still encouraged, and
the total ran into the hundreds of thousands, until during the last
year, before the service was finally stopped by the Great War in 1917,
the yearly correspondence totalled nearly a million letters.

[Illustration: The Grandmother, who counselled each of her children to
make the world a better and more beautiful place to live in--a counsel
which is now being carried on by her grandchildren, one of whom is
Edward Bok.]

The lack of opportunity for an education in Bok's own life led him to
cast about for some plan whereby an education might be obtained without
expense by any one who desired. He finally hit upon the simple plan of
substituting free scholarships for the premiums then so frequently
offered by periodicals for subscriptions secured. Free musical
education at the leading conservatories was first offered to any girl
who would secure a certain number of subscriptions to _The Ladies' Home
Journal_, the complete offer being a year's free tuition, with free
room, free board, free piano in her own room, and all travelling
expenses paid. The plan was an immediate success: the solicitation of
a subscription by a girl desirous of educating herself made an
irresistible appeal.

This plan was soon extended, so as to include all the girls' colleges,
and finally all the men's colleges, so that a free education might be
possible at any educational institution. So comprehensive it became
that to the close of 1919, one thousand four hundred and fifty-five
free scholarships had been awarded. The plan has now been in operation
long enough to have produced some of the leading singers and
instrumental artists of the day, whose names are familiar to all, as
well as instructors in colleges and scores of teachers; and to have
sent several score of men into conspicuous positions in the business
and professional world.

Edward Bok has always felt that but for his own inability to secure an
education, and his consequent desire for self-improvement, the
realization of the need in others might not have been so strongly felt
by him, and that his plan whereby thousands of others were benefited
might never have been realized.

It was this comprehensive personal service, built up back of the
magazine from the start, that gave the periodical so firm and unique a
hold on its clientele. It was not the printed word that was its chief
power: scores of editors who have tried to study and diagnose the
appeal of th