As Bok studied the field, his confidence in the proposition, as he saw it, grew. For his own amusement, he made up some six issues of The Century as he visualized it, and saw that the articles he had included were all obtainable. He selected a business manager and publisher who would relieve him of the manufacturing problems; but before the contract was actually closed Bok, naturally, wanted to consult Mr. Curtis, who was just returning from abroad, as to this proposed sharing of his editor.
For one man to edit two magazines inevitably meant a distribution of effort, and this Mr. Curtis counselled against. He did not believe that any man could successfully serve two masters; it would also mean a division of public association; it might result in Bok's physical undoing, as already he was overworked. Mr. Curtis's arguments, of course, prevailed; the negotiations were immediately called off, and for the second time—for some wise reason, undoubtedly—the real Edward Bok was subdued. He went back into the bottle!
A cardinal point in Edward Bok's code of editing was not to commit his magazine to unwritten material, or to accept and print articles or stories simply because they were the work of well-known persons. And as his acquaintance with authors multiplied, he found that the greater the man the more willing he was that his work should stand or fall on its merit, and that the editor should retain his prerogative of declination—if he deemed it wise to exercise it.
Rudyard Kipling was, and is, a notable example of this broad and just policy. His work is never imposed upon an editor; it is invariably submitted, in its completed form, for acceptance or declination. "Wait until it's done," said Kipling once to Bok as he outlined a story to him which the editor liked, "and see whether you want it. You can't tell until then." (What a difference from the type of author who insists that an editor must take his or her story before a line is written!)
"I told Watt to send you," he writes to Bok, "the first four of my child stories (you see I hadn't forgotten my promise), and they may serve to amuse you for a while personally, even if you don't use them for publication. Frankly, I don't myself see how they can be used for the L. H. J.; but they're part of a scheme of mine for trying to give children not a notion of history, but a notion of the time sense which is at the bottom of all knowledge of history; and history, rightly understood, means the love of one's fellow-men and the land one lives in."
James Whitcomb Riley was another who believed that an editor should have the privilege of saying "No" if he so elected. When Riley was writing a series of poems for Bok, the latter, not liking a poem which the Hoosier poet sent him, returned it to him. He wondered how Riley would receive a declination—naturally a rare experience. But his immediate answer settled the question:
"Thanks equally for your treatment of both poems, [he wrote], the one accepted and the other returned. Maintain your own opinions and respect, and my vigorous esteem for you shall remain 'deep-rooted in the fruitful soil.' No occasion for apology whatever. In my opinion, you are wrong; in your opinion, you are right; therefore, you are right,—at least righter than wronger. It is seldom that I drop other work for logic, but when I do, as my grandfather was wont to sturdily remark, 'it is to some purpose, I can promise you.'
"Am goin' to try mighty hard to send you the dialect work you've so long wanted; in few weeks at furthest. 'Patience and shuffle the cards.'
"I am really, just now, stark and bare of one common-sense idea. In the writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much merriment)-creasing pressure of it all.
"Even the hope of waking to find myself famous is denied me, since I haven't time in which to fall asleep. Therefore, very drowsily and yawningly indeed, I am your