on, explained editorial
conditions in his magazine, and, recognizing the ethics of the occasion
by not offering Bok another position while he was already occupying
one, asked him if he knew the man for the place.

"Are you talking at me or through me?" asked Bok.

"Both," replied Mr. Curtis.

This was in April of 1889.

Bok promised Mr. Curtis he would look over the field, and meanwhile he
sent over to Philadelphia the promised trial "literary gossip"
instalment. It pleased Mr. Curtis, who suggested a monthly department,
to which Bok consented. He also turned over in his mind the wisdom of
interrupting his line of progress with the Scribners, and in New York,
and began to contemplate the possibilities in Philadelphia and the work
there.

He gathered a collection of domestic magazines then published, and
looked them over to see what was already in the field. Then he began
to study himself, his capacity for the work, and the possibility of
finding it congenial. He realized that it was absolutely foreign to
his Scribner work; that it meant a radical departure. But his work
with his newspaper syndicate naturally occurred to him, and he studied
it with a view of its adaptation to the field of the Philadelphia
magazine.

His next step was to take into his confidence two or three friends
whose judgment he trusted and discuss the possible change. Without an
exception, they advised against it. The periodical had no standing,
they argued; Bok would be out of sympathy with its general atmosphere
after his Scribner environment; he was now in the direct line of
progress in New York publishing houses; and, to cap the climax, they
each argued in turn, he would be buried in Philadelphia: New York was
the centre, etc., etc.

More than any other single argument, this last point destroyed Bok's
faith in the judgment of his friends. He had had experience enough to
realize that a man could not be buried in any city, provided he had the
ability to stand out from his fellow-men. He knew from his
biographical reading that cream will rise to the surface anywhere, in
Philadelphia as well as in New York: it all depended on whether the
cream was there: it was up to the man. Had he within him that
peculiar, subtle something that, for the want of a better phrase, we
call the editorial instinct? That was all there was to it, and that
decision had to be his and his alone!

A business trip for the Scribners now calling him West, B