The New York herald., 1922-11-12
Continued from Preceding Page.

ter of the "aristocratic" sort Magazines
would always start off with what looked
like enthusiasm on the part of subscribers
You know how it is yourself if you have
ever tried to get up anything. Plenty of
people will promise to help you, but when
it comes to actually lending a hand or
putting one in their pockets it's another
story. They usually melt away or turn a
deaf ear to your appeals. and you must
either manage the whole thing yourself
or give it up. Some of the men who
started magazines proved able to keep
them going single handed for quite a
while but they all had to give up at last
Yet, although we do not even remember
their names now they were doing a gal
liant Service. They were paying out their
money, their time, their energy, their en-
thusiasm-all of which they might have
put into something else more profitable to
themselves-in order that you and 1 might
have to-day what we call national litera-
ture. For you must remember that their
fervent enthusiasm for literature was not
at all representative. If it had been their
magazines would not have died of starva-
ton. Even the appeal they made to patriot
ism was unavailing. "Disprove," they
cried, ''the British jeer that the Colonies
when separated from England would be-
come mere illiterate orang- utansl Show
them that you have taste for literature!
But the majority of the people in Amer
lea were little interested in reading Most
of those that were were satisfied with the
newspaper. The average household did not
own or care to own what We call book
In spite of this however, a competent OBJ
server wrote in the last year of the GEN.
tury: Il am satisfied that the ratio of in
tellect is as 20 to / and of knowledge as
100 to / in these States, compared with
what they were before the American Revo-
luton" Something had produced this great
change. There is no fact of the time which
is likely to account for it as these
plucky attempts at magazines. Short lived
as they were and dead loss as they seemed
to their overenthusiastic founders, they
were laying the firm foundation for the
literature that was to come. These name
less men, then. were doing the importan.
literary work of the time.
Furthermore, it was a work unparalleled
in the history of the literature of any other
country Such a thing as a magazine pub
lished outside of the leading literary CEN
ters of Europe was unheard of then, and
it is almost unheard of to-day. But
everywhere in America, especially after the
change in postal rates. there were these
attempts to establish magazines, not only
in the half dozen minor cities, but in viii
lagos of scarcely more than a half dozen
houses It would have chagrined very
much the writer's of those mammoth epics
to know that the distinctive national voice
they were trying in vain to produce was
at that moment being heard in half a
hundred places in America, and that no
body recognized it as such. Even to-day,
people do not seem to consider how re-
markable it was. These nameless pioneers
of letters setting UP their printing presses
in the wilderness sometimes before the
little clearings they had fenced in were
connected with the main roads of travel
to and from the cities. deserve our
admiration and gratitude as much as do
those pioneers who swung the first axes.
Some of those little clusters of houses
were trying to support a magazine before
they had a post office. What do you think
of that for indomitable ambition!
Yes one after the other. they all failed.
But there were SO many that it actually
amounted to a continuous performance.
1t was like a torch race A runner runs
with a lighted torch in hand, and before
his pace begins to flag he gives it to an
other and he to another, and so on until