These enemies of the plant will not all begin their work in March, but they are enlisting, drilling, and furnishing their regiments for the season’s strife.
WITH THE EDITOR
IN the early days of our country the guest was always honored. Friend or stranger, the door was thrown open to him, and the circle around the fireplace parted willingly to receive him. After his comfort had been assured, however, there came inevitably to the mind of the host the natural queries—seldom expressed in words—“What is his name? What his purpose?” Then the wayfarer, his reserve thawing before the friendly greeting, would just as naturally open his heart and speak of himself.
Such was the old-time hospitality which Hawthorne so quaintly pictures in “The Ambitious Guest.”
To-day, the railroad and the comparative luxury of travel have made the wayside visitor a being of tradition, but the primitive impulses of hospitality and curiosity still survive.
You have opened your doors to us and have welcomed us into that most sacred of places—the family circle. You do not ask, yet we cannot but feel, the old question in your kindly gaze. You would know our name?—our purpose?
Until better advised, we shall call ourselves Young Folks Magazine.
Our purpose is to provide good reading for young people. By good reading, we mean that which is interesting enough to catch and hold the attention of the reader, and which, in the end, leaves him better or wiser for having read it. But it must be interesting, or all its other virtues fail. The young person, particularly the boy, looks with distrust upon the story which comes too emphatically recommended as useful. To him, mere utility is closely related to dullness. With this knowledge fresh in our memory, we promise at the outset that our pages shall not be lacking in a keen and healthy human interest.
“But,” we hear our host exclaim, “why another magazine in a time and country already over-run with literature?”