d the
Harper situation to his astonished contemporary. The solution proposed
was more astonishing still. This was that Mr. Doubleday and Mr. McClure
should amalgamate their young and vigorous business with the Harper
enterprise and become the active managers of the new corporation. Both
Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday were comparatively young men, and the
magnitude of the proposed undertaking at first rather staggered them. It
was as though a small independent steel maker should suddenly be invited
to take over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure,
characteristically impetuous and daring, wished to accept the invitation
outright; Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested a period of probation. The
outcome was that the two men offered to take charge of Harper & Brothers
for a few months, and then decide whether they wished to make the
association a permanent one. One thing was immediately apparent; Messrs.
Doubleday and McClure, able as they were, would need the help of the
best talent available in the work that lay ahead. The first man to whom
they turned was Page, who presently left Boston and took up his business
abode at Franklin Square. The rumble of the elevated road was somewhat
distracting after the four quiet years in Park Street, but the new daily
routine was not lacking in interest. The Harper experiment, however, did
not end as Mr. Morgan had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday,
Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue to be performed
by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one
years afterward, in an even more important post--that of ambassador to
the Court of St. James's. The one important outcome of the Harper
episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the forming of a close
business and personal association with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday. As soon
as the two men definitely decided not to assume the Harper
responsibility, therefore, they joined forces and founded the firm of
Doubleday, Page & Company. Page now had the opportunity which he had
long wished for; the mere editing of magazines, even magazines of such
an eminent character as the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, could
hardly satisfy his ambition; he yearned to possess something which he
could call his own, at least in part.

The life of an editor has its unsatisfactory aspect, unless the editor
himself has an influential ownership in his periodical. Page now found
his opportunity to establish a mo