(At this point it should be stated that when a small check goes to Mr. Davis, with an apology for it being just the first installment and that another check will go a month later, the return mail brings a pleasant letter of thanks and an acknowledgment of payment in full.)
And now, as you are recrossing Madison Square Park, your head so high in the clouds that not even the tips of your toes are touching the earth, all the birds in the neighborhood, including the sparrows, have gathered and are singing glad anthems of joy; and all the trees that an hour ago were just in green leaf are now billowed with beautiful flowers.
Well, that is that, and of course you are now sitting pretty. But presently we see you on a Fifth Avenue bus, returning from Fifty-ninth Street where, in a sumptuous Victorian apartment overlooking Central Park you have asked William Dean Howells for a story--and on this incident we will charitably draw the curtain.
Meanwhile _Bradley: His Book_ met with kind reception--advance orders for the second number being: Brentano’s New York, six hundred copies, Old Corner Bookstore, Boston, four hundred, etc.; the first issue being out of print except for the supply being held for new subscribers. Pratt, Sixth Avenue, New York, sent check to pay for one hundred subscriptions.
There being no joy in doing today what one did yesterday, or what another did yesterday; and creative design in which there is no joy or laughter being of little worth, a new lay-out and change of stock were provided for each issue of _Bradley: His Book_; the fifth number started a change of format.
But as a business tycoon Will Bradley was a lamentable failure despite this auspicious start--a story I have already told.
At the turn of the century, after saying a sad farewell to fond hopes and feeling older at thirty-two than is now true at eighty-two, I finally gave up trying to be a publisher and printer. While covers for _Collier’s_ were bridging an awkward gap Edward Bok appeared on the scene and commissioned the laying-out of an editorial prospectus for the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, the printing to be done at the Curtis plant. For this I used a special casting of an old face not then on the market, Mr. Phinney of the Boston branch of ATF telling me it was to be called Wayside. When the prospectus was finished Mr. Bok invited me to his home just outside Philadelphia and there it was arranged that I design eight full pages for the _Journal_--eight full pages of house interiors. These were followed by a series of house designs. Finding it difficult to keep to merely four walls I added dozens of suggestions for individual pieces of furniture--this being the “Mission” period when such designing required no knowledge of periods, only imagination. Then Mr. Bok suggested that I move to Rose Valley, start a shop to make furniture and other forms of handicraft in line with designs shown in my _Journal_ drawings; and assume art editorship of _House Beautiful_, which he was considering buying. But having failed in one business venture, there was little excuse to embark on another.