John S. C. Abbott - "Napoleon Bonaparte"

Sam Vaknin - "Issues in Ethics"

Louisa May Alcott - "The Mysterious Key And What It Opened"

Azel Ames - "The Mayflower and Her Log, v2"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Merton of the Movies

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Merton of the Movies




Not one of these enviable persons ever betrayed any interest in
Simsbury or its little group of citizens who daily gathered on the
platform to do them honour. Merton Gill used to fancy that these
people might shrewdly detect him to be out of place there--might
perhaps take him to be an alien city man awaiting a similar proud
train going the other way, standing, as he would, aloof from the
obvious villagers, and having a manner, a carriage, an attire, such
as further set him apart. Still, he could never be sure about this.
Perhaps no one ever did single him out as a being patently of the
greater world. Perhaps they considered that he was rightly of
Simsbury and would continue to be a part of it all the days of his
life; or perhaps they wouldn't notice him at all. They had been
passing Simsburys all day, and all Simsburys and all their peoples
must look very much alike to them. Very well--a day would come.
There would be at Simsbury a momentous stop of No. 4 and another
passenger would be in that dining car, disjoined forever from
Simsbury, and he with them would stare out the polished windows at
the gaping throng, and he would continue to stare with incurious
eyes at still other Simsburys along the right of way, while the
proud train bore him off to triumphs never dreamed of by natural-
born villagers.

He decided now not to tantalize himself with a glance at this
splendid means of escape from all that was sordid. He was still not
a little depressed by the late unpleasantness with Gashwiler, who
had thought him a crazy fool, with his revolver, his fiercely
muttered words, and his holding aloft of a valuable dummy as if to
threaten it with destruction. Well, some day the old grouch would
eat his words; some day he would be relating to amazed listeners
that he had known Merton Gill intimately at the very beginning of
his astounding career. That was bound to come. But to-night Merton
had no heart for the swift spectacle of No. 4. Nor even, should it
halt, did he feel up to watching those indifferent, incurious
passengers who little recked that a future screen idol in natty
plush hat and belted coat amusedly surveyed them. To-night he must
be alone--but a day would come. Resistless Time would strike his
hour!

Still he must wait for the mail before beginning his nightly study.
Certain of his magazines would come to-night. He sauntered down the
deserted street, pausing before the establishment of Selby Brothers.
From the door of this emerged one Elmer Huff, clerk at the City Drug
Store. Elmer had purchased a package of cigarettes and now offered
one to Merton.

"'Lo, Mert! Have a little pill?"

"No, thanks," replied Merton firmly.

He had lately given up smoking--save those clandestine indulgences
at the expense of Gashwiler--because he was saving money against his
great day.

Elmer lighted one of his own little pills and made a further
suggestion.

"Say, how about settin' in a little game with the gang to-night
after the store closes--ten-cent limit?"

"No, thanks," replied Merton, again firmly.

He had no great liking for poker at any limit, and he would not
subject his savings to a senseless hazard. Of course he might win,
but you never could tell.

"Do you good," urged Elmer. "Quit at twelve sharp, with one round of
roodles."

"No, I guess not," said Merton.

"We had some game last night, I'll tell the world! One hand we had
four jacks out against four aces, and right after that I held four
kings against an ace full. Say, one time there I was about two-
eighty to the good, but I didn't have enough sense to quit. Hear
about Gus Giddings? They got him over in the coop for breaking in on
a social out at the Oak Grove schoolhouse last night. Say, he had a
peach on when he left here, I'll tell the world! But he didn't get
far. Them Grove lads certainly made a believer out of him. You ought
to see that left eye of his!"

Merton listened loftily to this village talk, gossip of a rural
sport who got a peach on and started something--And the poker game
in the back room of the City Drug Store! What diversions were these
for one who had a future? Let these clods live out their dull lives
in their own way. But not Merton Gill, who held aloof from their low
sports, studied faithfully the lessons in his film-acting course,
and patiently bided his time.

He presently sauntered to the post office, where the mail was being
distributed. Here he found the sight-seers who had returned from the
treat of No. 4's flight, and many of the less enterprising citizens
who had merely come down for their mail. Gashwiler was among these,
smoking one of his choice cigars. He was not allowed to smoke in the
house. Merton, knowing this prohibition, strictly enforced by Mrs.
Gashwiler, threw his employer a glance of honest pity. Briefly he
permitted himself a vision of his own future home--a palatial
bungalow in distant Hollywood, with expensive cigars in elaborate
humidors and costly gold-tipped cigarettes in silver things on low
tables. One might smoke freely there in every room.

