I never know what an audience wants: I know what it ought to want: and sometimes I can give it, or make it accept what I think it needs--and sometimes I cannot.But the more I thought over your proposal, the more I liked it...Whether the wine will be good enough to attract without any bush I don't know; and besides, in such cases the fault is not in the wine, but in the fact that the consumers decline to have their attention attracted unless there is a bush!"In the latter part of 1916 an anonymous department called "Men" was begun in the magazine.
The physical work was great.The colonel punctiliously held to the conditions, and wrote manuscript and letters with his own hand, and Bok carried out his part of the agreement.Nor was this simple, for Colonel Roosevelt's manuscript--particularly when, as in this case, it was written on yellow paper with a soft pencil and generously interlined--was anything but legible.Month after month the two men worked each at his own task.To throw the public off the scent, during the conduct of the department, an article or two by Colonel Roosevelt was published in another part of the magazine under his own name, and in the department itself the anonymous author would occasionally quote himself.
It was natural that the appearance of a department devoted to men in a woman's magazine should attract immediate attention.The department took up the various interests of a man's life, such as real efficiency; his duties as an employer and his usefulness to his employees; the employee's attitude toward his employer; the relations of men and women;a father's relations to his sons and daughters; a man's duty to his community; the public-school system; a man's relation to his church, and kindred topics.
The anonymity of the articles soon took on interest from the positiveness of the opinions discussed; but so thoroughly had Colonel Roosevelt covered his tracks that, although he wrote in his usual style, in not a single instance was his name connected with the department.
Lyman Abbott was the favorite "guess" at first; then after various other public men had been suggested, the newspapers finally decided upon former President Eliot of Harvard University as the writer.
All this intensely interested and amused Colonel Roosevelt and he fairly itched with the desire to write a series of criticisms of his own articles to Doctor Eliot.Bok, however, persuaded the colonel not to spend more physical effort than he was already doing on the articles;for, in addition, he was notating answers on the numerous letters received, and those Bok answered "on behalf of the author."For a year, the department continued.During all that time the secret of the authorship was known to only one man, besides the colonel and Bok, and their respective wives!
When the colonel sent his last article in the series to Bok, he wrote:
"Now that the work is over, I wish most cordially to thank you, my dear fellow, for your unvarying courtesy and kindness.I have not been satisfied with my work.This is the first time I ever tried to write precisely to order, and I am not one of those gifted men who can do so to advantage.Generally I find that the 3,000 words is not the right length and that I wish to use 2,000 or 4,000! And in consequence feel as if I had either padded or mutilated the article.And I am not always able to feel that every month I have something worth saying on a given subject.
"But I hope that you have not been too much disappointed."Bok had not been, and neither had his public!
In the meanwhile, Bok had arranged with Colonel Roosevelt for his reading and advising upon manuscripts of special significance for the magazine.In this work, Colonel Roosevelt showed his customary promptness and thoroughness.A manuscript, no matter how long it might be, was in his hands scarcely forty-eight hours, more generally twenty-four, before it was read, a report thereon written, and the article on its way back.His reports were always comprehensive and invariably interesting.There was none of the cut-and-dried flavor of the opinion of the average "reader"; he always put himself into the report, and, of course, that meant a warm personal touch.If he could not encourage the publication of a manuscript, his reasons were always fully given, and invariably without personal bias.
