ODD MANUSCRIPTS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1449, 25 May 1912, Page 9

ODD MANUSCRIPTS.

Probably all publishing 1 houses have had odd experiences with manuscripts, • but some ot tlioso of the Messrs. Harper are peculiar, as described in tho recentlyissued "House of Harper." Thus, cases of bad writing and bad typing are universal, but a novel running to sonic 250,000 words, so minutely written that tho best eyes could not stand more than half an hour of it, and yet so good" in quality that it had to be read practical!}; through, is exceptional. A "crank' manuscript arrived in a box weighing 251b.j and proved to bo an incoherent tan lof words dealing in esoteric philosophy and illustrated by charts in coloured inks covered with mysterious hieroglyphics. A work with numerous interlineations and erasures that spoke of original composition proved to be Mrs. Shelley 6 "Frankenstein," with American equivalents for the original names and places. A case like that of the "Giant's Kobe", also occurred. Tliero came to the ofhee a book bearing such marks of power .that tho publisher corresponded with the lady who had sent it, with a view to her future work. When that work came it was worthless, and it turned out that the original story was a legacy from a dead friend, and the lady had hoped to open up a literary career for herself by issuing it as her own. She had got engaged on the strength of it, and on the marriage card which reached the publisher was written, "I have told him." The resemblance between two stories from different parts of the country, which had tho same title awl similar plots, was accounted for by both writers having heard , the same travelling lecturer, but the case in which an author sent in a story with the plot of an ■unpublished novel by Howells is a most curious instance of coincidence. Out of sight the most striking experience of this sort, however, was a superbly written work, the subject ot which was too horrible for publication:— ■ "Tho story purported to bo a narrative of the last week in the lives of two human derelicts—an immoral woman and a 'black sheep' English younger son, who had met by chance at the edge of the abyss. That man could write! He,himself must have beeii the 'black sheep' to have plumbed as ho did the utmost depths of despair and degradation. The pictures of horror were too horrible for a normal miiul. to gazo upon; one instinctively revolted,at this glimpse into, an actual liell. .There was but one thing to do—to skim. it over .rapidly and get the dreadful thing out of the place. It was the kind of book the devil himself might have written, and it camo in the ordinary way by express from a dull and decorous >.ew England town."