nthly magazine which he could regard as
his own in both senses. He was its untrammelled editor, and also, in
part, its proprietor. All editors and writers will sympathize with the
ideas expressed in a letter written about this time to Page's friend,
Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, already distinguished as the historian of
Italian unity and afterward to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and
John Hay. When the first number of the _World's Work_ appeared Mr.
Thayer wrote, expressing a slight disappointment that its leading
tendency was journalistic rather than literary and intellectual. "When
you edited the _Forum_," wrote Mr. Thayer, "I perceived that no such
talent for editing had been seen in America before, and when, a little
later, you rejuvenated the _Atlantic_, making it for a couple of years
the best periodical printed in English, I felt that you had a great
mission before you as evoker and editor of the best literary work and
weightiest thought on important topics of our foremost men." He had
hoped to see a magnified _Atlantic_, and the new publication, splendid
as it was, seemed to be of rather more popular character than the
publications with which Page had previously been associated. Page met
this challenge in his usual hearty fashion.

_To William Roscoe Thayer_
34 Union Square East, New York,
December 5, 1900.

My Dear Thayer:

The _World's Work_ has brought me nothing so good as your letter of
yesterday. When Mrs. Page read it, she shouted "Now that's it!" For
"it" read "truth," and you will have her meaning and mine. My
thanks you may be sure you have, in great and earnest abundance.

You surprise me in two ways--(1) that you think as well of the
magazine as you do. If it have half the force and earnestness that
you say it has, how happy I shall be, for then it will surely bring
something to pass. The other way in which you surprise me is by the
flattering things that you say about my conduct of the _Atlantic_.
Alas! it was not what you in your kind way say--no, no.

Of course the _World's Work_ is not yet by any means what I hope to
make it. But it has this incalculable advantage (to me) over every
other magazine in existence: it is mine (mine and my partners',
i.e., partly mine), and I shall not work to build up a good piece
of machinery and then be turned out to graze as an old horse is.
This of