The most successful publisher in this country attributes the success of
his periodical to the fact that he kept before his mind's eye, as a
type, a family of his acquaintance in a Middle-Western town of fifteen
hundred inhabitants, and shaped the policy of his publication to meet
the needs and interests of all its members. An editor who desired to
reach such a family would be immeasurably helped in selecting his
material by trying constantly to judge from their point of view whatever
passed through his hands. It is equally true that a writer desiring to
gain admittance to that magazine, or to others making the same appeal,
would greatly profit by visualizing as vividly as possible a similar
family. Every successful writer, consciously or unconsciously, thus
pictures his readers to himself.

If, for example, an author is preparing an article for an agricultural
journal, he must have in his mind's eye an average farmer and this
farmer's family. Not only must he see them in their surroundings; he
must try to see life from their point of view. The attitude of the
typical city man toward the farm and country life is very different from
that of the countryman. Lack of sympathy and insight is a fatal defect
in many an article intended by the writer for farm readers.

Whatever the publication to which an author desires to contribute, he
should consider first, last, and all the time, its readers--their
surroundings, their education, their income, their ambitions, their
amusements, their prejudices--in short, he must see them as they really
are.

The necessity of understanding the reader and his point of view has been
well brought out by Mr. John M. Siddall, editor of the _American