race, brought to his desk a manuscript copied word for word from a published source.  Page recognized the deception, and seizing the rascal’s collar with a firm editorial grip, rejected the poem, and ejected the poet, with an energy very invigorating to the ancient serenities of the office.

“Page was always effervescent with ideas.  Like an editor who would have made a good fisherman, he used to say that you had to cast a dozen times before you could get a strike.  He was forever in those days sending out ideas and suggestions and invitations to write.  The result was electric, and the magazine became with a suddenness (of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder) a storehouse of animating thoughts.  He avoided the mistake common to our craft of editing a magazine for the immediate satisfaction of his colleagues.  ‘Don’t write for the office,’ he would say.  ’Write for outside,’ and so his magazine became a living thing.  His phrase suggests one special gift that Page had, for which his profession should do him especial honour.  He was able, quite beyond the powers of any man of my acquaintance, to put compendiously into words the secrets of successful editing.  It was capital training just to hear him talk.  ‘Never save a feature,’ he used to say.  ’Always work for the next number.  Forget the others.  Spend everything just on that.’  And to those who know, there is divination in the principle.  Again he understood instinctively that to write well a man must not only have something to say, but must long to say it.  A highly intelligent representative of the coloured race came to him with a philosophic essay.  Page would have none of it.  ’I know what you are thinking of,’ said Page.  ’You are thinking of the barriers we set up against you, and the handicap of your lot.  If you will write what it feels like to be a Negro, I will print that.’  The result was a paper which has seemed to me the most moving expression of the hopeless hope of the race I know of.

“Page was generous in his cooeperation.  He never drew a rigid line about his share in any enterprise, but gave and took help with each and all.  A lover of good English, with an honest passion for things tersely said, Page esteemed good journalism far above any second-rate manifestation of more pretentious forms; but many of us will regret that he was not privileged to find some outlet for his energies in which aspiration for real literature might have played an ampler part.  For the literature of the past Page had great respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future.  He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and the poetaster.  His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the substantial work of others was no surer than his instinct for his own