8oo THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Among American contributors were:
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Alice Brown, Gertrude Hall, Richard Hovey, Louise Chandler Moulton, Gilbert Parker, Charles G. D. Roberts, Clinton Scollard, Louise Imogen Guiney, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Maria Louise Pool, Richard Henry Stoddard, Richard Burton, Madison Cawein, Eugene Field, Julian Hawthorne, H. H. Boyesen, Clyde Fitch, Wallace Rice, Hamlin Garland, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Maurice Thompson, John Vance Cheney, Lillian Bell, John Burroughs, Stephen Crane, John Fox, Jr., Henry James, Clinton Ross, Charles F. Lummis, Edmund Clarence Stedman, George W. Cable, Alice Morse Earle, Brander Matthews, Octave Thanet, Tudor Jenks, Joseph Pennell, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Paul Laurence Dunbar, J. J. Piatt, Ruth McEnery Stuart, George Edward Woodberry, R. W. Chambers, L. E. Gates, John Jay Chapman, Norman Hapgood, Gerald Stanley Lee, John Kendrick Bangs, and Joel Chandler Harris.
That their writings would find place alongside of those of such a company from America and England was a spur to ambitious young writers in Chicago and the West, who found in the Chap-Book a medium which was suited to the virility and inde- pendence of their westernism, but at the same time was so cosmo- politan an exponent of literary expression from various parts of the world as to make for the broadening of their striving toward artistic expression. Among the Americans listed above not a few did some of their first work for the Chap-Book. In Chicago Mr. Stone solicited manuscripts not only from amateur literary workers, such as Edith Wyatt then was, but also asked news- paper men to write for the Chap-Book with special attention to form of expression. Among others of whom he asked manu- scripts were George Ade and Finley Peter Dunne. Wallace Rice wrote many clever critiques for the periodical.
The artists and literary workers of Chicago, who had grown to be quite a group, well defined through World's Fair influ- ences, were soon rallied around the Chap-Book. A series of "Chap-Book teas" drew them to Mr. Stone's publishing-office, to look at originals of drawings and manuscripts, to talk shop, and in general to promote sociability in the professional literary and art crowd. Incidentally the "Chap-Book teas," which were followed by meetings of the "Attic Club," set the copy for the meetings of the "Little Room," an organization of creative
