Four
pictures were given in each number, and the faithfulness of the
reproductions astonished even their owners. The success of the series
was beyond Bok's own best hopes. He was printing and selling one and
three-quarter million copies of each issue of his magazine; and before
he was through he had presented to American homes throughout the
breadth of the country over seventy million reproductions of forty
separate masterpieces of art.
The dream of years had come true.
Bok had begun with the exterior of the small American house and made an
impression upon it; he had brought the love of flowers into the hearts
of thousands of small householders who had never thought they could
have an artistic garden within a small area; he had changed the lines
of furniture, and he had put better art on the walls of these homes.
He had conceived a full-rounded scheme, and he had carried it out.
It was a peculiar satisfaction to Bok that Theodore Roosevelt once
summed up this piece of work in these words: "Bok is the only man I
ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an
entire nation, and he did it so quickly and yet so effectively that we
didn't know it was begun before it was finished.
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