But in the East, where printing has existed so long that the memory of man goes not to the contrary, it is almost impossible to say how far back was the introduction of the monthly literary magazine. This publication was accompanied with certain advantages and certain disadvantages, which sprang from the peculiarities of the Eastern calendar. The Eastern month being lunar, the magazine, if accuracy were consulted, had to be issued once in twenty-nine days, twelve hours, and forty-four minutes. On the other hand, the people of the East are less exacting or precise than we are in their estimates of time; and in the long run, if they had thirteen monthlies in one year, and twelve in each of the next two years, it generally proved that subscribers were satisfied.
There is a story of two of these early magazines--universally known through the East, where, indeed, it is told in many exaggerated and impossible forms--which is worth repeating for Western readers not yet familiar with it. It gives both instruction and warning in an age in which every boy in college, and every girl in a "female seminary," regards magazine-writing as the chief end of man and of woman,--an age in which editors are feeling round, somewhat blindly, to know what their rights may be, or whether, in fact, they have any rights, which is doubtful. The story simply told, without any of the absurd adornments which are put upon it in the East, teaches all men how some of the most difficult editorial questions were decided there, and what are the delicate relations between contributors and the public.
Far back in the period of mythical history in the East two brothers, men of spirit, tact, shrewdness, and literary culture, conducted at the same time two monthly magazines. The offices of publication were so far from each other, and the "constituencies" were so different, that the two journals did not in the least interfere with each other. Those were in the happy days when there were no mails; and each magazine had its own staff and its own contributors, the one set skilled in the language and literature of Tartary, and the other in those of India. Though the two brothers loved each other, they seldom exchanged letters, and the chosen contributors of one journal never sent articles to the other.