"Are you talking at me or through me?" asked Bok.
"Both," replied Mr. Curtis.
This was in April of 1889.
Bok promised Mr. Curtis he would look over the field, and meanwhile he
sent over to Philadelphia the promised trial "literary gossip"
installment. It pleased Mr. Curtis, who suggested a monthly department,
to which Bok consented. He also turned over in his mind the wisdom of
interrupting his line of progress with the Scribners, and in New York,
and began to contemplate the possibilities in Philadelphia and the work
there.
He gathered a collection of domestic magazines then published, and
looked them over to see what was already in the field. Then he began to
study himself, his capacity for the work, and the possibility of finding
it congenial. He realized that it was absolutely foreign to his Scribner
work: that it meant a radical departure. But his work with his newspaper
syndicate naturally occurred to him, and he studied it with a view of
its adaptation to the field of the Philadelphia magazine.
His next step was to take into his confidence two or three friends whose
judgment he trusted and discuss the possible change. Without an
exception, they advised against it. The periodical had no standing, they
argued; Bok would be out of sympathy with its general atmosphere after
his Scribner environment; he was now in the direct line of progress in
New York publishing houses; and, to cap the climax, they each argued in
turn, he would be buried in Philadelphia: New York was the centre, etc.
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