In the next issue he combined some of his smaller departments in the back; and thus, in 1896, he inaugurated the method of “running over into the back” which has now become a recognized principle in the make-up of magazines of larger size.  At first, Bok’s readers objected, but he explained why he did it; that they were the benefiters by the plan; and, so far as readers can be satisfied with what is, at best, an awkward method of presentation, they were content.  To-day the practice is undoubtedly followed to excess, some magazines carrying as much as eighty and ninety columns over from the front to the back; from such abuse it will, of course, free itself either by a return to the original method of make-up or by the adoption of some other less irritating plan.

In his reading about the America of the past, Bok had been impressed by the unusual amount of interesting personal material that constituted what is termed unwritten history—­original events of tremendous personal appeal in which great personalities figured but which had not sufficient historical importance to have been included in American history.  Bok determined to please his older readers by harking back to the past and at the same time acquainting the younger generation with the picturesque events which had preceded their time.

He also believed that if he could “dress up” the past, he could arrest the attention of a generation which was too likely to boast of its interest only in the present and the future.  He took a course of reading and consulted with Mr. Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun, who had become interested in his work and had written him several voluntary letters of commendation.  Mr. Dana gave material help in the selection of subjects and writers; and was intensely amused and interested by the manner in which his youthful confrere “dressed up” the titles of what might otherwise have looked like commonplace articles.

“I know,” said Bok to the elder editor, “it smacks a little of the sensational, Mr. Dana, but the purpose I have in mind of showing the young people of to-day that some great things happened before they came on the stage seems to me to make it worth while.”

Mr. Dana agreed with this view, supplemented every effort of the Philadelphia editor in several subsequent talks, and in 1897 The Ladies’ Home Journal began one of the most popular series it ever published.  It was called “Great Personal Events,” and the picturesque titles explained them.  He first pictured the enthusiastic evening “When Jenny Lind Sang in Castle Garden,” and, as Bok added to pique curiosity, “when people paid $20 to sit in rowboats to hear the Swedish nightingale.”