An Editor and the Boys
Chums in 1894, the late Ernest Foster became editor, and for the next thirteen years put the same energy into conducting a boys' paper that he had already shown in the management of Little Folks and the Saturday Journal. In his reminiscences, published under the title "An Editor's Chair," Foster writes: "If I were asked what portion of work as Editor of Chums stood out in my recollection as the most remarkable ... I should have little difficulty in answering the question. It was the friendly relationship, the good fellowship that existed between the readers and myself. I have never known readers who identified themselves so closely with a publication. . . . They were untiring in the personal efforts they made to increase its circulation . . . and, furthermore, they criticized with the fullest freedom everything that was provided for them."
Now and then an already well-known story was republished. One was "Treasure Island." Foster found that though many of his readers had, of course, read the book, they were not the less delighted to have it anew as a serial. When the last installment appeared the words "The End " were followed by an "In Memoriam" paragraph; for it happened that at the very moment when Foster was sending to the printers the sheet containing the final chapters of the story, the news arrived that Robert Louis Stevenson had died in Samoa. The correspondence of the boys was one of the joys and curiosities of editorship. "When boys wanted little things," said Foster, "they had no hesitation in asking for them, whether they were picture postcards, or the foreign stamps which came on letters to the office, or portions of authors' MSS., or their autographs, or, indeed, whatever fancy might decree. On one occasion Lord Roberts had been kind enough to write a short note for publication in the paper, telling, in reply to an inquiry, where and when he had won the V.C. After it appeared I received four or five applications from different boys for the original letter, and I have no doubt they all expected to get it."
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