e
announced his series and began its publication.

The most wonderful Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Hobbema, Van Dyck,
Raphael, Frans Hals, Romney, Gainsborough, Whistler, Corot, Mauve,
Vermeer, Fragonard, Botticelli, and Titian reproductions followed in
such rapid succession as fairly to daze the magazine readers. Four
pictures were given in each number, and the faithfulness of the
reproductions astonished even their owners. The success of the series
was beyond Bok's own best hopes. He was printing and selling one and
three-quarter million copies of each issue of his magazine; and before
he was through he had presented to American homes throughout the
breadth of the country over seventy million reproductions of forty
separate masterpieces of art.

The dream of years had come true.

Bok had begun with the exterior of the small American house and made an
impression upon it; he had brought the love of flowers into the hearts
of thousands of small householders who had never thought they could
have an artistic garden within a small area; he had changed the lines
of furniture, and he had put better art on the walls of these homes.
He had conceived a full-rounded scheme, and he had carried it out.

It was a peculiar satisfaction to Bok that Theodore Roosevelt once
summed up this piece of work in these words: "Bok is the only man I
ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an
entire nation, and he did it so quickly and yet so effectively that we
didn't know it was begun before it was finished. That is a mighty big
job for one man to have done."

In 1905 and in previous years the casualties resulting from fireworks
on the Fourth of July averaged from five to six thousand each year.
The humorous weekly _Life_ and the _Chicago Tribune_ had been for some
time agitating a restricted use of fireworks on the national fete day,
but nevertheless the list of casualties kept creeping to higher
figures. Bok decided to help by arousing the parents of America, in
whose hands, after all, lay the remedy. He began a series of articles
in the magazine, showing what had happened over a period of years, the
criminality of allowing so many young lives to be snuffed out, and
suggested how parents could help by prohibiting the deadly firecrackers
and cannon, and how organizations could assist by influencing the
passing of city ordinances. Each recurring January, _The Journal_
returned to the subject, looking forwa