You cannot go to the Patent Office in Washington and take out a patent that will transform men into angels. The way upward, long and tedious as it is, lies through the hearts of men. It has been so since the founding of the Feast. Nothing has been proved more clearly in the political history of the race than this, that good will to men has done more to improve government than laws and wars. ... Let us close down our desks for the year. If you want to find me for another week I will be found in the wonderful little toy shop around the corner. That editorial broke the tension which had made me think this was no time to go home for Christmas. I went. Peter Dunne hated the pains of writing. His labor affected the whole office—sympathy with what he was going through, fear that his copy would not be in on time, eagerness to see it when it came, to know if it was “one of his best.” But Peter’s work was never what he thought it ought to be, and he sought forgetfulness. Indispensable on the new editorial staff, seeing Peter through his birth pains, keeping the rest of us at our tasks, nursing new writers, making up the magazine, was Albert Boyden. He had come fresh from Harvard to _McClure’s_ and had at once made himself a place by his genius for keeping things going and his gift for sympathetic friendliness. It was a combination which became more valuable and irresistible as time went on. Bert was everybody’s friend, whether editor, artist, or writer. “One can have friends, one can have editors,” Ray Stannard Baker was to write later, “but Bert was both.” He was of the greatest value to the _American_ in bringing together writers and artists who were attaching themselves to the new magazine. Bert was so fond of us all that he could not endure the idea that we did not all know one another, and he made it his business to see that we had at least the opportunity. He lived on the south of Stuyvesant Square, four flights up. There was no one in all that circle of distinguished contributors who did not welcome the chance to climb those stairs to Bert’s dinners and teas. And what a group of people came! They are recorded in his guest book: Booth Tarkington, Edna Ferber, Stewart Edward White, his wife and his brother Gilbert, Julian and Ada Street, the Norrises, the Rices and Martins of Louisville, Joe Chase, Will Irwin, and a dozen more, along with visiting celebrities, politicians, scientists, adventurers. What talk went on in that high-up living room! What wonderful tales we heard!