Charles A. Briggs.
"Let me see," asked Doctor Patton, and when he read it, he muttered: "Humph, pretty broad, pretty broad."
"Well," answered the nettled Doctor Briggs, "perhaps you can give a less broad definition, Patton."
"No, no," answered the Princeton theologian, as the slightest wink came from the eye nearest Bok, "I wouldn't attempt it for a moment. Too much for me."
On another occasion, as the two were busy in their discussion of some article to be inserted in the magazine, Bok listening with all his might, Doctor Patton, suddenly turning to the young listener, asked, in the midst of the argument: "Whom are the Giants going to play this afternoon, Bok?"
Doctor Briggs's face was a study. For a moment the drift of the question was an enigma to him: then realizing that an important theological discussion had been interrupted by a trivial baseball question, he gathered up his papers and stamped violently out of the office. Doctor Patton made no comment, but, with a smile, he asked Bok: "Johnnie Ward going to play to-day, do you know? Thought I might ask Mr. Scribner if you could go up to the game this afternoon."
It is unnecessary to say to which of the two men Bok was the more attracted, and when it came, each quarter, to figuring how many articles could go into the Review without exceeding the cost limit fixed by the house, it was always a puzzle to Doctor Briggs why the majority of the articles left out were invariably those that he had brought in, while many of those which Doctor Patton handed in somehow found their place, upon the final assembling, among the contents.
"Your articles are so long," Bok would explain.
"Long?" Doctor Briggs would echo. "You don't measure theological discussions by the yardstick, young man."
"Perhaps not," the young assembler would maintain.