_> £’Weewent shins Spenine: for: a 
while; 
“Tt is a eurious story abope how 
we went bad. The managing editor 
was a man named William H. Grif- 
fiths; we ealled him Billy. Politics 
was pretty hot out there then, and I 
forgot exactly what the situation 
was, but anyhow, Billy had to de- 
cide which side to take on an imn- 
portant political matter one night 
right off the reel. And he decided 
wrong. In six months the Sun had 
gone to the newspaper graveyard. 
‘*After that I went into the Grand 
Valley fruit ranching. The job came 
to me through a fellow I knew in 
Denver, who was interested in the. 
fruit land out there at that time, 
which was just when the boom was 
getting well under way. Our pro- 
position, of which I was assistant 
manager, was to sell and develop 
the territory, and we disposed of a 
lot of the finest irrigated property 
in the country. IJ was in that busi- 
ness a couple of years and had a 
good time in it. 
‘‘I was married in Denver in 1895 
and the next year came eastward and 
began reading copy on the Chicago 
Inter Ocean. From there I went to 
the Philadelphia Times to read copy. 
Not long after I became night city 
editor. 
“‘Wow did you happen to begin 
writing boys’ books, Mr. Barbour?’’ 
‘“Well, that city editor jeb struck 
me as pretty hard work and the elec- 
tric lights didn’t all together agree 
with my eyes. Besides, I was mar- 
ried, and about that time was get- 
ting over the idea of becoming a 
great editor and deciding it was 
about. time to get out and make 
some money. 
‘“When I’was a kid I always had 
a knack of writing verses, and dur- 
ing most of my newspaper days used 
to send skits to Puck, Life and Lip- 
pincott’s. Curious enough, I wrote 
under a pseudonym—ealled myself 
Richard Stillman Powell in print. I 
don’t know why I did it, but I sup- 
pose I thought a writer ought to 
have a pen name, 
‘““My first boys’ story was a little 
piece of fiction called ‘The Arrival 
of Jimpson,’ and it was published 
in St Nicholas’, about 1899. Probab- 
ly I shouldn’t have done much more 
along that line if it hadn’t been for 
Ripley Hitchcock, who. was at that_ 
time one of the Appleton editors. He 
‘found’ me. In fact, after he had 
seen the ‘Arrival of Jimpson’ he 
wrote and wondered why I couldn’t 
do a book of the same sort. That 
led to my writing another of. the 
juveniles, and the list now runs to 
-NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
24. Hitchcock, who set me on the 
work, was the man who accepted 
‘David Harum’ after 17 publishers 
had turned it down—you know the 
story. 
“The reason why I have so many 
of the juveniles to my eredit—or 
discredit—is that I am turning out 
two a year. One is published by the 
Appletons in book form, and the 
other is run serially in St Nicholas 
and is put out later as a book. Be- 
sides these I am doing a novelette 
every year for Lippincott’s, which is 
got up as a gift book, with photo- 
graphically decorated pages. There 
are six of these at present. 
‘‘Here is the first, ‘Kitty of the 
Roses,’ ’’ said Mr. Barbour, stepping 
to the table and picking up the beau- 
tifully printed volume. “‘That’s the 
best one of the half dozen. Every 
year, when I get the agreement, it 
reads: ‘A novelette similar to ‘‘ Kitty 
of the Roses’’ ’, but I have never 
been able quite to equal it.’’ 
“T suppose you follow some rules 
for your boys’ books?’’ queried Mr. 
Barbour’s interviewer. 
‘“‘Offhand, I wouldn’t say so’’, he 
replied. ‘‘I aim to make more of the 
characters than the stories, and not 
to thrust anything down their 
throats that couldn’t happen. My 
stories are school stories, dealing 
with boys from 12 to 20 years old, 
and I put them into natural school 
situations.. They play football, hoc- 
key, baseball and try themselves out 
in track sports, but all of it can 
happen to boys of that age and 
doubtless does in one way or another 
to hundreds of youngsters in 
school.’’ a 
“Do you make an elaborate plan, 
or think out an ending and then 
write up to it?”’ 
“‘T am afraid planning is my weak 
point. My difficulty is to get start- 
ed right. Why, I’ve been three days 
trying to get going on a story now. 
I couldn’t do it today, so I spent the 
time taking my automobile to pieces 
up at the garage. The machine had 
acted .just like a horse that felt. it 
had done enough work for the 
amount of oats furnished, and when 
I got it together again it didn’t act 
any better. And I didn’t get that 
story started while I ,was messing 
up its insides either. Well, I usual- 
ly map out my characters and suit 
myself as to the beginning. Then I 
let them take care of themselves. 
‘‘Once I know the kind of. boys 
they are the incidents come easily, 
and as I lay. my greatest. stress on 
characters, I know how the kids will 
” 
act when they’re up against ¢ a pre 
position. One kind of a fellow would 
be sure to act one way in a situation - 
that another would meet entirely 
differently. One thing I am a stickler 
for and that is chronological order. 
I decide on my scene and the time. 
The story I am going to begin will 
be laid at school last year. 
“‘The safest rule 1 know for any 4 
writer is the one attributed to O. 
Henry, who said he wrote to please 
himself. You know what you your- — 
self like, or would like if you were a | 
boy, as you were years ago, and you © 
can be pretty sure that your own hu- 
man nature is a pretty fair example 
of the general run. 
‘‘The girls read my stories as “well _ 
as the boys. It seems to me from 
the letters I get that more girls read 
them than boys, but that is only be-— 
cause three girls will write to tell © 
you what they think of a chara aa 
while one boy is thinking about pen- 
ning a letter. 
letters from them, and always try 
to answer them, although it’s a good 
hie 
: 
; 
‘ 
I get a good many = 
deal of a bore sometimes, especially . 
when a girl wants to know what — 
happens in the next book to a hero 
or heroine. My books run in trios or ~ 
fours, and frequently I am able to 
‘make the next of the series a reply 
to such exhibitions of curiosity. 
‘‘Letters containing queer re- 
quests come in often. Only the other 
day I had one from a woman who is 
a librarian out in Kansas. She beg- 
ged me to write a book with an aero-_ 
plane in it. She said she was 
swamped with requests from child- 
ren who wanted to read about flying 
machines. But I can’t touch it. It 
is against my policy of never making 
my characters do anything that 
would be impossible or improbable 
for them, and flying is still a man’s 
game. I don’t believe in this scheme 
of writing juveniles on the leading 
story in yesterday’s paper”. 
‘You aim, however, to reflect the 
current interest of the youngsters, 
don’t you?”’ 
‘‘Boys today like clean athletics 
and manliness, and those things I -~ 
like to furnish them. I don’t know 
that their tastes have changed so 
great since I was a boy, though I did 
like the Oliver Optic stuff, notwith- 
standing that I knew his kids were 
doing things that grown men con- 
sidered to be something in the line 
of feats. 
**Now that you ask it, J ames. Otis’ 
‘Toby Tyler’ is to my. mind the best 
boy’ s book ever written. Some lib- 
rarian wrote me once putting that 
very question, and I remember I put 
