United States or Sierra Leone ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here was a field almost limitless in possible improvement, but he wanted to approach it in a new way. The best method baffled him until one day he met a woman friend who told him that she was on her way to a funeral at a friend's home. "I didn't know you were so well acquainted with Mrs. S ," said Bok. "I wasn't, as a matter of fact," replied the woman.
Doctor Anna Howard Shaw had been appointed chairman of the National Committee of the Women's Council of National Defence, and Bok arranged at once with her that she should edit a department page in his magazine, setting forth the plans of the committee and how the women of America could co-operate therewith.
He consulted with friends, who advised against it; his editors were all opposed to the introduction of the unsavory subject into the magazine. "But it isn't unsavory," argued Bok. "That is just it. We have made it so by making it mysterious, by surrounding it with silence, by making it a forbidden topic. It is the most beautiful story in life." Mr. Curtis, alone, encouraged his editor.
While Bok did not solve the problem of bill-board advertising, and while in some parts of the country it is a more flagrant nuisance to-day than ever before, he had started the first serious agitation against bill-board advertising of bad design, detrimental, from its location, to landscape beauty.
Just about this time a group of Philadelphia physicians, headed by Doctor Samuel McClintock Hamill, which had formed itself into a hygienic committee for babies, waited upon Bok to ask him to join them in the creation of a permanent organization devoted to the welfare of babies and children.
Of course the facts could not be gainsaid; local pride was aroused, and as a result not only were the advertised "dirty spots" cleaned up, but the municipal authorities went out and hunted around for other spots in the city, not knowing what other photographs Bok might have had taken.
He had conceived a full-rounded scheme, and he had carried it out. It was a peculiar satisfaction to Bok that Theodore Roosevelt once summed up this piece of work in these words: "Bok is the only man I ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an entire nation, and he did it so quickly and yet so effectively that we didn't know it was begun before it was finished.
His knowledge of the manufacture of the two magazines in his charge was likewise educative, as was the fascinating study of typography which always had, and has to-day, a wonderful attraction for him. It was, however, in connection with the advertising of the general books of the house, and in his relations with their authors, that Bok found his greatest interest.
Years afterward Bok happened to be at a public meeting where Mr. Blaine was speaking, and the statesman, seeing him, immediately called him by name. Bok knew of the reputed marvels of Mr. Blaine's memory, but this proof of it amazed him. "It is simply inconceivable, Mr. Blaine," said Bok, "that you should remember my name after all these years." "Not at all, my boy," returned Mr. Blaine.
Bok had always wanted Gibson to depict the characters of Dickens; and he felt that this was the opportunity, while the artist was in London and could get the atmosphere for his work. Gibson was as keen for the idea as was Bok, and so the two arranged the series which was subsequently published.
Word Of The Day