Literary Boston As I Knew It | Page 7

with the glow and
thrill possible only from very beautiful poetry, and which impart such
an emotion as we can feel only
"When a great thought strikes along the brain And flushes all the
cheek."
When I had the fortune to meet him first, I suppose that in the employ
of the kindly house we were both so eager to serve, our dignities were
about the same; for if the 'Atlantic Monthly' was a somewhat prouder
affair than an eclectic weekly like 'Every Saturday', he was supreme in
his place, and I was subordinate in mine. The house was careful, in the
attitude of its senior partner, not to distinguish between us, and we were
not slow to perceive the tact used in managing us; we had our own joke
of it; we compared notes to find whether we were equally used in this
thing or that; and we promptly shared the fun of our discovery with
Fields himself.
We had another impartial friend (no less a friend of joy in the life
which seems to have been pretty nearly all joy, as I look back upon it)
in the partner who became afterwards the head of the house, and who
forecast in his bold enterprises the change from a New England to an
American literary situation. In the end James R. Osgood failed, though
all his enterprises succeeded. The anomaly is sad, but it is not
infrequent. They were greater than his powers and his means, and
before they could reach their full fruition, they had to be enlarged to
men of longer purse and longer patience. He was singularly fitted both

by instinct and by education to become a great publisher; and he early
perceived that if a leading American house were to continue at Boston,
it must be hospitable to the talents of the whole country. He founded
his future upon those generous lines; but he wanted the qualities as well
as the resources for rearing the superstructure. Changes began to follow
each other rapidly after he came into control of the house. Misfortune
reduced the size and number of its periodicals. 'The Young Folks' was
sold outright, and the 'North American Review' (long before Mr. Rice
bought it and carried it to New York) was cut down one-half, so that
Aldrich said, it looked as if Destiny had sat upon it. His own periodical,
'Every Saturday', was first enlarged to a stately quarto and illustrated;
and then, under stress of the calamities following the great Boston fire,
It collapsed to its former size. Then both the 'Atlantic Monthly' and
'Every Saturday' were sold away from their old ownership, and 'Every
Saturday' was suppressed altogether, and we two ceased to be of the
same employ. There was some sort of evening rite (more funereal than
festive) the day after they were sold, and we followed Osgood away
from it, under the lamps. We all knew that it was his necessity that had
caused him to part with the periodicals; but he professed that it was his
pleasure, and he said he had not felt so light-hearted since he was a boy.
We asked him, How could he feel gay when he was no longer paying
us our salaries, and how could he justify it to his conscience? He liked
our mocking, and limped away from us with a rheumatic easing of his
weight from one foot to another: a figure pathetic now that it has gone
the way to dusty death, and dear to memory through benefactions
unalloyed by one unkindness.

IV.
But when I came to Boston early in 1866, the 'Atlantic Monthly' and
'Harper's' then divided our magazine world between them; the 'North
American Review', in the control of Lowell and Professor Norton, had
entered upon a new life; 'Every Saturday' was an instant success in the
charge of Mr. Aldrich, who was by taste and training one of the best
editors; and 'Our Young Folks' had the field of juvenile periodical
literature to itself.
It was under the direction of Miss Lucy Larcom and of Mr. J. T.
Trowbridge, who had come from western New York, where he was

born, and must be noted as one of the first returners from the setting to
the rising sun. He naturalized himself in Boston in his later boyhood,
and he still breathes Boston air, where he dwells in the street called
Pleasant, on the shore of Spy Pond, at Arlington, and still weaves the
magic web of his satisfying stories for boys. He merges in their
popularity the fame of a poet which I do not think will always suffer
that eclipse, for his poems show him to have looked deeply into the
heart of common humanity, with a true and tender sense of it.
Miss Larcom