ave ever read.
They'd love to know Miss Ashmead better."

Here was exactly what the editor wanted, but he was the author! He
changed the name to Ruth Ashmore, and decided to let the manuscript go
into the magazine. He reasoned that he would then have a month in which
to see the writer he had in mind, and he would show her the proof. But a
month filled itself with other duties, and before the editor was aware
of it, the composition-room wanted "copy" for the second installment of
"Side Talks with Girls." Once more the editor furnished the copy!

Within two weeks after the second article had been written, the magazine
containing the first installment of the new department appeared, and the
next day two hundred letters were received for "Ruth Ashmore," with the
mail-clerk asking where they should be sent. "Leave them with me,
please," replied the editor. On the following day the mail-clerk handed
him five hundred more.

The editor now took two letters from the top and opened them. He never
opened the third! That evening he took the bundle home, and told his
mother of his predicament. She read the letters and looked at her son.
"You have no right to read these," she said. The son readily agreed.

His instinct had correctly interpreted the need, but he never dreamed
how far the feminine nature would reveal itself on paper.

The next morning the editor, with his letters, took the train for New
York and sought his friend, Mrs. Isabel A. Mallon, the "Bab" of his
popular syndicate letter.

"Have you read this department?" he asked, pointing to the page in the
magazine.

"I have," answered Mrs. Mallon. "Very well done, too, it is. Who is
'Ruth Ashmore'?'

"You are," answered Edward Bok. And while it took considerable
persuasion, from that time on Mrs. Mallon became Ruth Ashmore, the most
ridiculed writer in the magazine world, and yet the most helpful editor
that ever conducted a department in periodical literature. For sixteen
years she conducted the department, until she passed away, her last act
being to dictate a letter to a correspondent. In those sixteen years she
had received one hundred and fifty-eight thousand letters: she kept
three stenographers busy, and the number of girls who to-day bless the
name of Ruth Ashmore is legion.

But the newspaper humorists who insisted that Ruth Ashmore was none
other than Edward Bok never knew the partial truth of their joke!

The editor soon supplemented this department wi