Adventure Magazine Cover — page 157: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44s pare . MeetmePlace Laee For pecdlers — Writers and ae Adventurers Re nN ee stare ? SD AR GE ME Wipy EG LE S Our Camp-Fire came into being May 5, 1912, with our June issue, and since then its fire has never died down. Many have gathered about it and they are of all classes parts of the earth. Some whose voices we used to know have taken the Long Trail and are heard no more, but they are still memories among us, and new voices are heard, and welcomed. ; doors, for word from the earth’s far places, for man in action instead of caged by cir- cumstance. The spirit of adventure lives in all men; the rest is chance. But something besides a common interest holds us together. Somehow a real com- radeship has grown up among us. Men can not thus meet and talk together without growing into friendlier relations; many a time does one of us come to the rest for facts and guidance; many a close personal friendship has our Camp-Fire built up between two men who had never met; often has it proved an open sesame between strangers infa far land. Perhaps our Camp-Fire is even a little’more. Perhaps it is a bit of leaven working gently among those of different station toward the fuller and more human understand- ing and sympathy that will some day bring to man the real democracy and brotherhood he seeks. Few indeed are the agencies that bring together on a friendly footing so many and such great extremes as here. And we are numbered by the hundred thousand now. If you are come to our Camp-Fire for the first time and find you like the things we like, join us and find yourself very welcome. There is no obligation except ordinary manliness, no forms or ceremonies, no dues, no officers, no anything except men and women gathered for interest and friendliness. Your desire to join makes you a member. too much love-interest in the book. (One -—— fool even indulged in idiotic speculations as to my personal affairs on the theory that they were the cause of the change. He figured I’d fallen in love. Just as another figured I was a woman-hater and hardened cynic because there wasn’t enough soft stuff in the magazine to suit him. Please note this— Whatever my personal feelings and affairs ‘Tus is where I catch it hard. Quite a lot of you lambasted me for printing one of Talbot Mundy’s stories in Romance instead of in Adventure. ‘The funny part of it is that some fs of you also lambasted me for printing any of Mr. Mundy’s stories in Adventure. One of you wrote that he always tore out a Mundy story before beginning to read a copy of Ad- venture. (I tell this because I know Mr. Mundy well enough to know he’ll only chuckle when he reads it.) In other words, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Can’t possibly suit all of you. Best I can do is to let you take turns in cussing me. And there’s another similar predicament in this matter of using Mr. Mundy’s story in Romance. ‘ Adventure has always printed some stories with some women and some love-inter- . est in them, but it’s never let the love-interest be the first interest and it has always made a point of having part of the stories in each issue entirely free from any love-interest. During the past year some of you wrote in complain- ing because, they said, there was getting to be, happen to be, any time I get to editing the magazine according to them I'll lose my job and be fully entitled to lose it. I’ve managed to hang on as an editor for some twenty years and, whatever other mistakes I’ve» made, I haven’t made that one.) WELL, to go back, quite a number of you complained that there was getting to be too much love-interest in the magazine. here in the office talked it over. Hadn’t noticed it ourselves, but, if that many readers had, it was time we did. (Incidentally, the others concerned don’t choose stories according to the thermometer of their personal hearts any 147 We GComuicbook and degrees, high and low, rich and poor, adventurers and stay-at-homes, and from all . We are drawn together by a common liking for the strong, clean things of out-of- — fool once . / ~ +