THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO 811
pared for other purposes, were solicited for the magazine. One of the most notable contributions was an article on Taine by Professor Paul Shorey, Ph.D., head of the department of the Greek language and literature at the University. For a time, Dr. Edwin H. Lewis, now professor of literature at Lewis In- stitute, then an assistant in rhetoric on the University of Chi- cago faculty in the department of English, was active, not only in contributing to Current Topics, but in securing contributions for the magazine from other university men. Soon, however, it was discovered that the publisher did not carry out his agree- ments to pay for the contributions he readily accepted, and that the university men were being used to give prestige to a maga- zine which was part of an advertising device for selling pianos. The university authors discontinued contributing, and it is al- leged that the man who was a magazine-publisher for a time still owes some of them for the serious work they did for his periodi- cal. The name of the magazine was changed to the Chicago Mag- azine of Current Topics, and later to Chicago Magazine. It went out of existence in 1895, having been published for about two years. Dr. Lewis is of the opinion that the history of Current Topics has no more significance in the consideration of the literary interests of Chicago than any advertising scheme has. It appears to have been an example of the engraftment of interests, with a considerable element of plain graft involved.
A University of Chicago student from the West, Frank Bur- lingame Harris, who became a Chicago newspaper man, under- took the establishing of a general magazine in 1898. Mr. Har- ris was a friend of Opie Read, Forrest Crissey, and other literary workers in the Press Club ranks. He rejected the name Ro- mantic Life, suggested to him for the periodical by Mr. Read, and christened it, after the lake at the southern border of the city, the Calumet, thus giving the journal a name intended to connote the western romantic sentiment. Mr. Harris started by inserting more essays than stories. But two numbers were pub- lished. Mr. Harris had undertaken the enterprise almost with- out capital a lack which literary sentiment could hardly offset.
Carter's Monthly was a general story magazine begun in
