“I can truthfully say I never dreamed a magazine could contain what I call 100 per cent stories. The thing that is worrying me now is the long wait until next month and the arrival of the next issue. Dear Mr. Editor, why not a weekly? It is the ONE magazine I wish were a daily! I am going to boost it to all my friends, as I am sure they will be glad I called their attention to it.... I feel you have undertaken a brave proposition, and there must be many thousands of others who will await its arrival just as anxiously as I.
“In conclusion, let me thank you for your dauntless courage and express the sincere hope that you may never weaken. Always count me as one of your very best boosters for this absolutely wonderful magazine, and always believe me to be
“One who admires courage and determination,
“L. William Pitzer,
“Director, Girard Avenue Theatre Co., Philadelphia.”
That serves very neatly for a starter, does it not? In fact, we doubt if the Editor himself could have written a more fervid panegyric! Mr. Pitzer, we gather, is even more feverishly absorbed in WEIRD TALES than we are—and we thought we were rather interested in it. What he says about publishing it every week is interesting, but as for a daily—Heaven help us! The man doesn’t live who could do it!
Of compelling charm is the following communication, postmarked Vera Cruz, Mexico, from Charles M. Boone, Third Officer of the Steamship Yumuri:
“Editor, WEIRD TALES: I, acting on a ‘hunch,’ purchased your March issue in Brooklyn, along with other reading matter for sea use, and your publication was so far in advance of the others that I could not resist a letter to you expressing my appreciation and wishing WEIRD TALES a long and prosperous voyage on the sea of literature, and with just such precious cargo as is carried in the March issue.
“I work and live on the Yumuri, a tramp steamer out of New Orleans. New Orleans, as you know, was requisitioned by you people ‘up there,’ some years ago, to fasten the other end of the I. C. R. R. to, and now New Orleans requisitions us to carry your freight away as rapidly as possible so that you can’t push her overboard into the Gulf by using said railroad as a handspike. You can gather from this that at present I have no fixed address for mailing purposes, such as I would need to have you mail WEIRD TALES to me regularly, but I am enclosing price of April number, and if you will kindly have same mailed to me at address given I’ll feel greatly obliged, and can arrange with some newsdealer in New Orleans to save an issue for me each month.
“Your magazine (the only copy on board) is slowly making the rounds of the ship. So far, everybody is favorably impressed, except the cat and the goat, and those who have not read it are lined up awaiting their turn. At present the Old Man (skipper) is locked in his cabin, submerged in ‘A Dead Man’s Tale,’ and he swears he will shoot anyone that interrupts him. As he is a veteran of four wars, has a .45 Colts, a bad ‘rep,’ and is able to swear in every known (and several unknown) tongues, it is a pretty safe bet that he won’t be disturbed, and that you will have another ‘fan’ as soon as he comes up for air.