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he wrote: “Of course, I want every single line and word of it left out,” and then added: “Do me the favor to call the next time you are again in Hartford. I want to say things which—well, I want to argue with you.” Bok never knew what those “things” were, for at the next meeting they were not referred to.
It is, perhaps, a curious coincidence that all the Presidents of the United States whose work Bok had occasion to publish were uniformly liberal with regard to having their material edited.
Colonel Roosevelt was always ready to concede improvement: “Fine,” he wrote; “the changes are much for the better. I never object to my work being improved, where it needs it, so long as the sense is not altered.”
William Howard Taft wrote, after being subjected to editorial revision: “You have done very well by my article. You have made it much more readable by your rearrangement.”
Mr. Cleveland was very likely to let his interest in a subject run counter to the space exigencies of journalism; and Bok, in one instance, had to reduce one of his articles considerably. He explained the reason and enclosed the revision.
“I am entirely willing to have the article cut down as you suggest,” wrote the former President. “I find sufficient reason for this in the fact that the matter you suggest for elimination has been largely exploited lately. And in looking the matter over carefully, I am inclined to think that the article expurgated as you suggest will gain in unity and directness. At first, I feared it would |
