ttention to strengthening the fiction in his
magazine. He sought Mark Twain, and bought his two new stories; he
secured from Bret Harte a tale which he had just finished; and then ran
the gamut of the best fiction writers of the day, and secured their best
output. Marion Crawford, Conan Doyle, Sarah Orne Jewett, John Kendrick
Bangs, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Hamlin Garland, Mrs. Burton Harrison,
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mary E. Wilkins, Jerome K. Jerome, Anthony
Hope, Joel Chandler Harris, and others followed in rapid succession.

He next turned for a moment to his religious department, decided that it
needed a freshening of interest, and secured Dwight L. Moody, whose
evangelical work was then so prominently in the public eye, to conduct
"Mr. Moody's Bible Class" in the magazine--practically a study of the
stated Bible lesson of the month with explanation in Moody's simple and
effective style.

The authors for whom the Journal was now publishing attracted the
attention of all the writers of the day, and the supply of good material
became too great for its capacity. Bok studied the mechanical make-up,
and felt that by some method he must find more room in the front
portion. He had allotted the first third of the magazine to the general
literary contents and the latter two-thirds to departmental features.
Toward the close of the number, the departments narrowed down from full
pages to single columns with advertisements on each side.

One day Bok was handling a story by Rudyard Kipling which had overrun
the space allowed for it in the front. The story had come late, and the
rest of the front portion of the magazine had gone to press. The editor
was in a quandary what to do with the two remaining columns of the
Kipling tale. There were only two pages open, and these were at the
back. He remade those pages, and continued the story from pages 6 and 7
to pages 38 and 39.

At once Bok saw that this was an instance where "necessity was the
mother of invention." He realized that if he could run some of his front
material over to the back he would relieve the pressure at the front,
present a more varied contents there, and make his advertisements more
valuable by putting them next to the most expensive material in the
magazine.

In the next issue he combined some of his smaller departments in the
back; and thus, in 1896, he inaugurated the method of "running over into
the back" which has now become a recognized principle in the m