Under more of the Elmer Huff sort of gossip, and the rhythmic clump
of the cancelling stamp back of the drawers and boxes, he allowed
himself a further glimpse of this luxurious interior. He sat on a
low couch, among soft cushions, a magnificent bearskin rug beneath
his feet. He smoked one of the costly cigarettes and chatted with a
young lady interviewer from Photo Land.

"You ask of my wife," he was saying. "But she is more than a wife--
she is my best pal, and, I may add, she is also my severest critic."

He broke off here, for an obsequious Japanese butler entered with a
tray of cooling drinks. The tray would be gleaming silver, but he
was uncertain about the drinks; something with long straws in them,
probably. But as to anything alcoholic, now--While he was trying to
determine this the general-delivery window was opened and the
interview had to wail. But, anyway, you could smoke where you wished
in that house, and Gashwiler couldn't smoke any closer to his house
than the front porch. Even trying it there he would be nagged, and
fussily asked why he didn't go out to the barn. He was a poor fish,
Gashwiler; a country storekeeper without a future. A clod!

Merton, after waiting in line, obtained his mail, consisting of
three magazines--Photo Land, Silver Screenings, and Camera. As he
stepped away he saw that Miss Tessie Kearns stood three places back
in the line. He waited at the door for her. Miss Kearns was the one
soul in Simsbury who understood him. He had confided to her all his
vast ambitions; she had sympathized with them, and her never-failing
encouragement had done not a little to stiffen his resolution at odd
times when the haven of Hollywood seemed all too distant. A certain
community of ambitions had been the foundation of this sympathy
between the two, for Tessie Kearns meant to become a scenario writer
of eminence, and, like Merton, she was now both studying and
practising a difficult art. She conducted the millinery and
dressmaking establishment next to the Gashwiler Emporium, but found
time, as did Merton, for the worthwhile things outside her narrow
life.

She was a slight, spare little figure, sedate and mouselike, of
middle age and, to the village, of a quiet, sober way of thought.
But, known only to Merton, her real life was one of terrific
adventure, involving crime of the most atrocious sort, and contact
not only with the great and good, but with loathsome denizens of the
underworld who would commit any deed for hire. Some of her scenarios
would have profoundly shocked the good people of Simsbury, and she
often suffered tremors of apprehension at the thought that one of
them might be enacted at the Bijou Palace right there on Fourth
Street, with her name brazenly announced as author. Suppose it were
Passion's Perils! She would surely have to leave town after that!
She would be too ashamed to stay. Still she would be proud, also,
for by that time they would be calling her to Hollywood itself. Of
course nothing so distressing--or so grand--had happened yet, for
none of her dramas had been accepted; but she was coming on. It
might happen any time.

She joined Merton, a long envelope in her hand and a brave little
smile on her pinched face.

"Which one is it?" he asked, referring to the envelope.

"It's Passion's Perils." she answered with a jaunty affectation of
amusement. "The Touchstone-Blatz people sent it back. The slip says
its being returned does not imply any lack of merit."

"I should think it wouldn't!" said Merton warmly.

He knew Passion's Perils. A company might have no immediate need for
it, but its rejection could not possibly imply a lack of merit,
because the merit was there. No one could dispute that.

They walked on to the Bijou Palace. Its front was dark, for only
twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, could Simsbury muster a
picture audience; but they could read the bills for the following
night. The entrance was flanked on either side by billboards, and
they stopped before the first. Merton Gill's heart quickened its
beats, for there was billed none other than Beulah Baxter in the
ninth installment of her tremendous serial, The Hazards of Hortense.

It was going to be good! It almost seemed that this time the
scoundrels would surely get Hortense. She was speeding across a vast
open quarry in a bucket attached to a cable, and one of the
scoundrels with an ax was viciously hacking at the cable's farther
anchorage. It would be a miracle if he did not succeed in his
hellish design to dash Hortense to the cruel rocks below. Merton, of
course, had not a moment's doubt that the miracle would intervene;
he had seen other serials. So he made no comment upon the gravity of
the situation, but went at once to the heart of his ecstasy.

"The most beautiful woman on the screen," he murmured.

"Well, I don't know."

Miss Kearns appeared about to advance the claims of rival beauties,
but desisted when she saw that Merton was firm.

"None of the rest can touch her," he maintained. "And look at her
nerve! Would your others have as much nerve as that?"

