2020: “Likes” Are Disabled

There’s a way to abuse the Like system that I forgot about.

And someone has gone and abused it.

I have turned off Likes.

2020: Posts Now Have Categories

The best I can say about them is that they’re better than nothing. Still, easier to find people based on your interest.

2020: About Page Updated

Contains corrected email address, among other minor changes.

2020: Every Post Below Available As ePub eBook

I’ve used the dotEPUB Firefox extension to convert each post into an ePub eBook.

Anyone who has been touched by a post and wants to be able to carry it around to re-read and to share can now do so without requiring WiFi and this blog.

The extent of my checking these has been viewing them in the Windows desktop version of Adobe Editions, where they look like this:

Even if the images aren’t exactly great, the text is pristine and that’s what really matters.

All the posts are available in one Google Drive folder: Click here. Double-click on a title to get a download prompt or select the drop-down menu from the folder title to download everything as a ZIPped folder.

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Writer Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey

From the February 1920 issue of The American Magazine:

Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey

Who wrote a thousand “Nick Carter” detective stories, aggregating more than fifty million words. The first was written in 1890; and during a period of years he averaged one complete book of about 33,000 words each week. In addition to his “Nick Carter” stories he has written others under the signatures Ross Beekman, Dirk Van Doren, Varick Vanardy, and also under his true name, Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey.

Mr. Dey was born in 1865, in New York City. He now lives in Nyack, on the Hudson. His article, beginning on the opposite page, is a human document of extraordinary interest.

1903: Dr. Chauncey B. Forward

Here is the incredible story of a guy who could not settle down to one thing and simply focus.

From a 1903 issue of Successful American:

1922: Grocer David Pender

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

What I Learned In a Tarboro Grocery

Keep away from the easy job — when the choice is yours, pick a hard one

by David Pender
President, The D. Pender Grocery Company and The Pender-Dillworth Company, Inc.

Every time I go by a little store on a little side street I wonder if the man behind the counter is properly discontented with his job.

1922: Editor W. O. Saunders

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

The Autobiography Of A Crank

by W. O. Saunders

I guess I was predestined to be a crank. My father was a Hard-shell Baptist, my mother a Southern Methodist, and I a robust, mischievous, enthusiastic, ambitious American boy, born and raised in a poor little antique Southern town, where three churches struggled to prepare everybody to live a life hereafter and one little two-teacher school half-heartedly taught a few children to read, write and figure their own way through this life.

1922: Poet Edgar A. Guest

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

What I Owe the Other Fellow

There is no such thing as a self-made man. No one achieves anything by his own efforts alone; all along the way are countless others who contribute to his progress, who help him to reach his goal

by Edgar A. Guest

All my life I have heard about the self-made man. He has been written up in all the leading publications of the world. He has frequently written of himself — not always from a spirit of pride, but often from a desire to inspire others even at the sacrifice of his own modesty.

1922: Doctor Laura M. Wright

From a 1922 issue of The American Magazine:

At Eighty-two She Manages a Plumbing Shop

Mrs. Laura M. Wright, of Belvidere, New Jersey, celebrated her eighty-second birthday by doing her usual work, which, as manager of a plumbing shop, consisted in taking calls over the telephone, seeing that the plumbers’ assistants left on time and arrived on time for their appointments, meeting customers and supplying their demands. Incidentally, she walked a mile to work in the morning, and walked a mile home at night. “I never,” she said, “miss my mile of oxygen.”