ght
to photodramatize their most suitable short-stories. Sometimes this is
done with the consent of the author and the plot of the story used
substantially without change, while in other instances the plot is
freely changed, only the germ being used. It is particularly in such
cases that we must be careful not to charge plagiarism.

In this connection it is important to note that the photoplaywright
cannot be too careful in respecting the rights of publishers and
authors in their fictional properties. To many writers it is not clear
precisely what rights an author parts with when he, without any other
stipulation, sells a short-story or a longer piece of fiction outright
to a magazine, so he must be careful in offering moving-picture rights
to a company unless he is _sure_, from a clear _understanding_ with
the magazine publisher, that he is at liberty to do so. If these
points are not altogether in the clear to you, nevertheless it is
certainly wise to be definite in securing your own copyright on
stories, when that is possible, by agreeing with your publisher for
the release to you of all dramatic rights.

To return once more to the subject of originality, in W.W. Jacobs's
story, "The Monkey's Paw," the thrillingly terrible crisis begins when
the father, much against his will, makes use of the second wish
granted to him as the possessor of the fatal paw and wishes his dead
son alive again. In the night he and his wife are aroused by a
familiar knocking on their door. The mother, believing it to be their
son returned to life, rushes to let him in, but while she is trying to
unlock the door, the husband, remembering the terrible condition of
the son's body, he having been crushed to death by some machinery,
utters the third and last wish. The knocking ceases, and when the
woman succeeds in getting the door open, the street lamp flickering
opposite is shining on a quiet and deserted road.

Substantially the same plot is used in a story published in _The Blue
Book_, "The Little Stone God," the principal difference being that,
when those in the house hear the knocking on the door, they refuse, in
utter terror, to answer the summons. The knocking ceases; and the next
morning they learn that a telegraph messenger boy called at the house
with a message on the previous night and, after knocking several times
in vain, went away again.

The foregoing are only a few examples of plots which strongly resemble
one another. How