rapidly taking its place as one of the largest successes of the day.

Mr. Curtis's single proprietorship of the magazine had been changed
into a corporation called The Curtis Publishing Company, with a capital
of five hundred thousand dollars, with Mr. Curtis as president, and Bok
as vice-president.

The magazine had by no means an easy road to travel financially. The
doubling of the subscription price to one dollar per year had
materially checked the income for the time being; the huge advertising
bills, sometimes exceeding three hundred thousand dollars a year, were
difficult to pay; large credit had to be obtained, and the banks were
carrying a considerable quantity of Mr. Curtis's notes. But Mr. Curtis
never wavered in his faith in his proposition and his editor. In the
first he invested all he had and could borrow, and to the latter he
gave his undivided support. The two men worked together rather as
father and son--as, curiously enough, they were to be later--than as
employer and employee. To Bok, the daily experience of seeing Mr.
Curtis finance his proposition in sums that made the publishing world
of that day gasp with sceptical astonishment was a wonderful
opportunity, of which the editor took full advantage so as to learn the
intricacies of a world which up to that time he had known only in a
limited way.

What attracted Bok immensely to Mr. Curtis's methods was their perfect
simplicity and directness. He believed absolutely in the final outcome
of his proposition: where others saw mist and failure ahead, he saw
clear weather and the port of success. Never did he waver: never did
he deflect from his course. He knew no path save the direct one that
led straight to success, and, through his eyes, he made Bok see it with
equal clarity until Bok wondered why others could not see it. But they
could not. Cyrus Curtis would never be able, they said, to come out
from under the load he had piled up. Where they differed from Mr.
Curtis was in their lack of vision: they could not see what he saw!

It has been said that Mr. Curtis banished patent-medicine
advertisements from his magazine only when he could afford to do so.
That is not true, as a simple incident will show. In the early days,
he and Bok were opening the mail one Friday full of anxiety because the
pay-roll was due that evening, and there was not enough money in the
bank to meet it. From one of the letters dropped a certified check for
five