Bok was beginning to realize the vision which had lured him from New York:  that of putting into the field of American magazines a periodical that should become such a clearing-house as virtually to make it an institution.

He felt that, for the present at least, he had sufficiently established the personal contact with his readers through the more intimate departments, and decided to devote his efforts to the literary features of the magazine.

The newspaper paragraphers were now having a delightful time with Edward Bok and his woman’s magazine, and he was having a delightful time with them.  The editor’s publicity sense made him realize how valuable for his purposes was all this free advertising.  The paragraphers believed, in their hearts, that they were annoying the young editor; they tried to draw his fire through their articles.  But he kept quiet, put his tongue in his cheek, and determined to give them some choice morsels for their wit.

He conceived the idea of making familiar to the public the women who were back of the successful men of the day.  He felt sure that his readers wanted to know about these women.  But to attract his newspaper friends he labelled the series, “Unknown Wives of Well-Known Men” and “Clever Daughters of Clever Men.”

The alliterative titles at once attracted the paragraphers; they fell upon them like hungry trout, and a perfect fusillade of paragraphs began.  This is exactly what the editor wanted; and he followed these two series immediately by inducing the daughter of Charles Dickens to write of “My Father as I Knew Him,” and Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, of “Mr. Beecher as I Knew Him.”  Bok now felt that he had given the newspapers enough ammunition to last for some time; and he turned his attention to building up a more permanent basis for his magazine.

The two authors of that day who commanded more attention than any others were William Dean Howells and Rudyard Kipling.  Bok knew that these two would give to his magazine the literary quality that it needed, and so he laid them both under contribution.  He bought Mr. Howells’s new novel, “The Coast of Bohemia,” and arranged that Kipling’s new novelette upon which he was working should come to the magazine.  Neither the public nor the magazine editors had expected Bok to break out along these more permanent lines, and magazine publishers began to realize that a new competitor had sprung up in Philadelphia.  Bok knew they would feel this; so before he announced Mr. Howells’s new novel, he contracted with the novelist to follow this with his autobiography.  This surprised the editors of the older magazines, for they realized that the Philadelphia editor had completely tied up the leading novelist of the day for his next two years’ output.

Meanwhile, in order that the newspapers might be well supplied with barbs for their shafts, he published an entire number of his magazine written by the daughters of famous men.  This unique issue presented contributions by the daughters of Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, President Harrison, Horace Greeley, William M. Thackeray, William Dean Howells, General Sherman, Jefferson Davis, Mr. Gladstone, and a score of others.  This issue simply filled the paragraphers with glee.  Then once more Bok turned to articles calculated to cement the foundation for a more permanent structure.