"Maybe she has someone to double in those places," suggested the
screen-wise Tessie Kearns.

"Not Beulah Baxter. Didn't I see her personal appearance that time I
went to Peoria last spring on purpose to see it? Didn't she talk
about the risks she look and how the directors were always begging
her to use a double and how her artistic convictions wouldn't let
her do any such thing? You can bet the little girl is right there in
every scene!"

They passed to the other billboard. This would be the comedy. A
painfully cross-eyed man in misfitting clothes was doing something
supposed to be funny--pushing a lawn mower over the carpet of a
palatial home.

"How disgusting!" exclaimed Miss Kearns.

"Ain't it?" said Merton. "How they can have one of those terrible
things on the same bill with Miss Baxter--I can't understand it."

"Those censors ought to suppress this sort of buffoonery instead of
scenes of dignified passion like they did in Scarlet Sin," declared
Tessie. "Did you read about that?"

"They sure ought," agreed Merton. "These comedies make me tired. I
never see one if I can help it."

Walking on, they discussed the wretched public taste and the
wretched actors that pandered to it. The slap-stick comedy, they
held, degraded a fine and beautiful art. Merton was especially
severe. He always felt uncomfortable at one of these regrettable
exhibitions when people about him who knew no better laughed
heartily. He had never seen anything to laugh at, and said as much.

They crossed the street and paused at the door of Miss Kearns' shop,
behind which were her living rooms. She would to-night go over
Passion's Perils once more and send it to another company.

"I wonder," she said to Merton, "if they keep sending it back
because the sets are too expensive. Of course there's the one where
the dissipated English nobleman, Count Blessingham, lures Valerie
into Westminster Abbey for his own evil purposes on the night of the
old earl's murder--that's expensive--but they get a chance to use it
again when Valerie is led to the altar by young Lord Stonecliff, the
rightful heir. And of course Stonecliff Manor, where Valerie is
first seen as governess, would be expensive; but they use that in a
lot of scenes, too. Still, maybe I might change the locations around
to something they've got built."

"I wouldn't change a line," said Merton. "Don't give in to 'em. Make
'em take it as it is. They might ruin your picture with cheap
stuff."

"Well," the authoress debated, "maybe I'll leave it. I'd especially
hate to give up Westminster Abbey. Of course the scene where she is
struggling with Count Blessingham might easily be made offensive--
it's a strong scene--but it all comes right. You remember she
wrenches herself loose from his grasp and rushes to throw herself
before the altar, which suddenly lights up, and the scoundrel is
afraid to pursue her there, because he had a thorough religious
training when a boy at Oxford, and he feels it would be sacrilegious
to seize her again while the light from the altar shines upon her
that way, and so she's saved for the time being. It seems kind of a
shame not to use Westminster Abbey for a really big scene like that,
don't you think?"

"I should say so!" agreed Merton warmly. "They build plenty of sets
as big as that. Keep it in!"

"Well, I'll take your advice. And I shan't give up trying with my
other ones. And I'm writing to another set of people--see here." She
took from her handbag a clipped advertisement which she read to
Merton in the fading light, holding it close to her keen little
eyes. "Listen! 'Five thousand photoplay ideas needed. Working girl
paid ten thousand dollars for ideas she had thought worthless. Yours
may be worth more. Experience unnecessary. Information free.
Producers' League 562, Piqua, Ohio.' Doesn't that sound encouraging?
And it isn't as if I didn't have some experience. I've been writing
scenarios for two years now."

"We both got to be patient," he pointed out. "We can't succeed all
at once, just remember that."

"Oh, I'm patient, and I'm determined; and I know you are, too,
Merton. But the way my things keep coming back--well, I guess we'd
both get discouraged if it wasn't for our sense of humour."

"I bet we would," agreed Merton. "And good-night!"

He went on to the Gashwiler Emporium and let himself into the dark
store. At the moment he was bewailing that the next installment of
The Hazards of Hortense would be shown on a Saturday night, for on
those nights the store kept open until nine and he could see it but
once. On a Tuesday night he would have watched it twice, in spite of
the so-called comedy unjustly sharing the bill with it.

Lighting a match, he made his way through the silent store, through
the stock room that had so lately been the foul lair of Snake le
Vasquez, and into his own personal domain, a square partitioned off
from the stockroom in which were his cot, the table at which he
studied the art of screen acting, and his other little belongings.
He often called this his den. He lighted a lamp on the table and
drew the chair up to it.

