Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/822

 806 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

which the "Skytes," as the publishers called themselves, brought out from time to time, it was hand-set and printed by hand, ex- quisite in workmanship. Most of the numbers were the size of a book easily slipped into a coat pocket. It was printed on deckle- edge paper, and each paragraph was indicated with a reversed P. Thomas Wood Stevens and Alden Charles Noble, poetic souls who had been schooled in the mechanical part of their craft at Armour Institute of Technology, were the Blue Sky Magazine publishers, editors, and chief contributors.

"Happy is the man who ever sees the blue sky" so their adopted motto ran. In an announcement of back volumes of the magazine, books bound in antique boards, they gave this quotation from "The Summer Sky" :

So let us mould the Spirit of our book : to bring sometimes the sound of an old chivalric song over star-strewn waters tuning the Elder elemental note to the sweetest harmonies of the New.

Throughout, the contents showed evidence of editing and writ- ing in this spirit. Verse, short stories, mostly on archaic themes, and two departments designated "Stray Clouds" and "The Devil, His Stuff," being made up of clever literary gossip by the young editors, filled the pages. In the verse some "Formal Measures" by Mr. Stevens, and a series of stately child rhymes by Mr. Noble, received the favor of critics. Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, the imaginative pulpit orator who is president of the institute which the Blue Sky Magazine editors had attended, contributed some of his poetry. Among the tales was one by James Lane Allen, entitled "The Extraordinary." An essay on "The Poetry of William Morris," by Wallace Rice, and a few lines in meter, entitled "Brothers," by Mrs. Elia W. Peattie, were written for the April, 1902, number, which proved to be the last. Each of the five volumes, except the first, was beauti- fully illustrated with symbolic pen-and-ink drawings and hazy wash-work. Walter J. Enright and Grace M. McClure, and other Chicago artists who were then students at the Art Insti- tute, did most of the illustrating for the periodical. Although so attractive in its way, the Blue Sky Magazine found its con- stituency limited to a small cult. The publishers saw "glim-