the one place where they may come and go as they please, where they are not obliged to mind, or say “yes, ma’am”’ and “yes, sir,”— where, in short, they can live a brand-new, free life of their own for a little while, accepting acquaintances as they choose and turning their backs without ceremony upon what does not concern them. Of course they expect to pick up odd bits and treasures, and now and then to “drop in” familiarly at an air-castle, or step over to fairyland. A child’s magazine is its playground.
Even with the opening issues, the child-readers of the country recognized that they had come into their own at last. It was the aim of both editor and publishers to produce the most beautiful and entertaining periodical for youth which it was possible to create. Mrs. Dodge was at her prime, and she made the magazine a marvel of inventiveness and youthful jollity; of absorbing stories, helpful articles, and historical sketches; of nonsense verse and genuine poetry—a rich mine, in short, of entertaining reading fitted with wonderful skill to the tastes and the wholesome development of the boys and girls, And all her conscientious labor was heartily seconded by her generous publishers. As Mrs. Dodge has said of him, Mr. Roswell Smith, the founder of the magazine, was “ambitious for the work in hand, rather than for himself. He counted no cost too great for the carrying out of a plan; and the success of St. Nicholas has rested upon his energy and liberality.” In her editorial work, also, she was fortunate in having capable and devoted assistants who shared her own enthusiasm for the magazine and its readers. The work was never drudgery to her nor to them. Her ardent zeal, keen wit, and tireless invention brightened with zest the dullest hour and the hardest task. Winter or summer, her spirits were unflagging, her powers always mettlesome and ready, Her mind teemed with ideas, Many a time, to fill a page or two in St. Nicholas, she has written, at white heat and while the presses were waiting, contributions in prose and verse that are now household favorites in the land.
An incident connected with her editorial career on “Hearth and Home” illustrates the spirit which always animated her. A happy idea came to her that would, she knew, greatly improve the number of the paper just then going to press. But—it involved a change of many pages, the rewriting of almost the entire contents of her department, and—the presses were waiting. A consultation was quickly held; the project was outlined and was promptly declared by all to be an inspiration, Bur could it be carried out in time? A half-hour went by in discussion; and then the decision was gently broken to Mrs, Dodge in the words “It is impossible. We are very sorry, but it is impossible.”
“Yes, I know. It is impossible. of course. But let’s do it, just the same! Why not?” was the quick, inspiring reply; and it was done—to the final enthusiastic admiration of all concerned.
What she attempted, she performed. There was no emergency, great or small, to which she was not equal; there was no Hill of Difficulty which she did not easily climb; for she believed with Emerson that “difficulties exist to be surmounted.”
Perhaps it is not too much to say that with the advent of St. Nicholas the Children’s Age began. Assuredly, nothing to compare with it had ever been known before. In proof of this, let us quote from a recent issue of the New York “Evening Post” this cordial recognition of what the magazine did in those days:
In that golden era the St. Nicholas published several of Trowbridge’s best tales, “The Young Surveyor” and others of the “Jack Hazard” series; Noah Brooks’s “Boy Emigrants,” Miss Alcott’s “Eight Cousins,” and some of the wittiest and most whimsical of Frank R. Stockton’s short sketches. Surely that is a noble muster-roll. Graybeards of forty will testify to the eagerness with which they awaited the mail that brought the St. Nicholas, to the gusto with which they plunged into. the fresh instalment of Trowbridge or Miss Alcott, to the earnestness with which they begged to sit up a little later that night, and to the bright, troubled dreams in which they lived over the fascinating adventures. But in a day or two the magazine had been read from cover to cover, including the alluring advertisements of bargains in foreign stamps and jig-saws; and twenty-eight long days stretched away before the next issue,
“Are n’t you going to ask me to write for St. Nicholas?” asked Mr. Rudyard Kipling, when he met Dodge for the first time.
“I am not sure that you can! Do you think you are equal to it?” was the bantering reply, to which he quickly answered:
“Oh, but I must and shall! for my sister and I used to scramble for St. Nicholas every month, when I was a kid.”
