" He asked Gene Stratton Porter to tell of her bird-experiences
in the series: "What I Have Done with Birds"; he persuaded Dean Hodges
to turn from his work of training young clergymen at the Episcopal
Seminary, at Cambridge, and write one of the most successful series of
Bible stories for children ever printed; and then he supplemented this
feature for children by publishing Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories
and his "Puck of Pook's Hill." He induced F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the
best stories he had ever heard in his wide travels in "The Man in the
Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin to tell a country church
experience of hers in "The Old Peabody Pew"; and Jean Webster her
knowledge of almshouse life in "Daddy Long Legs."
The readers of The Ladies' Home Journal realized that it searched the
whole field of endeavor in literature and art to secure what would
interest them, and they responded with their support.
Another of Bok's methods in editing was to do the common thing in an
uncommon way. He had the faculty of putting old wine in new bottles and
the public liked it. His ideas were not new; he knew there were no new
ideas, but he presented his ideas in such a way that they seemed new. It
is a significant fact, too, that a large public will respond more
quickly to an idea than it will to a name.
This The Ladies' Home Journal proved again and again. Its most
pronounced successes, from the point of view of circulation, were those
in which the idea was the sole and central appeal.
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