He went in turn to each noted person he had met, explained his
plight and stated his ambitions, with the result that very soon the
magazine and the public were surprised at the distinction of the
contributors to The Brooklyn Magazine. Each number contained a
noteworthy list of them, and when an article by the President of the
United States, then Rutherford B. Hayes, opened one of the numbers, the
public was astonished, since up to that time the unwritten rule that a
President's writings were confined to official pronouncements had
scarcely been broken. William Dean Howells, General Grant, General
Sherman, Phillips Brooks, General Sheridan, Canon Farrar, Cardinal
Gibbons, Marion Harland, Margaret Sangster--the most prominent men and
women of the day, some of whom had never written for magazines--began to
appear in the young editor's contents. Editors wondered how the
publishers could afford it, whereas, in fact, not a single name
represented an honorarium. Each contributor had come gratuitously to the
aid of the editor.
At first, the circulation of the magazine permitted the boys to wrap the
copies themselves; and then they, with two other boys, would carry as
huge bundles as they could lift, put them late at night on the front
platform of the street-cars, and take them to the postoffice. Thus the
boys absolutely knew the growth of their circulation by the weight of
their bundles and the number of their front-platform trips each month.
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