Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 2 (1923-02).djvu/85

Street claims that either he or you must go out of business—says that 'no man can drink Jake and read your magazines at eh same time.' He claims that he tried it, and that he intends to write you about it as soon as his hand becomes steady.

"My friend, Mr. Weeks, and I are still rooting for W. T. and still wish you every possible success in promoting the interest of WEIRD TALES, the most highly interesting of all magazines."

We dislike to ruin the business of this "soft-drink" man, and we suggest that he confine his activity to caramel sundaes and banana splits.

F. C. McKnight, a fourteen-year-old boy of Louisville, writes us that he thinks "somebody is playing a joke on you with that 'Transparent Ghost' stuff," and Herbert J. Lalonde of Syracuse, N.Y., advances the opinion that the person who wrote the story "is some great unknown author masquerading." Oh well. . . . Here's a lengthy letter from Medford, Oregon, that reviews, with refreshing candor, some of our stories and some of our faults:

"Dear Sir: May I express my opinion of the current issue of WEIRD TALES? I have read most of the previous issues, and believe that the magazine fills a decided need, but, of course, there is room for further improvement—there always is, in anything. Let me ask that what I have to say be regarded as my personal opinion only; that is what you want, I believe. If I say a story is poor, that doesn't mean that it is poor, but simply that I think it is. So here goes.

"In the first place, by all means let us have 'The Transparent Ghost,' by Mrs. Isa-bell Manzer. We frequently hear in a general way of some of the queer stories submitted to editors, but it is seldom that we have an opportunity to actually see one in full.

"DRACONDA is good. It is a little too technical in parts, but its very technicality makes it convincing, and is also the means of some clever humor, such as the sugeestion that the sun's path is in the form of a corkscrew or fish-hook, and that the gas 'geocoronium' is surrounded by another gas called 'perhapsium.' I shall look forward with interest to the next installment.

"And this brings me to another point. It is unfair to your readers to print a serial story without any indication in either the title of the story or the index that it is to be a serial. Let serials stand on their own merits, and not on the fact that the reader has unwittingly