day, Page & Company, and which he would personally have enjoyed
editing.

It was in 1913 that the real Edward Bok, bottled up for twenty-five
years, again came to the surface. The majority stockholders of The
Century Magazine wanted to dispose of their interest in the periodical.
Overtures were made to The Curtis Publishing Company, but its hands were
full, and the matter was presented for Bok's personal consideration. The
idea interested him, as he saw in The Century a chance for his
self-expression. He entered into negotiations, looked carefully into the
property itself and over the field which such a magazine might fill,
decided to buy it, and install an active editor while he, as a close
adviser, served as the propelling power.

Bok figured out that there was room for one of the trio of what was, and
still is, called the standard-sized magazines, namely Scribner's,
Harper's, and The Century. He believed, as he does to-day, that any one
of these magazines could be so edited as to preserve all its traditions
and yet be so ingrafted with the new progressive, modern spirit as to
dominate the field and constitute itself the leader in that particular
group. He believed that there was a field which would produce a
circulation in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million copies a month
for one of those magazines, so that it would be considered not, as now,
one of three, but the one.

What Bok saw in the possibilities of the standard illustrated magazine
has been excellently carried out by Mr. Ellery Sedgwick in The Atlantic
Monthly; every tradition has been respected, and yet the new progressive
note introduced has given it a position and a circulation never before
attained by a non-illustrated magazine of the highest class.

As Bok studied the field, his confidence in the proposition, as he saw
it, grew. For his own amusement, he made up some six issues of The
Century as he visualized it, and saw that the articles he had included
were all obtainable. He selected a business manager and publisher who
would relieve him of the manufacturing problems; but before the contract
was actually closed Bok, naturally, wanted to consult Mr. Curtis, who
was just returning from abroad, as to this proposed sharing of his
editor.

For one man to edit two magazines inevitably meant a distribution of
effort, and this Mr. Curtis counselled against. He did not believe that
any man could successfully serve two masters; it would also mean a