through these
small houses. The sets of plans and specifications sold by the
thousands. It was not long before the magazine was able to present
small-house plans by the foremost architects of the country, whose
services the average householder could otherwise never have dreamed of
securing.

Bok not only saw an opportunity to better the exterior of the small
houses, but he determined that each plan published should provide for
two essentials; every servant's room should have two windows to insure
cross-ventilation, and contain twice the number of cubic feet usually
given to such rooms; and in place of the American parlor, which he
considered a useless room, should be substituted either a living-room
or a library. He did not point to these improvements, every plan
simply presented the larger servant's room and did not present a
parlor. It is a singular fact that of the tens of thousands of plans
sold, not a purchaser ever noticed the absence of a parlor except one
woman in Brookline, Mass., who, in erecting a group of twenty-five
"_Journal_ houses," discovered after she had built ten that not one
contained a parlor!

For nearly twenty-five years Bok continued to publish pictures of
houses and plans. Entire colonies of "_Ladies' Home Journal_ houses"
have sprung up, and building promoters have built complete suburban
developments with them. How many of these homes have been erected it
is, of course, impossible to say; the number certainly runs into the
thousands.

It was one of the most constructive and far-reaching pieces of work
that Bok did during his editorial career--a fact now recognized by all
architects. Shortly before Stanford White passed away, he wrote: "I
firmly believe that Edward Bok has more completely influenced American
domestic architecture for the better than any man in this generation.
When he began, I was short-sighted enough to discourage him, and
refused to co-operate with him. If Bok came to me now, I would not
only make plans for him, but I would waive any fee for them in
retribution for my early mistake."

Bok then turned to the subject of the garden for the small house, and
the development of the grounds around the homes which he had been
instrumental in putting on the earth. He encountered no opposition
here. The publication of small gardens for small houses finally ran
into hundreds of pages, the magazine supplying planting plans and full
directions as to when and how to plant-