and wrote his old
friend congratulating him on his accession to the _Atlantic Monthly_.
The change that now took place was indeed a conspicuous, almost a
startling one. The _Atlantic_ retained all its old literary flavour, for
to its traditions Page was as much devoted as the highest caste
Bostonian; it still gave up much of its space to a high type of fiction,
poetry, and reviews of contemporary literature, but every number
contained also an assortment of articles which celebrated the prevailing
activities of men and women in all worth-while fields of effort. There
were discussions of present-day politics, and these even became
personal dissections of presidential candidates; there were articles on
the racial characters of the American population: Theodore Roosevelt was
permitted to discuss the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in
review the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. Washington
to picture the awakening of the Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans
upon a national beauty and wealth of which they had been woefully
ignorant, their forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects
of his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers and the hopes
of American democracy; Jacob Rues to tell about the Battle with the Slum;
and W.G. Frost to reveal for the first time the archaic civilization of
the Kentucky mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's genius
at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these Kentucky
mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; that their dialect,
their ballads, their habits were really a case of arrested development;
that by studying them present-day Americans could get a picture of their
distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation by changing a
commonplace title to this one: "Our Contemporary Ancestors."

There were those who were offended by Page's willingness to seek
inspiration on the highways and byways and even in newspapers, for not
infrequently he would find hidden away in a corner an idea that would
result in valuable magazine matter. On one occasion at least this
practice had important literary consequences. One day he happened to
read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died in Toronto, the account
casually mentioning the fact that Mrs. Hanning was the youngest sister
of Thomas Carlyle. Page handed this clipping to a young assistant, and
told him to take the first train to Canada. The editor could easily
divine that a