camper-out always takes twice as much junk as he can use. All that was left to do after that etc.,

There are sound reasons for all this. The first is that, likely enough, your title may not altogether suit the editor, and he will require some of the white space in the upper part of the page for a revised version. Also, he will need some space upon which to pencil his directions to the printers about how to set the type.

Double space your lines. If you leave no room between lines, you make it extremely difficult for the editor to write in any corrections in the text. Moreover, a solid mass of single-spaced typewriting is much harder to read than material that is double-spaced.

Use good white paper, of ordinary letter size, eight by eleven inches, and leave a margin of about an inch on either side of the text and at both top and bottom. Number each page. Don't write your "copy" with a ribbon which is too worn to be bright; and, while you are about it, clean up those letters on the typebars that have a tendency to fill up with ink and dust. You may have noticed, for example, that "a," "e," "o," "s," "m," and "w" are not always clear-cut upon the page.

You are doing all this to make the reading of your contribution as easy a task as possible from the purely physical side. You are simply using a little common sense in the process of addressing yourself to the favorable attention of a force of extremely busy persons who are paid to "wade through" a formidable stack of mail.

If you have an overpowering distaste for doing your own typewriting, you may hire a typist to turn your handwritten "copy" into something easier to read. This procedure, however, may prove to be rather too costly for a beginner's purse. It is the part of wisdom to learn to operate a machine yourself. At first the task may seem rather a tough one, but even after so short a time as a month of practice you are likely to be surprised at the progress you will make. Before long you will be able to write much faster upon a machine than with a pencil or a pen.

The danger then lies in a temptation to haste and carelessness. This is one reason why many fastidious magazine writers always do the first draft of an article in longhand and turn to the typewriter only when they are ready to set down the final version. Temperament and habit should decide the matter. Nearly any one can learn to compose newspaper "copy" at the keyboard, but not so many of us dare attempt to do magazine articles at the same high rate of speed. Particularly does this hold true of the first page of a magazine manuscript. The opening paragraph of such a manuscript is likely to make a much more exacting demand upon the writer's skill than the "lead" of a newspaper "story." All that the newspaper usually demands is that the reporter cram the gist of his facts into the first few sentences. The magazine insists that the first paragraph of a manuscript not only catch attention but also sound the keynote of many words to follow, for the "punch" of the magazine story is more often near the end of the article than the beginning.

Though the technique of newspaper and magazine writing may differ on this matter of the "lead," do not make the mistake of supposing that the magazine introduction need not be just as chock full of interest as the opening of a newspaper "story." You are no longer under any compulsion, when you write for the magazines, to cram the meat of the story into the first sentence, but one thing you must do—you must rouse the reader to sit up and listen. You can well afford to spend any amount of effort upon that opening paragraph. Write your lead a dozen times, a hundred times, if necessary, until you make it rivet the attention.

CHAPTER III

HOW TO TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS

After he has bought or rented a typewriter, the would-be free lance in the non-fiction field has his workshop only half equipped. One more machine is an urgent necessity. Get a camera.

Few of our modern American newspapers and magazines are published without pictures; so anybody ought to be able to perceive how absurd it is to submit an unillustrated manuscript to an illustrated periodical. Good photographs have won a market for many a manuscript that scarcely would have been given a reading if it had arrived without interesting pictures; and many a well-written article has been reluctantly returned by the editor because no photographs were available to illustrate it.

There is only one way to dodge this issue. Just as you can hire a typist to put your manuscript into legible form, you can pay a professional photographer to accompany you wherever you go and take the illustrations for your text. But the same vital objection holds here as in the case of the professional typist—the costs will cut heavily into your profits. With a little practice you can learn to do the work yourself. After that, you can operate at a small fraction of the expense of hiring a professional.

Your work soon enough will be of as high a quality as anything that the average commercial photographer can produce, and, better yet, it will not have any flat and stale commercial flavor about it. Nothing is more static and banal than the composition that the ordinary professional will produce if you fail to prevent him from having his own way. Ten to one, all the lower half of the picture will be empty foreground, and not a living creature will appear in the entire field of vision.

It cost the present writer upward of $150 to discover this fact. Then he bought a thirty dollar postcard kodak and a five dollar tripod and told the whole tribe of professionals to go to blazes. The only time since then that he has ever had to hire commercial aid was when he had to have heavy flashlights made of large rooms.

So save yourself money now, instead of eventually. Even if thirty dollars takes your last nickel, don't hesitate. For a beginning, if you are inexperienced in photography, rent a cheap machine with which to practice—a simple "snapshot box" with no adjustments on it will do while you are picking up the first inklings of how to compose a picture and of how much light is required for different classes of subjects.

After you have practiced with this for a while, go out and buy a folding kodak. If you have the journalistic eye for what is picturesque and newsy the camera will quickly return 100 per cent. upon the investment.

The one great difficulty for the beginner in photography is that he does not know how to "time" the exposure of a picture. The books on photography are all too technical. They discuss chemicals and printing papers and all the finer shadings of processes carried on in laboratories under a ruby light. But what the novice longs to know is simply how to take pictures—what exposure to allow for a portrait, what for a street scene, what for a panorama. He usually fails to give the portrait enough light, and he gives the panorama too much. He is willing to allow a professional finisher to do his developing and printing. What the beginner wants to read is a chapter on exposure. As an operator, he is seeking for a rule of how and some examples of its application.

If you lack a simple working theory, here is one now, in primer terms:

The closer the object which you wish to photograph is to your lens, the more light it requires; the farther away it is, the less light it requires.

This may sound somewhat unreasonable, but that is how a camera works. A portrait head, or anything