Unconquered Fields

In the editorial office of one of the oldest and most successful magazines in this country over 1,500 published and accepted stories were gone over in order to secure six with a definite motif. This editor declared, "Good stuff is at a premium; we can not get enough of the materials we desire. We need live characters, animated plots and language pulsating with vigorous ideas which are expressed and controlled by the art and the unities of rhetoric."

Today the motif story is in demand. Sacrifice, heroism, peril, faith, hope, virtue, when well embodied, are always in favor. Highmindedness, friendship, generosity of rivals as exemplified in Washington, Jonathan and David, Gladstone and Disraeli, may well be imitated in the everyday fields of life.

Veritably authors have eyes and see not, ears and hear not; for editors crave the story depicting the noble man or woman in everyday life. They wish to catch the pictures of men who are in quest of hard tasks, and who encounter the enemy and put him to flight; they desire men who can stand in the midst of the battles of life, where hatreds and jealousies are rampant, where man traduces man, where brother maltreats brother and where falsehoods and corruptions poison and embitter life; they wish men, who pass through this and still retain their cheer and good-will toward their fellow men.

Goody-goody characterless characters arc useless. Their adventures are insipid ; but live boys, girls, men, and women who stand amid temptations like solid rocks, who buffet the storms of adversity, who deny and give the lie to heredity and tradition when it would drag them down, and who create for themselves chance, environment and opportunity to be of service to humanity, are of vital interest to the reading world.

This demands characters with the unconquerable will,' with the sanest optimism and with the largest humanity illumined by a spark of divinity. The story itself should be comprehensive, democratic, optimistic and evolutionary.

A fact worthy of attention is that noted authors have been repeatedly asked to write such stories; their invariable answer has been: "I can not afford it, because I can write five in an ordinary vein and market them while I am preparing one of your kind."

The expert will fully leave the field open to cultivate the ivy of quickest growth, and the oak remains untended. And, "it is not likely that any professional writer will trouble himself to strike out a new path where the old path leads to fortune." Here is ample opportunity.

The needs of the human race are boundless. They are to be found in every field of activity. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" filled the yearning mind with a definite purpose, and its author is world famous.

A sincere appeal in behalf of the good, the true and the beautiful always finds room at the top. This is exemplified in real life, and is brought very vividly to us in the world of art. Beauty is the eternal theme, even though suffering is the source of inspiration. In literature good is the supreme subject and first-hand knowledge of life gives its truth an added charm. '

If an author realizes that he has a mission in the world, he may find many lessons in the lives of great men. Napoleon was a constant student of Plutarch; Dante pays tribute to Virgil and Virgil to the blind bard of Chios. Each encompasses a field reaching from the divinest bliss to direst woe. Plato gives us the virtue of wisdom; Goethe beckons for greater culture, and Emerson would have us be friends with the "Over-soul." Everywhere genius has bowed in reverence to an omnipotent master. And as this is true of great men, so is it all the more a fact for humanity, which needs a constant guide and stimulus to keep it moving onward amid the fatigue of life.

So, while many search for the abnormal, the rare, and the negative and sensational, let those who know and care find, the parallel cases on the positive side of life and present them to the world in an attractive manner.

The expose literature of the day should point out the way to enterprising writers. Men, policies, systems and traditions are all under a merciless bombardment. Radical champions of the truth are pressing their victory with massacre. The flashlight of exposure is working ruin in the enemies' camps.

Here lies the chance for the exponents of conservatism to extract the fundamentally good and sound principles and preserve them for the world.

There is indeed need of war, but surrender must be followed by rescue and peace.

In literature there is as much need of appreciation as of denunciation. The ideals of today rise to supplant the ruins of yesterday. While many tear down the old and condemned, let the prophetic hearts earnestly build up the new and approved.

The author's work is a great work, a good work, a noble work, if he fully realizes the true importance of his mission and the influence which he exerts for good or bad upon his fellow men.    
If the strange, the false, the cruel, the inhuman has been his inmost theme then time has already forgotten his fate.

But, if the Godlike in humanity has inspired his inmost soul, then Abou Ben Adhem's angel will appear the second night to show his name writ large across the book of fame.