in “Peter Ibbetson.” No
one had paid much attention to Mr. Poole’s earlier novel,
“A Man’s Friends,” but in the general recognition of “The
Harbor,” as a work of far more than ephemeral significance,
there was hardly a dissenting voice. Not so widely popular, but marked by the same
high quality of workmanship, is Mr. Poole’s later book, “His Family.”

Of the same generation at Princeton as Ernest Poole was Stephen French Whitman,
and as mention of Mr. Poole’s name inevitably suggests “The Harbor,” so the
name of Mr. Whitman calls up at once memories of “Predestined.” Unlike “The
Harbor,” “Predestined” was not, speaking materially, a success. It was too grim,
its ending was too pitiless. But very few who read the story of the degeneration of
Felix Piers were able soon to forget it. In such later stories as “The Isle of Life” and
“Children of Hope,” Mr. Whitman has forsaken New
York for Italy and Sicily.

JOSEPH C. LINCOLN

It is now almost twenty years since Henry Kitchell
Webster and Samuel Merwin began their writing careers
in collaboration. Together they wrote “The Short Line
War” (1899), “Calumet K” and “Comrade John.” All
these were well-told tales, and the later years, when each
man has been working alone, have shown that neither
one carried an undue share of the burden. Mr. Webster’s
books include “The Whispering Man,” “A King in Khaki,”
“The Ghost Girl,” “The Butterfly” and “The Real Adventure.”
Mr. Merwin’s work has been unusual in the variety
of its themes. Washington and the Constitution of the
United States were ingredients of “The Citadel.” The
adventures of an American girl in China
were narrated in “The Charmed Life of
Miss Austen.” Musical theories, the segregated
district of Yokohama, and incidents
in Chinese hotels went to the making of
“Anthony the Absolute.” “The Honey
Bee” is the story of a woman whose life has
been in an American department store, who
makes a trip to Paris, and there falls in love
with one Blink Moran, of the prize-ring.

JOSEPH LINCOLN’S HOME

Summit Avenue, Hackensack, N. J.

Fiction of Adventure

There is no questioning the force that
Hamlin Garland has been in the literature
of our time. He has told his story of his[Pg 23]
own life and literary activities in
“A Son of the Middle Border”
(1917), a volume that was at once
accepted as one of the foremost of
American literary autobiographies.
In no way detracting from the quality
of Mr. Garland’s later work is
the ventured opinion that he has
never surpassed some of his earlier
stories. His writing career began
about 1890, when the first of the
tales of “Main-Traveled Roads”
struck a fresh note in fiction. Between
1895 and 1898 he wrote
“Rose of Dutcher’s Cooley,” and,
in 1902, “The Captain of the Gray
Horse Troop.” These, with “Main-Traveled
Roads” are still probably his most popular
books. In 1900 “The Eagle’s Heart” appeared, and later
“Hesper,” “The Tyranny of the Dark,” “The Long Trail,”
“The Shadow World” and “Cavanagh, Forest Ranger.”

HARRY LEON WILSON’S BUNGALOW IN THE OZARK
MOUNTAINS, MO.

HARRY LEON WILSON

Writing men of our generation have begun under the
magic spell of Stevenson. To
Lloyd Osbourne it was given to
serve his apprenticeship to R. L. S.,
as Maupassant served his
apprenticeship to Flaubert, and,
while yet an apprentice, to be
accepted as a collaborator.
Together the stepfather and the
stepson worked out “The Wrong
Box” (1889), “The Wrecker”
(1892), and “The Ebb Tide”
(1894). Then Stevenson passed on into Shadow Land, and
some years later Osbourne began alone with “The Queen
Versus Billy” and “Love the Fiddler.” In the first decade
of the present century the motor-car was still something
of a novelty, and as such almost a virgin field for fiction.
It was of its then baffling problems and incomprehensible
moods that Lloyd Osbourne told in “The Motor-maniacs,”
“Three Speeds Forward,” and “Baby
Bullet.” Later books are “Wild Justice,” “The
Adventurer,” and “A Person of Some Importance.”

WILL PAYNE

From photograph, copyright by Paul Thompson, N.Y.

SAMUEL MERWIN

A certain letter of the alphabet for a time
seemed to exert a cabalistic influence on Louis
Joseph Vance. “The Brass Bowl” appeared in
1907. The book of the next year was “The Black
Bag.” In 1909 it was “The Bronze Bell.” There
ended the use of the double B, but in 1912, Mr.
Vance wrote “The Bandbox.” In the meantime
had appeared “The Pool of Flame,” “The Fortune
Hunter,” “No Man’s Land,” and “Cynthia-of-the-Minute.”
Among the books that have followed
“The Bandbox” are “The Day of Days,” “Joan[Pg 24]
Thursday,” showing Mr. Vance
at his best, “The Lone Wolf,”
and very recently, “The False
Faces,” in which the Lone Wolf
returns to play a great part in
the World War.