On the boards of the partition in front of him were pasted many
presentments of his favourite screen actress, Beulah Baxter, as she
underwent the nerve-racking Hazards of Hortense. The intrepid girl
was seen leaping from the seat of her high-powered car to the cab of
a passing locomotive, her chagrined pursuers in the distant
background. She sprang from a high cliff into the chill waters of a
storm-tossed sea. Bound to the back of a spirited horse, she was
raced down the steep slope of a rocky ravine in the Far West. Alone
in a foul den of the underworld she held at bay a dozen villainous
Asiatics. Down the fire escape of a great New York hotel she made a
perilous way. From the shrouds of a tossing ship she was about to
plunge to a watery release from the persecutor who was almost upon
her. Upon the roof of the Fifth Avenue mansion of her scoundrelly
guardian in the great city of New York she was gaining the friendly
projection of a cornice from which she could leap and again escape
death--even a fate worse than death, for the girl was pursued from
all sorts of base motives. This time, friendless and alone in
profligate New York, she would leap from the cornice to the branches
of the great eucalyptus tree that grew hard by. Unnerving
performances like these were a constant inspiration to Merton Gill.
He knew that he was not yet fit to act in such scenes--to appear
opportunely in the last reel of each installment and save Hortense
for the next one. But he was confident a day would come.

On the same wall he faced also a series of photographs of himself.
These were stills to be one day shown to a director who would
thereupon perceive his screen merits. There was Merton in the natty
belted coat, with his hair slicked back in the approved mode and a
smile upon his face; a happy, careless college youth. There was
Merton in tennis flannels, his hair nicely disarranged, jauntily
holding a borrowed racquet. Here he was in a trench coat and the cap
of a lieutenant, grim of face, the jaw set, holding a revolver upon
someone unpictured; there in a wide-collared sport shirt lolling
negligently upon a bench after a hard game of polo or something.
Again he appeared in evening dress, two straightened fingers resting
against his left temple. Underneath this was written in a running,
angular, distinguished hand, "Very truly yours, Clifford Armytage."
This, and prints of it similarly inscribed, would one day go to
unknown admirers who besought him for likenesses of himself.

But Merton lost no time in scanning these pictorial triumphs. He was
turning the pages of the magazines he had brought, his first hasty
search being for new photographs of his heroine. He was quickly
rewarded. Silver Screenings proffered some fresh views of Beulah
Baxter, not in dangerous moments, but revealing certain quieter
aspects of her wondrous life. In her kitchen, apron clad, she
stirred something. In her lofty music room she was seated at her
piano. In her charming library she was shown "Among Her Books." More
charmingly she was portrayed with her beautiful arms about the
shoulders of her dear old mother. And these accompanied an interview
with the actress.

The writer, one Esther Schwarz, professed the liveliest trepidation
at first meeting the screen idol, but was swiftly reassured by the
unaffected cordiality of her reception. She found that success had
not spoiled Miss Baxter. A sincere artist, she yet absolutely lacked
the usual temperament and mannerisms. She seemed more determined
than ever to give the public something better and finer. Her
splendid dignity, reserve, humanness, high ideals, and patient study
of her art had but mellowed, not hardened, a gracious personality.
Merton Gill received these assurances without surprise. He knew
Beulah Baxter would prove to be these delightful things. He read on
for the more exciting bits.

"I'm so interested in my work," prettily observed Miss Baxter to the
interviewer; "suppose we talk only of that. Leave out all the rest--
my Beverly Hills home, my cars, my jewels, my Paris gowns, my dogs,
my servants, my recreations. It is work alone that counts, don't you
think? We must learn that success, all that is beautiful and fine,
requires work, infinite work and struggle. The beautiful comes only
through suffering and sacrifice. And of course dramatic work
broadens a girl's viewpoint, helps her to get the real, the
worthwhile things out of life, enriching her nature with the
emotional experience of her roles. It is through such pressure that
we grow, and we must grow, must we not? One must strive for the
ideal, for the art which will be but the pictorial expression of
that, and for the emotion which must be touched by the illuminating
vision of a well-developed imagination if the vital message of the
him is to be felt.

"But of course I have my leisure moments from the grinding stress.
Then I turn to my books--I'm wild about history. And how I love the
great free out-of-doors! I should prefer to be on a simple farm,
were I a boy. The public would not have me a boy, you say"--she
shrugged prettily--"oh, of course, my beauty, as they are pleased to
call it. After all, why should one not speak of that? Beauty is just
a stock in trade, you know. Why not acknowledge it frankly? But do
come to my delightful kitchen, where I spend many a spare moment,
and see the lovely custard I have made for dear mamma's luncheon."

