"Let me suggest again, Mr. Renwick. Better say 'Dear friends, closely associated with "The Family Blessing," as all must feel who share the privilege of maintaining it, you will naturally desire to be informed,' etc. Don't you agree, Mr. Renwick? It is well to neglect no opportunity for deepening the sense of our de-ar subscribers that the 'Blessing' is a privilege to their households. I do everything possible to make our beloved ones feel that they own 'The Blessing,' as in the highest sense they do. They like that. It is remunerative, also."
Renwick jotted in the improvement, and read on: "A general purpose editor of 'The Blessing' is simply one charged with promoting the general purpose of 'The Blessing.' To explain what that is I cannot do better than employ the words of the Sole Proprietress, Miss Minnely herself, and——."
The lady suggested, "I cannot do so well as to employ the words of—it is always effective to speak most respectfully of the absent Proprietress—that touches their imagination favourably. It is good business."
"I appreciate it, Miss Minnely. And now I venture to adapt, verbatim, parts of your notes to me."
"It was forethoughtful to preserve them, Mr. Renwick. I am cordially pleased."
He read on more oratorically:—"De-ar friends, 'The Blessing' has a Mission, and to fulfil that Mission it must, first of all, entertain its subscribers on their higher plane. This cannot be done by stimulating in them any latent taste for coarse and inelegant laughter, but by furnishing entertainingly the wholesome food from which mental pabulum is absorbed and mental growth accomplished."
"Excellent! My very own words."
"The varieties of this entertaining pabulum must be conscientiously prepared, and administered in small quantities so that each can be assimilated unconsciously by Youth and Age without mental mastication. Mind is not Character, and——"
"How true. Character-building publications must never be addressed to mere Mind."
"The uplifting of the Mind, or Intellect," Renwick read on, "is not the general purpose of 'The Family Blessing.' It is by the Literature of the Heart that Character is uplifted. Therefore a general purpose editor of 'The Blessing' must ever seek to maintain and to present the truly cordial. That is what most widely attracts and pleases all these sections of the great American people who are uncorrupted by worldly and literary associations which tend to canker the Soul with cynicism."