editions, and is still asked for. While teaching daily in school, she wrote weekly for the paper which first secured her contributions, for which she has continued to work ever since with steady fidelity. About thirty-five years ago the late Mr. James Clarke suggested that she could make a living by her pen, and she accordingly gave up the school. From that day to this Miss Hearn has been an untiring literary worker--articles, sketches, tales, poems being produced week by week, and her large output has been kept up in both quantity and quality. But for a three months' breakdown, during which time she wisely dropped work and sought Italy, scarcely a week has passed without something being printed from her versatile pen. Fifteen years back the publishers invited her to the editorship of the Sunday School Times, which is the oldest Sunday-school paper in existence. Miss Hearn accepted, and the little paper, with its interesting serial, seasonable poems, valuable lesson-helps, is today as bright and vigorous as ever.

"The most painful things I have to do is to send back things I should like to accept, said Miss Hearn. "Writers do not take sufficient pains over their work. Thinking that they are gifted to write, they write too much, and do it too easily."

"What is your advice to young writers?"

"A young writer must not begin writing too soon. He or she should study the masters--Ruskin, for example. Indeed, beginners should not try to write at all, until they feel they have something they must write. The work they then do is likely to be accepted."

The editress of the Sunday School Times has a tender place in her heart for the "great unaccepted" of the journalistic world. The sterotyped pharse, "the editor much regrets being unable to use," is at a discount. Instead, the would-be Kipling or George Eliot receives a note ringing with sympathy and encouragement.

It must not be thought that articles in the religious papers mentioned represent the whole of Miss Hearn's literary activity. She has published about a dozen books. Some of these are very well known, and have commanded a large and ready sale. "A Window in Paris" is the latest volume, while twenty thousand copies of "Girlhood" were sold.

One cannot speak with Miss Hearn for long without the name

[Continued on page 736]

Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.