Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/420

 404 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

this was declined, Mr. Browne deciding that, if the magazine must die, it should go down as it had lived the Lakeside Monthly. In February, 1874, it suspended publication a measure of necessity which at the time was thought to be only temporary. But it proved otherwise; and thus was closed the career of an enterprise in periodical literature which, in many respects, was the most important in the history of the literary interests of Chicago.

A publication of magazine form, generally called the Chicago Magazine, came out in the period of prosperity following the war. Its complete name, however, was the Chicago Magazine of Fashion, Music, and Home Reading. It was created by a coterie of fashionable ladies. Mrs. M. L. Rayne, who today contributes "Fun and Philosophy" to the editorial page of the Chicago Record-Herald, was the editor and leading spirit in the company. This magazine was the first of several Chicago periodicals designed to couple an interest in aesthetic writing with the aesthetic interest in dress. Possibly the fashions then did not call for tailor-made gowns. At any rate, the literary style of the poems, short stories, and serials, the printed trimming for the substantial material on modes, was characterized by something of looseness. The magazine secured a circulation of 3,000, chiefly local. It first appeared in 1870; numbers in the file of the Historical Society run to 1872; and the name appears in newspaper annuals until 1876.

One of the military titles used by boys at play in the Civil War time was stereotyped on the cover of a remarkable journal of juvenile literature, the Little Corporal. This little periodical was begun in Chicago the second month after fighting men came, from Appomattox, to their homes and children. The Little Cor- poral's slogan, shown in the files for 1865 and 1866 at the His- torical Society's library, sounded forth as follows : " Fighting against Wrong, and for the Good and the True and the Beauti- ful."

The authors of the periodical resided in Evanston, the suburban center of culture. Alfred L. Sewell, of the Evanston Index, was the publisher; Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller was the