Yes, Miss Ashmead in your department," was the answer.
The whereabouts of the manuscript was then disclosed, and the editor called for its return.He had called the department "Side Talks with Girls" by Ruth Ashmead.
"My girls all hope this is going into the magazine," said the superintendent when he returned the manuscript.
"Why?" asked the editor.
"Well, they say it's the best stuff for girls they have ever read.
They'd love to know Miss Ashmead better."Here was exactly what the editor wanted, but he was the author! He changed the name to Ruth Ashmore, and decided to let the manuscript go into the magazine.He reasoned that he would then have a month in which to see the writer he had in mind, and he would show her the proof.But a month filled itself with other duties, and before the editor was aware of it, the composition-room wanted "copy" for the second installment of "Side Talks with Girls." Once more the editor furnished the copy!
Within two weeks after the second article had been written, the magazine containing the first installment of the new department appeared, and the next day two hundred letters were received for "Ruth Ashmore," with the mail-clerk asking where they should be sent."Leave them with me, please," replied the editor.On the following day the mail-clerk handed him five hundred more.
The editor now took two letters from the top and opened them.He never opened the third! That evening he took the bundle home, and told his mother of his predicament.She read the letters and looked at her son.
"You have no right to read these," she said.The son readily agreed.
His instinct had correctly interpreted the need, but he never dreamed how far the feminine nature would reveal itself on paper.
The next morning the editor, with his letters, took the train for New York and sought his friend, Mrs.Isabel A.Mallon, the "Bab" of his popular syndicate letter.
"Have you read this department?" he asked, pointing to the page in the magazine.
"I have," answered Mrs.Mallon."Very well done, too, it is.Who is 'Ruth Ashmore'?'
"You are," answered Edward Bok.And while it took considerable persuasion, from that time on Mrs.Mallon became Ruth Ashmore, the most ridiculed writer in the magazine world, and yet the most helpful editor that ever conducted a department in periodical literature.For sixteen years she conducted the department, until she passed away, her last act being to dictate a letter to a correspondent.In those sixteen years she had received one hundred and fifty-eight thousand letters: she kept three stenographers busy, and the number of girls who to-day bless the name of Ruth Ashmore is legion.
But the newspaper humorists who insisted that Ruth Ashmore was none other than Edward Bok never knew the partial truth of their joke!
The editor soon supplemented this department with one dealing with the spiritual needs of the mature woman."The King's Daughters" was then an organization at the summit of its usefulness, with Margaret Bottome its president.Edward Bok had heard Mrs.Bottome speak, had met her personally, and decided that she was the editor for the department he had in mind.
"I want it written in an intimate way as if there were only two persons in the world, you and the person reading.I want heart to speak to heart.We will make that the title," said the editor, and unconsciously he thus created the title that has since become familiar wherever English is spoken: "Heart to Heart Talks." The title gave the department an instantaneous hearing; the material in it carried out its spirit, and soon Mrs.Bottome's department rivaled, in popularity, the page by Ruth Ashmore.
These two departments more than anything else, and the irresistible picture of a man editing a woman's magazine, brought forth an era of newspaper paragraphing and a flood of so-called "humorous" references to the magazine and editor.It became the vogue to poke fun at both.The humorous papers took it up, the cartoonists helped it along, and actors introduced the name of the magazine on the stage in plays and skits.
Never did a periodical receive such an amount of gratuitous advertising.
Much of the wit was absolutely without malice: some of it was written by Edward Bok's best friends, who volunteered to "let up" would he but raise a finger.
But he did not raise the finger.No one enjoyed the "paragraphs" more heartily when the wit was good, and in that case, if the writer was unknown to him, he sought him out and induced him to write for him.In this way, George Fitch was found on the Peoria, Illinois, Transcript and introduced to his larger public in the magazine and book world through The Ladies' Home Journal, whose editor he believed he had "most unmercifully roasted";--but he had done it so cleverly that the editor at once saw his possibilities.
When all his friends begged Bok to begin proceedings against the New York Evening Sun because of the libellous (?) articles written about him by "The Woman About Town," the editor admired the style rather than the contents, made her acquaintance, and secured her as a regular writer:
she contributed to the magazine some of the best things published in its pages.But she did not abate her opinions of Bok and his magazine in her articles in the newspaper, and Bok did not ask it of her: he felt that she had a right to her opinions--those he was not buying; but he was eager to buy her direct style in treating subjects he knew no other woman could so effectively handle.
And with his own limited knowledge of the sex, he needed, and none knew it better than did he, the ablest women he could obtain to help him realize his ideals.Their personal opinions of him did not matter so long as he could command their best work.Sooner or later, when his purposes were better understood, they might alter those opinions.For that he could afford to wait.But he could not wait to get their work.
