roperty. When the time came for counting noses Page and his friends
found themselves in a minority. Of course his resignation as editor
necessarily followed this little unpleasantness. And just as inevitably
the _Forum_ again began to lose money, and soon sank into an obscurity
from which it has never emerged.

The _Forum_ had established Page's reputation as an editor, and the
competition for his services was lively. The distinguished Boston
publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company immediately invited him
to become a part of their organization. When Horace E. Scudder, in 1898,
resigned the editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, Page succeeded him.
Thus Page became the successor of James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields,
William D. Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous
periodical. This meant that he had reached the top of his profession. He
was now forty-three years old.

No American publication had ever had so brilliant a history. Founded in
1857, in the most flourishing period of the New England writers, its
pages had first published many of the best essays of Emerson, the second
series of the Biglow papers as well as many other of Lowell's writings,
poems of Longfellow and Whittier, such great successes as Holmes's
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the
Republic," and the early novels of Henry James. If America had a
literature, the _Atlantic_ was certainly its most successful periodical
exponent. Yet, in a sense, the _Atlantic_, by the time Page succeeded to
the editorship, had become the victim of its dazzling past. Its recent
editors had lived too exclusively in their back numbers. They had
conducted the magazine too much for the restricted audience of Boston
and New England. There was a time, indeed, when the business office
arranged the subscribers in two classes--"Boston" and "foreign";
"Boston" representing their local adherents, and "foreign" the loyal
readers who lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. One
of its editors had been heard to boast that he never solicited a
contribution; it was not his business to be a literary drummer! Let the
truth be fairly spoken: when Page made his first appearance in the
_Atlantic_ office, the magazine was unquestionably on the decline. Its
literary quality was still high; the momentum that its great
contributors had given it was still keeping the publication alive;
entrance into its columns still re