Tip Top Weekly No. 139: Frank Merriwell's Father — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 TTP TOP WEEKLY. office. If you are refused, then we are too late. But even then it is scarcely likely that we shall have serious trouble, unless we begin playing the large places, the cities, where this other show is likely to go. As long as we play smaller towns, of the class that we have been playing, it is quite probable this Eastern man- ager will consider us too small iry for him to bother with.” . “But we are going to play in Kansas City.” “Yes.” “And Topeka.” “That’s right, but the towns beyond that on our route are smaller; they are of the order that seldom get any of the big productions. Still they are large enough so that we may do a good, profitable business in them.” “That's right.” “Of course, I am sorry to know there is any question about the saw mill scene. I[ have never seen this other play, and I teil you now that I absolutely believed this saw mill scene new and original with me. It is an un- fortunate coincidence that there should be a scene like it on the stage, but such things fre- quently happén, and we are not the first ones to bring out what seems to be a new and novel idea, only to find it has been used be- fore. It frequently happens in literary work that two authors get hold of the same idea and work it out on similar lines at the same time, sometimes submitting their manuscripts occasionally to the same publishers.” “T’ve heard of such things, but I don’t take much stock in them.” | “J know from actual experience that such things happen. When I was in New Haven I became acquainted with an author. One day he read to me the first chapter of a juvenile story. It was about a Connecticut boy who became the possessor of the original Alad- _din’s lamp by purchasing it for ten cents at an auction of curios gathered by an old pro- Did You Ever Hear of a Gold Egg the Size of a Cocoanut—True Blue No. 30. fessor who had died. On his way home with the lamp, which the boy had bought in order that he might have something by which to remember the professor, who had been kind to him, he sat down beside the road and start- ed to rub up the old thing with his coat sleeve. Immediately there was a clap of thun- der, a burst of smoke, and Aladdin’s genie appeared before him. The stoory as con-. ceived was to be humorous throughout, the boy getting into no end of scrapes through the possession of the lamp and with the aid of the ‘slave of the lamp.’ by the idea. The author asked me what I thought of it. I told him it was simply great and so thoroughly original that it must be a great go if properly handled. I was captivated I advised him to finish it and submit it to a certain New York publishing house, for whom I believed it was adapted. He did so, and it was promptly returned to him, without being read, as 1 am firmly convinced. Then he of- fered it to a rival concern, and it was ac- cepted for publication in the leading juvenile magazine of this country, after which it was brought out in book form. But, before it was published in the magazine, before it had been announced, and almost immediately aiter another concern brought out a book on precisely the same lines. The resemblance extended even to the buying of the lamp at an auction. Oi course the magazine publishers were con- vinced that the manuscript they had pur- chased contained an idea that had not been stolen, for they had accepted it before the book appeared, but the whole affair was most remarkable, and simply goes to prove that when such things occur it is not always cer- tain that there has been a plagiarism. it was accepted, Folansbee listened to this with uncon- cealed impatience. | Oo “That’s all right,” he said; “but even if GON GoIOO S