My brother, Edward, and I were employed to take control of the paper and, if possible, resuscitate it. We found a number of "Tite Barnacles" there drawing extravagant salaries for which their services made no adequate return. To rid the paper of these was Edward's first concern. We found the pigeonholes stuffed with accepted manuscripts, not one in ten of which was worth printing. They were the work of amateurs who had nothing to say and didn't at all know how to say it. These must be paid for, as they had been accepted, but to print them would have been to invite continued failure. By my brother's order they were dumped into capacious waste baskets and better materials secured from writers of capacity—among them such persons as Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Asa Gray, George E. Waring, Jr., Charles Barnard, Mrs. Runkle, Helen Hunt, Rebecca Harding Davis, Sara Orne Jewett, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Rose Terry, and others of like ability.
Mary Mapes Dodge
Mrs. Dodge continued her well-nigh matchless work as editor of the children's pages, until a year or so later, when she left Hearth and Home to create the new children's magazine, St. Nicholas. She was a woman of real genius—a greatly overworked word, but one fitly applied in her case. Her editorial instincts were alert and unfailing. Her gift of discovering kernels of value in masses of chaff was astonishing, and her skill in revising and reconstructing so as to save the grain and rid it of the chaff was such as I have never known in any other editor.
Her industry was at times almost appalling in its tireless energy, yet it seemed to make no draughts upon her vitality that her singularly buoyant nature could not meet without apparent strain.
She had also a rare gift of recognizing ability in others, judging it accurately, and setting it to do its proper work. One of the greatest services she rendered Hearth and Home was in suggesting Frank R. Stockton for employment on the staff when we found ourselves in need of an assistant. He had not begun to make his reputation then. Such newspaper work as he had found to do had afforded his peculiar gifts no adequate opportunity and outside a narrow circle he was wholly unknown. But Mrs. Dodge was right in her reckoning when she advised his employment, and equally right in her perception of the kind of opportunity he needed.
The friendship between Stockton and myself, which was begun during the time of our association on Hearth and Home, endured and increased to the end of his life. The fame that those later years brought to him is a matter of familiar knowledge to all who are likely to read this book. It is not of that that I wish to write here, or of the character of the work by which that fame was won. It is only of Stockton the man that I need set down anything in these pages.
He was the best of good company always, as I found out early in our association, in those days when we went out together for our luncheon every day and enjoyed an hour of relaxation between the long morning's work and that of the longer afternoon. He never failed to be ready to go when the luncheon hour came. His work was always in shape and he carried no care for it with him when we quitted the office together. He never talked shop. I cannot remember that he ever mentioned anything respecting his work or asked a question concerning it between the time of our leaving the office and that of our return.
Not that he was indifferent to it, for on the contrary I never knew a more conscientious worker, or one who more faithfully attended to every detail. When his "copy" was laid on my desk I knew perfectly that every sentence was as he had intended it to be, that every paragraph break was made at the point he desired it to be, and that every comma was marked in its proper place. While engaged in doing his work he gave his undivided attention to it, but when he went with me to the Crooked Stoop house in Trinity Alley for his luncheon, he gave equal attention to the mutton and potatoes, while his conversation was of things light, airy, and not strenuous.
I spoke of this to him one day many years after the time of our editorial association, and for answer he said:
"I suppose there are men who can part their hair and polish their boots at the same time, but I am not gifted in that way."