He was its untrammelled editor, and also, in part, its proprietor.

All editors and writers will sympathize with the ideas expressed in a letter written about this time to Page's friend, Mr.William Roscoe Thayer, already distinguished as the historian of Italian unity and afterward to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and John Hay.

When the first number of the _World's Work_ appeared Mr.
Thayer wrote, expressing a slight disappointment that its leading tendency was journalistic rather than literary and intellectual.

"When you edited the _Forum_," wrote Mr.Thayer, "I perceived that no such talent for editing had been seen in America before, and when, a little later, you rejuvenated the _Atlantic_, making it for a couple of years the best periodical printed in English, I felt that you had a great mission before you as evoker and editor of the best literary work and weightiest thought on important topics of our foremost men." He had hoped to see a magnified _Atlantic_, and the new publication, splendid as it was, seemed to be of rather more popular character than the publications with which Page had previously been associated.

Page met this challenge in his usual hearty fashion.
_To William Roscoe Thayer_ 34 Union Square East, New York, December 5, 1900.
My Dear Thayer: The _World's Work_ has brought me nothing so good as your letter of yesterday.