The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scrap Book. Volume 1, No. 2, by Various

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Title: The Scrap Book. Volume 1, No. 2
April 1906

Author: Various

Release Date: April 24, 2010 [EBook #32119]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE SCRAP BOOK.

Vol. I. APRIL, 1906. No. 2.

A MARVELOUS RECEPTION.

Nothing is a success until it is a proved success. The ideas that seem
best frequently turn out the worst. If it were not for this fact, a fact
with which we are thoroughly familiar, we should feel that we have in THE
SCRAP BOOK the hit of a century. Indeed, it is difficult not to let
ourselves go a bit, even now, and talk about this new creation in
magazine-making in a way that would sound like high-pressure fiction.

Six weeks ago THE SCRAP BOOK was nothing but an idea. It had had a good
deal of thought in a general way, but nothing effectually focuses until
actual work begins. Filmy, desultory thought, in cloudland, counts for
little.

In the early conception of THE SCRAP BOOK it was as unlike this magazine
as a mustard-seed is unlike the full-grown tree. Rebelling as I did, and
still do, at the restraints of the conventional magazine, and realizing
the added strength that should come from the rare old things and the best
current things--the scrap bits that are full of juice and sweetness and
tenderness and pathos and humor--realizing all this, I undertook to
incorporate in MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE a department which I intended to call THE
SCRAP BOOK.

I had special headings and borders drawn for this department, with a view
to differentiating it from other parts of the magazine. I had sample pages
put in type, and more or less work done on the department. But it did not
fit MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, and MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE gave no scope for such a
section. It was atmospherically antagonistic to a magazine which consisted
wholly of original matter. This was the beginning of THE SCRAP BOOK--the
thought nebula.