tive quality, but in the main it was for Page a quiet, even a
cloistered existence; the work that an editor does, the achievements
that he can put to his credit, are usually anonymous; and the American
public little understood the extent to which Page was influencing many
of the most vital forces of his time. The business association that he
had formed with Mr. Doubleday turned out most happily. Their publishing
house, in a short time, attained a position of great influence and
prosperity. The two men, on both the personal and the business side,
were congenial and complementary; and the love that both felt for
country life led to the establishment of a publishing and printing plant
of unusual beauty. In Garden City, Long Island, a great brick structure
was built, somewhat suggestive in its architecture of Hampton Court,
surrounded by pools and fountains, Italian gardens, green walks and
pergolas, gardens blooming in appropriate seasons with roses, peonies,
rhododendrons, chrysanthemums, and the like, and parks of evergreen,
fir, cedar, and more exotic trees and shrubs. Certainly fate could have
designed no more fitting setting for Page's favourite activities than
this. In assembling authors, in instigating the writing of books, in
watching the achievements and the tendencies of American life, in the
routine of editing his magazine--all this in association with partners
whose daily companionship was a delight and a stimulation--Page spent
his last years in America.

Page's independence as an editor, sufficiently indicated in the days of
his vivacious youth, became even more emphatic in his maturer years. In
his eyes, merely inking over so many pages of good white paper was not
journalism; conviction, zeal, honesty--these were the important points.
Almost on the very day that his appointment as Ambassador to Great
Britain was announced his magazine published an editorial from his pen,
which contained not especially complimentary references to his new
chief, Mr. Bryan, the Secretary of State; naturally the newspapers found
much amusement in these few sentences; but the thing was typical of
Page's whole career as an editor. He held to the creed that an editor
should divorce himself entirely from prejudices, animosities, and
predilections; this seems an obvious, even a trite thing to say, yet
there are so few men who can leave personal considerations aside in
writing of men and events that it is worth while pointing out that