t not appear to be exclusively religious, he
determined that its literary contents should be of a high order and
equal in interest to the sermons. But this called for additional
capital, and the capital furnished was not for that purpose.

It is here that Edward's autographic acquaintances stood him in good
stead. He went in turn to each noted person he had met, explained his
plight and stated his ambitions, with the result that very soon the
magazine and the public were surprised at the distinction of the
contributors to _The Brooklyn Magazine_. Each number contained a
noteworthy list of them, and when an article by the President of the
United States, then Rutherford B. Hayes, opened one of the numbers, the
public was astonished, since up to that time the unwritten rule that a
President's writings were confined to official pronouncements had
scarcely been broken. William Dean Howells, General Grant, General
Sherman, Phillips Brooks, General Sheridan, Canon Farrar, Cardinal
Gibbons, Marion Harland, Margaret Sangster--the most prominent men and
women of the day, some of whom had never written for magazines--began
to appear in the young editor's contents. Editors wondered how the
publishers could afford it, whereas, in fact, not a single name
represented an honorarium. Each contributor had come gratuitously to
the aid of the editor.

At first, the circulation of the magazine permitted the boys to wrap
the copies themselves; and then they, with two other boys, would carry
as huge bundles as they could lift, put them late at night on the front
platform of the streetcars, and take them to the post-office. Thus the
boys absolutely knew the growth of their circulation by the weight of
their bundles and the number of their front-platform trips each month.
Soon a baker's hand-cart was leased for an evening, and that was added
to the capacity of the front platforms. Then one eventful month it was
seen that a horse-truck would have to be employed. Within three weeks,
a double horse-truck was necessary, and three trips had to be made.

By this time Edward Bok had become so intensely interested in the
editorial problem, and his partner in the periodical publishing part,
that they decided to sell out their theatre-programme interests and
devote themselves to the magazine and its rapidly increasing
circulation. All of Edward's editorial work had naturally to be done
outside of his business hours, in other words, in the eve