Merton Gill was entranced by this exposition of the quieter side of
his idol's life. Of course he had known she could not always be
making narrow escapes, and it seemed that she was almost more
delightful in this staid domestic life. Here, away from her
professional perils, she was, it seemed, "a slim little girl with
sad eyes and a wistful mouth."

The picture moved him strongly. More than ever he was persuaded that
his day would come. Even might come the day when it would be his lot
to lighten the sorrow of those eyes and appease the wistfulness of
that tender mouth. He was less sure about this. He had been unable
to learn if Beulah Baxter was still unwed. Silver Screenings, in
reply to his question, had answered, "Perhaps." Camera, in its
answers to correspondents, had said, "Not now." Then he had written
to Photo Land: "Is Beulah Baxter unmarried?" The answer had come,
"Twice." He had been able to make little of these replies,
enigmatic, ambiguous, at best. But he felt that some day he would at
least be chosen to act with this slim little girl with the sad eyes
and wistful mouth. He, it might be, would rescue her from the
branches of the great eucalyptus tree growing hard by the Fifth
Avenue mansion of the scoundrelly guardian. This, if he remembered
well her message about hard work.

He recalled now the wondrous occasion on which he had travelled the
nearly hundred miles to Peoria to see his idol in the flesh. Her
personal appearance had been advertised. It was on a Saturday night,
but Merton had silenced old Gashwiler with the tale of a dying aunt
in the distant city. Even so, the old grouch had been none too
considerate. He had seemed to believe that Merton's aunt should have
died nearer to Simsbury, or at least have chosen a dull Monday.

But Merton had held with dignity to the point; a dying aunt wasn't
to be hustled about as to either time or place. She died when her
time came--even on a Saturday night--and where she happened to be,
though it were a hundred miles from some point more convenient to an
utter stranger. He had gone and thrillingly had beheld for five
minutes his idol in the flesh, the slim little girl of the sorrowful
eyes and wistful mouth, as she told the vast audience--it seemed to
Merton that she spoke solely to him--by what narrow chance she had
been saved from disappointing it. She had missed the train, but had
at once leaped into her high-powered roadster and made the journey
at an average of sixty-five miles an hour, braving death a dozen
times. For her public was dear to her, and she would not have it
disappointed, and there she was before them in her trim driving
suit, still breathless from the wild ride.

Then she told them--Merton especially--how her directors had again
and again besought her not to persist in risking her life in her
dangerous exploits, but to allow a double to take her place at the
more critical moments. But she had never been able to bring herself
to this deception, for deception, in a way, it would be. The
directors had entreated in vain. She would keep faith with her
public, though full well she knew that at any time one of her dare-
devil acts might prove fatal.

Her public was very dear to her. She was delighted to meet it here,
face to face, heart to heart. She clasped her own slender hands over
her own heart as she said this, and there was a pathetic little
catch in her voice as she waved farewell kisses to the throng. Many
a heart besides Merton's beat more quickly at knowing that she must
rush out to the high-powered roadster and be off at eighty miles an
hour to St. Louis, where another vast audience would the next day be
breathlessly awaiting her personal appearance.

Merton had felt abundantly repaid for his journey. There had been
inspiration in this contact. Little he minded the acid greeting, on
his return, of a mere Gashwiler, spawning in his low mind a
monstrous suspicion that the dying aunt had never lived.

Now he read in his magazines other intimate interviews by other
talented young women who had braved the presence of other screen
idols of both sexes. The interviewers approached them with
trepidation, and invariably found that success had not spoiled them.
Fine artists though they were, applauded and richly rewarded, yet
they remained simple, unaffected, and cordial to these daring
reporters. They spoke with quiet dignity of their work, their
earnest efforts to give the public something better and finer. They
wished the countless readers of the interviews to comprehend that
their triumphs had come only with infinite work and struggle, that
the beautiful comes only through suffering and sacrifice. At lighter
moments they spoke gayly of their palatial homes, their domestic
pets, their wives or husbands and their charming children. They all
loved the great out-of-doors, but their chief solace from toil was
in this unruffled domesticity where they could forget the worries of
an exacting profession and lead a simple home life. All the husbands
and wives were more than that--they were good pals; and of course
they read and studied a great deal. Many of them were wild about
books.