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metropolis, the Arkansaw Traveler held its own. In fact, it is still brought out regularly from a bookkeeping supply house. But it has lost its unique characteristics, and has an insignificant circulation.
Mr. Read resigned from the editorship in 1892, and has not since contributed to the paper. His resignation was made partly because some promoters acquired control of the organization of the periodical, converted it into a stock company, and proposed to put Mr. Read, its creator, on salary. But a more important rea- son was that Mr. Read had come to the conclusion that humor and character sketches put into ephemeral form in a weekly periodical were more or less wasted. He aspired to write books, and had been encouraged by Ticknor & Co., of Boston, who had already published one of his southern dialect productions, entitled "Len Gansett." For thirteen years, since resigning from the periodical whose interests brought him here, Mr. Read has been in Chicago writing for publications chiefly in book form. He has probably been the most prolific user of the fiction form working continuously in Chicago since the eighties. A score of his books of fiction are to be found in the Public Library. Most of them have been published, by Chicago printing-houses, between paper covers. The news-company boys on passenger trains east and west will tell you that Opie Read is the author most popular among train readers. He has held and enlarged the audience before which he secured his first hearing with sketches and jokes in the Arkansaw Traveler. And recently eastern magazine and book publishers have solicited and secured his output.
From the day of his arrival, Mr. Read has been the personi- fication of the fact that the growing mid- American metropolis has been constantly drawing to itself men with unique points of view writers whose outlook is first of all that of some other locality. To busy Chicago Mr. Read brought the point of view of quaint and quiet southern life, the eye and ear of an interpreter of the dialect characters in the region from which he came. Always picturesque in character, wearing a long black coat, black string tie, long locks, and a broad-brimmed hat, Mr. Read has visited the Press Club almost daily, and, meeting the younger news-
