| Vol. I. | APRIL, 1906. | No. 2. |
Nothing is a success until it is a proved success. The ideas that seembest frequently turn out the worst. If it were not for this fact, a factwith which we are thoroughly familiar, we should feel that we have in TheScrap Book the hit of a century. Indeed, it is difficult not to letourselves go a bit, even now, and talk about this new creation inmagazine-making in a way that would sound like high-pressure fiction.
Six weeks ago The Scrap Book was nothing but an idea. It had had a gooddeal of thought in a general way, but nothing effectually focuses untilactual work begins. Filmy, desultory thought, in cloudland, counts forlittle.
In the early conception of The Scrap Book it was as unlike this magazineas a mustard-seed is unlike the full-grown tree. Rebelling as I did, andstill do, at the restraints of the conventional magazine, and realizingthe added strength that should come from the rare old things and the bestcurrent things—the scrap bits that are full of juice and sweetness andtenderness and pathos and humor—realizing all this, I undertook toincorporate in Munsey's Magazine a department which I intended to call TheScrap Book.
I had special headings and borders drawn for this department, with a viewto differentiating it from other parts of the magazine. I had sample pagesput in type, and more or less work done on the department. But it did notfit Munsey's Magazine, and Munsey's Magazine gave no scope for such asection. It was atmospherically antagonistic to a magazine which consistedwholly of original matter. This was the beginning of The Scrap Book—thethought nebula.
It was as late as the middle of January when I came to my office onemorning and startled our editorial force by saying that The Scrap Bookwould be issued on the 10th of February. Up to this time no decisive workhad been done on it. As I stated in my introduction last month, we hadbeen gathering scrap books from all over the world for some time, and hada good deal of material classified and ready for use. It was an accepted[Pg 96]fact in the office that The Scrap Book would be issued sooner or later.Indeed, the drawing for the cover was made more than a year ago. But noone on the staff, not even myself, knew just what The Scrap Book would belike or when it would make its appearance.
With a definite date fixed for the day of issue, however, and that dateonly about three weeks away, intense work and intense thought werenecessary, and from this thought and work was evolved The Scrap Book as wenow have it. From the first minute, as it began to take shape, it became athing of evolution. Enough material was prepared, set up, and destroyed tofill three issues of The Scrap Book, and display headings were changed andchanged—and a dozen times changed—to get the effect we wanted.
As it was something apart from all other magazines, we had no precedentsto follow, no examples to copy, either in the matter itself, the method oftreating it, or the style of presenting i