EDWIN LEFEVRE

Each Holds a Place of His Own

The Law has ever had countless
stories to tell. There is
hardly a tale by Arthur Train
that does not, in some way,
lead back to one of the offices
that cluster about the Criminal
Courts Building facing Centre Street, on the lower end of Manhattan Island. In that
neighborhood swung the shingle of the law firm of Gottlieb & Quibble, as related in
“The Confessions of Artemas Quibble.” Mr. Train’s first book, “McAllister and His
Double” (1905), began in a Fifth Avenue club, but before a dozen pages had been
finished, fate had carried McAllister to the Tombs Prison. The thrice-told tales of
Pontin’s Restaurant in Franklin Street, where the lawyers gather at the noon hour,
went to make “The Prisoner at the Bar,” “True Stories of Crime” and “Courts,
Criminals and the Camorra.” Like Mr. Train, William Hamilton Osborne has also
achieved a place in Literature as well as Law.

ARTHUR TRAIN

There are readers who regard the very facility of Gouverneur Morris as a curse,
believing that if writing to him had been harder work, his present achievement would
be considerably greater. His first book, “A Bunch of Grapes,” dates back to his
undergraduate days at Yale. Four years later, in 1901, “Tom Beauling” appeared,
to be followed the next year by “Aladdin O’Brien.” “Yellow Men and White” showed
what he could do in the vein of “Treasure Island.” Of more enduring quality was “The
Voice in the Rice.” It is not surprising that many of our novelists have begun with
tales of undergraduate life. “Princeton Stories” was the first book of Jesse Lynch Williams.
“Harvard Episodes” of Charles M. Flandrau. Will Irwin’s first fling at the
game of writing was “Stanford Stories” (1910). That book was done in collaboration.
Also in collaboration, this time with Gelett Burgess, the creator of “The Purple Cow,”
the editor of The Lark, and a humorist of rare whim, were written Mr. Irwin’s next two
books. It was a short sketch of the old San Francisco before the earthquake, called “The
City That Was,” that first made Will Irwin’s name widely known. Of more substantial
proportions were “The House of Mystery,” “The Readjustment” and “Beating Back.”

ROBERT HERRICK

Of a certain genuine importance has been the work of Robert Herrick. The author,
like his heroes, has been finding the threads of life’s web in a
rather sorry tangle, and groping for a solution of the world’s
real meaning. It was of problems big and vital in our American
civilization that Mr. Herrick wrote in “The Memoirs of
an American Citizen,” “The Common Lot,” “The Web of
Life,” “The Real World,” “The Gospel of Freedom,” and
“Together.” In “The Master of the Inn” he has achieved
an exceptional short story. Also deserving of high attention
is Meredith Nicholson, who began in 1903 with “The Main
Chance,” and achieved unusual popular success somewhat
later with “The House of a Thousand Candles” and “The
Port of Missing Men.” Among Mr. Nicholson’s more recent
books are “The Lords of High Decision,” “Hoosier Chronicle,”
“Otherwise Phyllis” and “The Siege of the Seven[Pg 25]
Suitors.” For tales breathing the spirit of the West and
intricate mystery stories, Zane Grey and Burton Egbert
Stevenson are known respectively. Mr. Grey’s best known
books are “The Heritage of the Desert,” “The Light of
Western Stars,” “The Lone Star Ranger,” “The Heart of
the Desert” and “The U. P. Trail.” Wherever a well-told
yarn of intricate mystery is appreciated, such books as Mr.
Stevenson’s “The Marathon Mystery,” “The Destroyer”
and “The Boule Cabinet” have found generous welcome.
Will Payne is the author of “Jerry the Dreamer,” the striking
“Story of Eva,” “Mr. Salt” and “The Losing Game”;
Edward W. Townsend in writing of Chimmie Fadden did
not forfeit the place as a novelist to which he is entitled
by reason of such books as “A Daughter of the Tenements,” “Days Like These” and
“Lees and Leaven”; and Harry Leon Wilson, who years ago made a definite impression
with “The Seeker” and “The Spenders,” and who
of late has been moving a continent to laughter by the
dexterity with which he confronted the very British Ruggles
with the complicated problems of social life in the
town of Red Gap—somewhere in America.

