has remained the
same. Before Mr. Bush sold _The American Magazine_ he had urged Edward
to come back to it as its editor, with promise of financial support;
but the young man felt instinctively that his return would not be wise.
The magazine had been _The Cosmopolitan_ only a short time when the new
owners, Mr. Paul J. Slicht and Mr. E. D. Walker, also solicited the
previous editor to accept reappointment. But Edward, feeling that his
baby had been rechristened too often for him to father it again,
declined the proposition. He had not heard the last of it, however,
for, by a curious coincidence, its subsequent owner, entirely ignorant
of Edward's previous association with the magazine, invited him to
connect himself with it. Thus three times could Edward Bok have
returned to the magazine for whose creation he was responsible.

Edward was now without editorial cares; but he had already, even before
disposing of the magazine, embarked on another line of endeavor. In
sending to a number of newspapers the advance sheets of a particularly
striking "feature" in one of his numbers of _The Brooklyn Magazine_, it
occurred to him that he was furnishing a good deal of valuable material
to these papers without cost. It is true his magazine was receiving
the advertising value of editorial comment; but he wondered whether the
newspapers would not be willing to pay for the privilege of
simultaneous publication. An inquiry or two proved that they would.
Thus Edward stumbled upon the "syndicate" plan of furnishing the same
article to a group of newspapers, one in each city, for simultaneous
publication. He looked over the ground, and found that while his idea
was not a new one, since two "syndicate" agencies already existed, the
field was by no means fully covered, and that the success of a third
agency would depend entirely upon its ability to furnish the newspapers
with material equally good or better than they received from the
others. After following the material furnished by these agencies for
two or three weeks, Edward decided that there was plenty of room for
his new ideas.

He discussed the matter with his former magazine partner, Colver, and
suggested that if they could induce Mr. Beecher to write a weekly
comment on current events for the newspapers it would make an
auspicious beginning. They decided to talk it over with the famous
preacher. For to be a "Plymouth boy"--that is, to go to the Plymouth
Church Sunday