TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8598, 27 September 1893, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

We referred yesterday to English and some remarks made by Mr American Maga- Walter Besant in the zincs. latest number of Tlie

I Autlutr on the subject of i what the American people read and the position occupied by English writers. One more comparison is drawn from railway bookj stalls with reference to the supply of Home lor American magazines. Mr Besant in a letter, dated 2<iagara Falls, July sth, sa3*s: — " The stalls, both of the railways and the hotels—foe in this country literature is not left to be found but is offered—show piles of American magazines—so do the railway stalls at home. But where are the English magazines 1 They do not exist; they are not apparent; no one inquires for them. The ' thoughtful" magazines—are there no thoughtful readers in the States? Apparently not, unless they are satisfied with their own thoughtfulness as illustrated by the Fanr.n. and the Arena and the Atlantic Monthly. But what does it mean that the American magazines have obtained so firm a hold in Great Britain, while oar own wholly fail and are never seen on this side ? It is a question admitting a great deal of explanation. Perhaps this may indicate the nature of the answer. An American magazine means business. It is provided with a ■ highly-paid editor, and, in the case of sue- I cessful magazines, a highly-paid staff of servants. The editor and his assistauts are , supposed to give their whole time, their thoughts, their strength, to the interests of J the paper. They must be always thinking of it—providing material well ahead; engag- I ing writers at rate 3of pay which would make some (so called) first-class English magazine editors to jump; they think of their readers, you see, and lay their lines and set their bait to attract and to catch them. Compare this with the casual editing of an English magazine. Where is there any thought for what is wanted ? Where do we find continuity of subject, serial papers (not serial fiction only) ? Papers of the moment, papers of passing interest, there are in plenty. But these are not what the reader wants; lie gets them already in the daily papera ; he knows beforehand all that the writer in the monthly or the quarterly can tell him ; nor does he care twopence for the opinions of Lord A. and the Right Hon. B. about questions of the day which are decided for him every morning. It is not true, as some Americans say, that they have killed our magazines, but they are inflicting deadly injury upon them, and they will continue to do so until our people change their ways."

One hardly needs this reminder of what good art, good editing and the famous short story tellere have made of the lighter American magazines. Even here, supposing a family are deciding upon an extra periodical, we fear they will be quite as likely to take Harper's or the Century as Longman's or Temple Bar or the English Illustrated. On the other hand, it ia doubtful whether the " thoughtful magazines " on the American side go very far towards a double popularity. The Forum is a good and solid paper and finely'_" edited, but not very widely read out of America; and the Arena is known to ordinary households chiefly through Mr Stead's careful notices in the Review of Reviews. We question if these would be found much more generally knov;n in England than the Nineteenth Century or the Fortnightly at Niagara. And Mr Besant forgets, we think, that the Americans have demonstrated their esteem for our magazine work, in their usual friendly way, by a successful piracy. The presence of the Eclectic, with its cargo of good things, perhaps helps to account for the disappearance of the English periodicals themselves from American book-stalls.

A faint flavour of his early Latter Day days must come to the Pirates. newspaper reader when, as

( occasionally happens, he has«placed before him the account of some act of piracy committed in the China seaa. His thoughts fly back to that delightful time when a pirate's life, as depicted by his favourite authors, seemed to leave nothing to be-desired, except that it sometimes came to too abrupt a conclusion. At that age there was no difficulty in the matter of deciding what occupation he should follow; he would be a pirate, though if that glorious career, for some reason, happened to be closed to him, he would sack fame at the scalping - knife of the Red Indian " out West." But the modern representatives of Paul Jonea, BJackbeard, and Bully Hayes have sadly degenerated from the habits of their renowned predecessors. The long, low clipper of rakish rig flying the dreaded black flag, adorned by a skull aad crossbones, and manned by gorgeous devil-may-care desperadoes, who, when they were not plundering a vessel were picnicking on some lovely tropic island, none of these darling properties of our youthful literature find a place in the stock-in-trade of the modern pirate, who prefers to slip on board the vessel in the character of a passenger, and does his murdering as unostentatiously as posssible. One of these outrages was recently committed on a steamer belonging to Penang while on a trip to a place called Telok Senawe, on the coast of Acheen, in Sumatra. From the account of the affair given by the Penang Gazette it appears that a gang of some dozen Achinese embarked on board the boat as passengers. An authority describes the natives of Acheen as being treacherous, revengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral and inordinately addicted to opium, and the ruffians under notice seem to fill the bill completely. During the night one of them, while asking the steersman a question, cut him down and followed this up by similarly disposing of an officer. Having thus cleared the decks for action he took charge of the wheel and ran the vessel ashore, after which he and his companions proceeded to massacre the passengers and the crew. The captain was attacked and wounded, but had just enough strength i left to get into his cabin and lock the door. I The chief engineer, though requested by the Achinese to come up on deck, could not see his way to accept the invitation, and promptly turned out the lights. The second engineer, asleep in his cabin, woke up just in time to see a sailor killed, and he too extinguished his light and " lay low." After killing some more people and collecting all the available money on board, which is said to have amounted to some 10,000 or 12,000 dollars, the pirates left the vessel in two of the boats, carrying off with them four women as prisoners. The total number of persons they had murdered was twenty-four, but the death list was greatly increased by the panicstricken survivors themselves, who, on the remaining boat being lowered for the purpose oi enabling assistance to be sought, rushed into it. The boat capsized, and eighteen lives were lost. A Dutch gunboat came alongside next morning, and sent some blue jackets on board to take charge of the vessel. It was fortunate that this was done, for shortly afterward the Achinese returned for more plunder, but were given such a reception by the blue jackets that they were glad to retreat without doing further damage.