NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Writes Boys’ Stories which the Girls Like 
Ralph Henry Barbour of Cambridge and Manchester Has Turned Out 24 Books for Juveniles at the 
Rate of Two a Year---Letters He Gets from Pleased Children---His Experiences as a News- 
paper Man in Boston and Denver---Why he Refused to Pen an Aeroplane Tale. 
Ralph Henry Barbour of 361 Har- 
_ vard street, Cambridge, having writ- 
ten two dozen books for juveniles, 
while still on the sunny side of mid- 
dle age, lives on the fat of the land. 
_ He turns out two stories a year, one 
of which runs serially, and produces 
a gift book each season for grown- 
ups beside. 
He does his writing in a cozy den 
on the third floor of the Colonial 
 elub, Quincy st., Cambridge, and 
just at this season he is working the 
typewriter at top speed, recounting 
the school exploits of manly boys, 
whom it took him three whole days 
in mid-October to get started on 
the road to heroship. 
Mr. Barbour writes boys’ stories 
that girls like, and youngsters of 
both sexes send him a good many 
letters wanting more of the same 
kind of character tales he has pro- 
duced for these dozen years past. 
Curiously enough the man who con- 
sistently pleases thousands of child- 
ren and youths with every new book 
be issues, lays claim to nothing more 
than a professional interest in the 
work. If Mr. Barbour has genius 
he himself has never discovered it. 
It was in his severely furnished 
den at the top of the Colonial club 
that the author talked with the re- 
porter between puffs of a good cigar. 
The author had kept an evening ap- 
pointment to the minute and while 
climbing stairs the weather had 
come in for a little criticism. 
“‘T used to be in your business’’, 
said he to the newspaperman as he 
was arranging himself at his desk 
for the ordeal of an interview. ‘‘I 
was covering Cambridge and Somer- 
ville for a combination of morning 
and evening papers in about 90 or 
’91. I got out of that job rather pe- 
culiarly. My folks used to go down 
to Beach Bluff in the summer and I 
would run down in the morning and 
get back in the afternoon in time 
to get the news for my afternoon 
paper. 
“‘Well, this day I did that and drop- 
ped around to the police station to 
exchange items with the other fel- 
lows. That particular day a house 
had fallen down and two or three 
people were hurt. I got the facts 
from them, wrote my story and sent 
it in. That afternoon I had some- 
thing else on and didn’t bother any 
more about news until it was time 
to look into things for my morning 
paper. I guess it was the next day 
that I was in the office and the city 
editor called me over and wanted to 
know why I didn’t get the story on 
that building that fell down. 
** “*T got the story all right,’ I said. 
‘It was the building fell down, not 
me.’ 
‘““Then he broke the news to me 
that another building had fallen 
down that same afternoon in Somer- 
ville. About a week after that I sort 
of figured chasing news was too 
many for me, so I quit. © 
‘“‘That happened about August as 
I recall, and I went out to Denver, 
where I still stuck to the newspaper 
business. I was out there about 
seven years all together. I worked 
on the Republican and the Times, 
where I became their crime artist 
and used to have a jolly time travel- 
ing all over, the state of Colorado 
covering trials and doing murder 
stories. In those days there was 
something doing in the gun line all 
the time, and I always had a bunch 
of that stuff to get through. Then 
the Colorado Sun was started and I 
went over to them to do the same 
kind of work, 
“‘That paper turned out to be a 
newspaper tragedy. It started with 
one of the finest staffs in the country, 
and for a while was a big success. 
They couldn’t get an Associated 
Press franchise at first, and to over- 
SN é 
Sabp he Kerry Barbour 
come that deficiency contracted with 
correspondents in every little city 
and town through the state to fur- 
nish news, giving every man a mon- 
ey guarantee. Some of the stuff 
those country fellows sent in was 
pretty punk and a good many times 
about three-quarters of it went into 
the waste basket. But the way the 
Sun covered the state woke up the 
other papers and for a while Denver 
with about 30,000 population and 
three papers was about the liveliest 
newspaper town in the United States, 
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