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY

Moffett studios, Chicago

EMERSON HOUGH

MAXIMILLIAN FOSTER

Besides all these there are Joseph C. Lincoln and Cyrus
Townsend Brady, the first one in high favor for his breezy
stories of Cape Cod life and character, redolent of the salt sea
air, the latter for his many entertaining tales of plain and
desert; and Sewell Ford, who created the slangy but very
human “Shorty McCabe” and “Torchy”; and those two
pungent writers of Western episodes, Peter Kyne and
Charles E. Van Loan. Emerson Hough has given us rousing
tales of the Middle and Far West, of the Kentucky mountains
and Alaska. Holman Day’s excellent stories breathe of
the Maine woods, and Roy Norton has rendered tribute to
the sea. Harris Dickson, a son of Mississippi, has woven into
story form some throbbing incidents of Southern history, and
has depicted numerous sunny corners of every-day existence
below the Mason and Dixon line. James Branch Cabell is a
spinner of charming romances; some of the best have a medieval
French flavor. Harold Bell Wright is well known as the
author of “Barbara Worth” and several other books whose
sales have climbed into the hundreds of thousands. Richard
Washburn Child is a young American who wields a vigorous
pen in the portrayal of national character, and James Oppenheim,
not to be confused with the Englishman, E. Phillips
Oppenheim, represents vital phases of present-day city life.
Joseph Hergesheimer has won a place among writers by
reason of his picturesque style and original invention. A
comprehensive list of American-born novelists must also
include the names of Leroy Scott, Henry B. Fuller, Frank H. Spearman, Earl Derr Biggers
and Arthur Reeve, all of whom have within late years produced popular successes.

The roll of the makers of modern American fiction is a long one, yet none can
gainsay that the average of achievement is high.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

[Pg 26]

THE OPEN LETTER

As you finish the foregoing review of
fiction writers, you may ask, “Why do
you make no mention of one of the best
known and most widely read of all our
modern story-tellers—O. Henry?” We
have reserved a special place for him on
this page. O. Henry occupied a position
of unique distinction among fiction
makers, and it is only fitting that he
should have a place of his own in this
number of The Mentor.
As there is in literature
only one Edgar Poe and
one Maupassant, so
there is only one O.
Henry—and the gamut
of life’s keynotes that
his fingers swept was
wider than that of Poe
and Maupassant combined.
Tragedy, Comedy,
Mystery, Adventure,
Romance and Humor—he
knew them all, and
it was with no uncertain,
amateur touch, but with
the strong, sure stroke of
a master that he played
in those varied keys. His
Tragedy is grim, his
Comedy light and skilful,
his Mystery baffling, his
Adventure absorbing, his
Romance charming, and
his Humor irresistible.

O. HENRY

(William Sydney Porter—from the latest
photograph made of him)

William Sydney Porter—for that was
O. Henry’s real name—was born at
Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1867. His
father was a doctor of ability, and something
of an inventive genius. His mother
wrote poetry, and her father was, at one
time, a newspaper editor. There was nothing
unusual about this family outfit—it
was quite ordinary, in fact, and in no way
explained the genius of O. Henry. Nor
did his school days, nor his term of employment
as a clerk in a drug store.
His boyhood was like that of thousands.
But, as we read of him: “In
those days Sunday was a day of rest, and
Porter and a friend would spend the long
afternoons out on some sunny hillside
sheltered from the wind by the thick
brown broom sedge, lying on their backs
gazing up into the blue sky dreaming,
planning, talking or turning to their
books and reading. He was an ardent
lover of God’s great out-of-doors, a
dreamer, a thinker and a constant reader.”

At eighteen years of age he went to Texas
and, as he put it, “ran wild on the prairies.”
If he had any ambitions to write at that
time, he did not show
them. He lived in an atmosphere
of adventure,
and he loved to tell stories,
but apparently just
for the pleasure of it. He
was a good singer, a clever
mimic, and something
of a sketch artist. But
his pen had not yet begun
to flow. From the
Texas ranch he went to
Austin, where he engaged
in newspaper work. After
that came a period
of wandering—and then
the New York life. He
lived in two big rooms
on quiet Irving Place,
three doors from Washington
Irving’s old
home—and he found it
lonesome. So he became
a wanderer in New York,
and he saw and noted
many things in the life
of that city that no other writer had taken
account of. New York is better known
to the world since O. Henry lived there.
His stories were written under pressure
and with great rapidity. He contracted
to furnish the New York World one
story a week for a year, and his product
was so good that the contract was
renewed. During the same period he
was contributing to magazines. His
total of stories amounts to two hundred
and fifty-one, and they were written
during eight years. Then, in 1910,
he died, leaving the world enriched by
a heritage of short stories that stand
high among the classic productions of
their kind.

W. S. Woffat

EDITOR

[Pg 27]

[Pg 28]

THE MENTOR

A NEW VOLUME

It gives us much pleasure to advise our friends that the sixth
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It contains numbers one hundred and twenty-one to one
hundred and forty-four inclusive, and is, in every particular,
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One of the great advantages of The Mentor Library is that it continues
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instructive and wonderfully illustrated material that it would be
impossible to obtain elsewhere. As a new volume is added each
year, this constitutes one of the most valuable educational sets
that you could possibly own, and at a small cost.

The beautiful numbers of the
unique Mentor Library will
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Mentor is built on an important
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The concise form in which
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