sly
interlined--was anything but legible. Month after month the two men
worked each at his own task. To throw the public off the scent, during
the conduct of the department, an article or two by Colonel Roosevelt
was published in another part of the magazine under his own name, and in
the department itself the anonymous author would occasionally quote
himself.

It was natural that the appearance of a department devoted to men in a
woman's magazine should attract immediate attention. The department took
up the various interests of a man's life, such as real efficiency; his
duties as an employer and his usefulness to his employees; the
employee's attitude toward his employer; the relations of men and women;
a father's relations to his sons and daughters; a man's duty to his
community; the public-school system; a man's relation to his church, and
kindred topics.

The anonymity of the articles soon took on interest from the
positiveness of the opinions discussed; but so thoroughly had Colonel
Roosevelt covered his tracks that, although he wrote in his usual style,
in not a single instance was his name connected with the department.
Lyman Abbott was the favorite "guess" at first; then after various other
public men had been suggested, the newspapers finally decided upon
former President Eliot of Harvard University as the writer.

All this intensely interested and amused Colonel Roosevelt and he fairly
itched with the desire to write a series of criticisms of his own
articles to Doctor Eliot. Bok, however, persuaded the colonel not to
spend more physical effort than he was already doing on the articles;
for, in addition, he was notating answers on the numerous letters
received, and those Bok answered "on behalf of the author."

For a year, the department continued. During all that time the secret of
the authorship was known to only one man, besides the colonel and Bok,
and their respective wives!

When the colonel sent his last article in the series to Bok, he wrote:

"Now that the work is over, I wish most cordially to thank you, my dear
fellow, for your unvarying courtesy and kindness. I have not been
satisfied with my work. This is the first time I ever tried to write
precisely to order, and I am not one of those gifted men who can do so
to advantage. Generally I find that the 3,000 words is not the right
length and that I wish to use 2,000 or 4,000! And in consequence feel as
if I had either padded or mutilated the