A second series of articles was also arranged for with Mr. Harrison, in
which he was to depict, in a personal way, the life of a President of
the United States, the domestic life of the White House, and the
financial arrangements made by the government for the care of the chief
executive and his family. The first series of articles by the former
President had been very successful; Bok felt that they had accomplished
much in making his women readers familiar with their country and the
machinery of its government. After this, which had been undeniably solid
reading, Bok reasoned that the supplementary articles, in lighter vein,
would serve as a sort of dessert. And so it proved.
Bok now devoted his attention to strengthening the fiction in his
magazine. He sought Mark Twain, and bought his two new stories; he
secured from Bret Harte a tale which he had just finished; and then ran
the gamut of the best fiction writers of the day, and secured their best
output. Marion Crawford, Conan Doyle, Sarah Orne Jewett, John Kendrick
Bangs, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Hamlin Garland, Mrs. Burton Harrison,
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mary E. Wilkins, Jerome K. Jerome, Anthony
Hope, Joel Chandler Harris, and others followed in rapid succession.
He next turned for a moment to his religious department, decided that it
needed a freshening of interest, and secured Dwight L. Moody, whose
evangelical work was then so prominently in the public eye, to conduct
"Mr.
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