The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 9, 1902, Page 13

The Man Who Created Morg Bloo:- Curdling Detective Storigs Than Rny Wreiter Tn the World Rag Now Settled Down 25 a Mild Newsgaper Man n San Jose- ICK CARTER, bloody or of the dime aore ‘has T butter ara Vi : please alist, to w They Nick, the novel, the pen hes rescued more criminals than any eformed. ‘tled down to & life of sweet and eggs, alley. He man these days. ick Carter has and to rescue and 1o slay. 18 all that days. Geno Saw- the world orld that know him, he r, king of dime get their ve mnoveis, een yeilow er ese people It is said that when he was in the ye! low novel business hls method of work was unique. An old frlend who knew Gene when he was writing his great in- ventions tells the following story of the way he thought them out. “He never made up the whole plot be- fcre he began to write, he did not even make a chapter outline. He just began with his characters, and after he had got tl.e herd into what seemed an inextricable positior: in a cave, for instance, boun: gagged, or on the edge of a bottomle pit with his enemies advancing to de: him, Gene would stop, ta! walk the floor for a few minutes sit down and pull him out again. n expecte.. does not always n in his stories. Damsels go ¢ daggers in their bosoms and the t of blood does not make delicate - ective re: k of love 8- vust DEREHD uPon 0 POOKS FOR THE MENTAL STIMULUS WHICH 1S DENIED THEIR PHYSICAL BEINGD " THE SUNDAY CALL ™ v5 hands them over to. others that he may b left fancy ffee. Nick's climaxes must have surorised himself. These tales are never dull in their be- . ginnings. He launches at once into his subject. ‘“‘Swear the defendant” and “It is a case of mysterious disappearance, Mr. Carter,” are characteristic introduc- tions to tales that will keep the stable boys and the chambermaids up all night. Once they have started one they can no more stop short of the final climax than can a fox terrier in pursuit of a rat. The second generation of boys i{s now reading the original stories of Eugepe Sawyer, as thelr fathers before them. Let them. The triumphant heroes are al- ways good and brave. The villains are always punished. The women are always pure and of “a stately beauty, tall and finely proportioned.” Virtue always wins, like the lady driver in the chariot race at the circus. Mr. Sawyer takes a humorous view of his work. ‘My books and serials,” he sald, ‘“were pot-boilers, and the re- quirements in their composition were a riotous imagination, the dramatic in- stinet and a big capacity for manual labor. The intellect”was never strained and there was never - any consclentious striving after style. All I had to do was to see that my wrist was in good shape and then write and write and write. Re- vision was never thought of, for the stuff wasn’t worth it. “But, trashy as the matter was, I never pandered to the tastes of the de- praved. While the moral tone may not have been so high as to require a step- !adder In reaching it, it was never so low as to do harm, I honestly believe. I in- variably painted vice in its most hideous colors. My herolnes were not only. in- comparably lovely, but honest and brave; my heroes were manly, vice- hating, and, of course, ‘utterly without fear.’ “Having my stock puppets, I made them dance to every tune I played, and I had as much fun out of their antics as the next fellow. I can well understand why all sorts of people, from the bank president down to the digger of clams, Tead the stuff I sent out. They are not HE WAS A COURT REPORTER ) hankering after study or an intellectual feast. They want something to amuse them. Consider the case of the tired-out man of business. His nerves are not in a condition to tackle ethical stuff; he desires no problem to bother his think- works, but rather something which will rest and entertain tim is what he craves. And he gets it when he sits down to a perusal of ‘The Holy Terror of Red Gulch’ or ‘Black Mike's Revenge.’ " Mr. Sawyer got most of the material for his work when he was a court re- porter in the days when strange cases resulting from the irregularity of land grants and the chaotic conditlon of so- ety were being tried. He knew Vas- quez personally and he was the only rewspaper man to whom the bandit would talk after his arrest. The little pamphlet he wrote, “The Life and Career | of Tiburclo Vasquez,” 1s the only au- | thentic history of the man who terrified | the whole State for twenty years before he was captured and hanged. | “Nick" tells the following story of how | he came to write “shilling shockers”: “It was by accident. My wife was sick and I stayed at home to nurse her. I| soon read everything in the house and asked a neighbor to lend me something. All he had was a heap of New York weeklies. When I finished them and was | thoroughly” absorbed in the gentlemen who gag bandits and ladles who wear | daggers ready for their pursuers it struck | me that I might create some of my own. | “So I wrote a story along the lines lald down in the weeklles and I sent it off. Back came an immediate acceptance and $160. That was the birth of ‘Nick Carter.’ “Procrastination was my besetting sin and it often got me into trouble. I re- member. recetving an order for a story by wire once. The message stated that one of the regular writers had faliled the publishers and that if I could have a story of 60,000 words in New York on a certain date I was to let them know. Of course ‘I accepted. The time allowed gave me just four days in which to write the story. And that was in the days of / FUSENE- T SAWYER longhand. “Well, as usual, I walted till two of the days had elapsed before I thought about STARTED TO PUBLISH A the story. Then I locked myself in my room and began. I wrote in pencil while my wife copled in ink. I couldn’t stop to eat nor sleep till it was finished, a feat which T actually accomplished in two and a half days. “In order to have the manuscript reach the publishers as promised it would have to leave the San Jose postoffice at noon. ‘When I dropped off the car at the corner of First and Santa Clara streets with the precious packet in my hand it lacked but two minutes of the hour and there were three blocks between me and the office. I ran all the way and got there just as the window was closing. But the story got in all right. ‘““When I saw it in print it was just like reading a new book. I had forgotten ab- solutely everything about the plot and every character and situation, for I had written it in such a rush. “Ned Buntline was the first man to write ‘penny dreadfuls.’ He was the or- iginator of the dime novel, and I got my inspiration from him. I met him when he was here in '68. He made Buffalo Bill famous. Buntline was a great character @ il ‘319' Money for Your Good Jhoughs APPY thoughts, sold just as they - were hot off the brain, and un- patented, sometimes have brought® men fortunes. For a plan for making aerated water, thought out over a pipe of tobacco, Harvey Browne got $50,000—the record price ever pald for a bare and unpatented idea. It was a bare idea of forcing carbonic acid gas Into water, with a suggestion of how to do it, and it made Harvey Browne the father of all soda water and other arti- ficlal “fizzes” in the world to-day. His idea having been born, Browne took it to a big béer bottling firm and offered it for sale. They questioned him closely and easily could have appropriated his idea without paying him a cent, but they hap- pened to be honest persons, and seeing at once that the scheme would work they offered the man with the happy thought $25,000 for his idea. But Browne asked $50,000, and threatened to go away and patent the idea and sell it to some one else if his terms were not complied with. The upshot of she matter was that Browne signed an agreement and left the office of the firm with a check for $50,000. For easy money it would be hard to beat the $25,000 which a man named Nor- man Miles received for his idea of per- forating postage stamp sheets from the British postal authorities. Before that the stamps were printed in sheets which had to be cut with a pair of scissors. One day when Miles was thinking about 18 and vastly more Interesting thar any he ever portrayed In his books. He began his literary career by writing for the New York Mercury. He was a graduate of Annapolis and served for a time in the ted States navy. During that time ke llenged and fought thirteen duels with is brother officers and escaped without a scratch. “WWhen the Rebellion broke out he en- listed and went to the front as colonel of a w York regiment of volunteers. He was cashiered for drunkenness and re- turred home. Then he reformed and turned temperance lecturer. He traveled all over the country lecturing-and came to the coast in that capacity. “When he left San Franeisco to go Bast he stopped off at Laramie and there he mef Buffalo Bill. Buntline became greatly at- tached to Bill and stayed in Laramie with him several months. He wrote a descrip- tion of him which appeared in a leading New York paper with a big pic- ture of Bill in the center of the page. Next he wrote a serles of storles In Wwhich Buffalo . Bill was the hero. Shortly afterward he wrote a play and Bill had a leading part. He got Texas Joe and Wild Bill to join the company and all went merrily for o time. But after a few performances Buntline got drunk again and the partnership was dissolved. Buffalo Bill went on the boards bn his own hook and eventually got up his Wild ‘West show. “Poor old Buntline reformed and died. For the sake of my sfories I am mighty glad he lived and was bad first. He not only inspired me to write, but he fur- nished me & character that I used many a time.” Mr. Sawyer himself has had many and varied life experiences. In 1874 he and Edwin Markham started to publish a daily paper in San Jose called “The Gar- den City Times.” When everything was ready to begin, the “angel” of the emter- prise insisted upon making it a prohibi- tion paper, and said that if his wishes were not complied with he would with- draw his support. The two enterprising young men would not agree to that, and as the plans were all laid they decided to try it alone. Mr. Sawyer was managing editor and Mr. Markham was literary editor. They hoped to make it the best paper on the coast. But It ran just eleven days. Then the printers and the rest of the force got anxious for their pay, so the partners settled up and killed the paper. ‘When all the bills were paid they had just six dollars and seventy cents left and they went into St. James square and di- vided it between them. Mr. Sawyer has also written plays. He wrote “Loyal Hearts,”” a military drama, in which Eleanor Calhoun and Adele ‘Waters made their debut on the dramatic stage. Besides, he wrote a “Log Cabin™ series and serials by the wagon load. He no longer writes dime novels. He has reformed most violently and has set- tled down to conservative journalism in the mildest kind of way. The imperious lady of the dagger, the black-masked vil- lain, the avenging hero—they are his pup- pets, and he has stored them away, never to be taken down again’ He says that he is through with them. He can afford to let them go now that they have made money for him. “It was all pot-boiling,” he says. “What I wrote was not literature, it was rub- bish, but it was what the people wanted.” nothing in particular it occurred to him that perforations between the stamps would enable them to be separated with- out the bother of using scissors. He did not stop to patent his idea, but rushed off to the proper postoffice officials and ex- plained his idea. illustrating it with a pin and a sheet of writing paper. He' also suggested a simple device for a perforate ing machine. It did not take a genius t® appreciate the value of the idea, and even the Government officials—British ones at that—saw it. Miles asked $25,000 for his idea, and though he held no patent he got what he demanded after some delay. Twice in his life the late John Ruthin scld tare ideas, just as they had com= into his head, for hard cash. Unpatented no- tions as they were, merely the inspira- tions of an idle moment, he received large sums for both of them. One was an idea for a safety valve which is now used ex- tensively all over the world. If he had taken out a patent the royaities on his in- vention would have netted him mucih more money, but he preferred to sell hia idea as soon as it was born, and he got $15,000 for it. Five years later he sold, just as it stood in his head, an idea for a sausage-making machine for $5000. Huntley Webb when he conceived the idea of his ‘“‘facile’ electric motor rushed right off and offered it for sale. He cgn- fessed afterward that it was the fear®of being forestalled that prevented his wait- ing to get the idea patented before he sold it. He dled last year worth a com- fortable fortune,