At the turn of the century, after saying a sad farewell to fond hopes and feeling older at thirty-two than is now true at eighty-two, I finally gave up trying to be a publisher and printer. While covers for Collier’s were bridging an awkward gap Edward Bok appeared on the scene and commissioned the laying-out of an editorial prospectus for the Ladies’ Home Journal, the printing to be done at the Curtis plant. For this I used a special casting of an old face not then on the market, Mr. Phinney of the Boston branch of ATF telling me it was to be called Wayside. When the prospectus was finished Mr. Bok invited me to his home just outside Philadelphia and there it was arranged that I design eight full pages for the Journal—eight full pages of house interiors. These were followed by a series of house designs. Finding it difficult to keep to merely four walls I added dozens of suggestions for individual pieces of furniture—this being the “Mission” period when such designing required no knowledge of periods, only imagination. Then Mr. Bok suggested that I move to Rose Valley, start a shop to make furniture and other forms of handicraft in line with designs shown in my Journal drawings; and assume art editorship of House Beautiful, which he was considering buying. But having failed in one business venture, there was little excuse to embark on another.

The roman and italic face, used later for Peter Poodle, Toy Maker to the King, was now designed for American Type Founders; and while building a home in Concord, adjoining Hawthorne’s “Wayside,” and working every day in the open, regaining lost health, the story, Castle Perilous, was written—also outdoors. These activities were followed by a request from Mr. Nelson, president of American Type Founders, that I undertake a campaign of type display and publicity for the Foundry, with a promise to cut any decorative or type designs that I might supply, also to purchase as many Miehle presses as might be required for the printing—an invitation to which I replied with an enthusiastic “Yes!” [In this way Bradley’s famous set of Chap Books was inaugurated—Ed.]

During this type-display and foundry-publicity period Castle Perilous, as a three-part serial, with illustrations made afternoons following mornings spent with American Type Founders at Communipaw, was published in Collier’s; and in 1907 I became that publication’s art editor. Sometime during the intervening years—I can’t remember where or when—time was found for designing several Collier’s covers.

From 1910 to 1915, again with my own studios, I took care of the art editorship of a group of magazines: Good Housekeeping, Century, Metropolitan and others, also an assignment from the Batten Advertising Agency and, as recreation, wrote eleven Tales of Noodleburg for St. Nicholas.