Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 2 (1923-02).djvu/89



ful little piece, more like a fiary tale than a weird story. I enjoyed this.

"THE INVISIBLE MONSTER is good. The writer's style is an attempt, with some success, to pattern after Poe, and the style helps the story.

"THE PEBBLE PROPHECY is unconvincing. As a story based on superstition it is a failure, because the prophecy was false, and the ghost is unconvincing unless explained.

"THE TELL-TALE HEART. In your last number I noted a question as to whether these old masterpieces of weird fiction should be continued. My vote is 'Yes.' Stories like 'The Pit' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart' give your present writers a mark to shoot at.

"By far the best story you have published for some time was the one in the October number of the clergeyman who had the adventure with the three werewolves, the loup-garou of the French Canadian. This was excellent, competently written, and very satisfactorily ended. I was afraid as I came to the end of the story that there would be an attempt at a happy ending, with a love-match and a marriage, but I was agreeably disappointed. I regret to say that I have forgotten the name of the tale, but the story remains with me." ("The Phantom Farmhouse" by Seabury Quinn—Editor.)

"This letter has stretched out to a greater lenth than I intended, for which I hope you will accept my apologies. The magazine on the hwole is good, and deserves success.

"If you use this or any portion of it in 'The Eyrie' please do not use my name."—Reader and Well-wisher.

Candid, too is the following "Confession" from Walter F. McCanless of Reidsville, North Carolina:

"Dear Mr. Baird: It seems that I have to beg everybody's pardon, and I now do so. In addition, I want to give an explanation of my attack upon a perfectly good story. I live at Greensboro and have my work here. As a result of this dual citizenship almost all of my copies of WEIRD TALES were in Greensboro when I wrote my letter. On this week-end visit I brought all copies back with me, and, on receiving your letter, reviewed the back numbers. Can you imagine such a thing?—I had two entirely different stories in mind. 'The Whispering Thing' is the two-part story I had in mind and the criticism I made applieslargely to the second part. 'The Damned Thing' had 'No. 3' beside it and, somehow, I imagined it was a