1894

Word comes from "Tigeroc Groves," Vero Beach, Fla., from the senior proprietor of that plantation, namely our esteemed treasurer - Billy Ames: "As you probably know I have been having a session with surgeons on account of prostate gland. Getting better but I don't like it at all."

The rest of this month's column will be given to Eddie Grover's account of how he put Alfred Bartlett on the way to become a pioneer - perhaps the pioneer — in the publishing of high class greeting cards. Eddie writes:

"In spite of his physical and other handicaps, Alfred made his name nationally known as a publisher of beautiful greeting cards, and carved for himself a niche in the historical record of the Greeting Card industry.

"In January, 1900, when I came back to Boston from Minneapolis to be Assistant Editor to Henry Hilton, then Editor of Ginn & Company, Alfred came to see me, and during the next year we saw each other almost daily. I persuaded him to quit the coal business and set himself up as a publisher of greeting cards, calendars and other artistic items. Alfred found an empty room, up two flights, in Cornhill, which he could rent for $15 a month. He covered the walls with red ingrain paper, hung burlap curtain across an alcove in which he installed his cot, sleeping there to save money. He painted his name on the glass door, and on the marble slab down stairs he wrote, 'Alfred Bartlett, Publisher.'

"I suggested the publication be called 'The Cornhill Booklet,' which I edited for him for the first year. Each issue contained odd and unusual items such as, 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' by Oscar Wilde, 'Father Damien,' by R. L. S. and 'A Little Book of Nonsense,' by Eugene Field. I wrote the Introduction and gave Alfred a fullpage ad for Ginn & Co. The little magazine made a great hit and I prize highly my two bound volumes of it.

"As you may know, Alfred had inherited epilepsy from his father, and was first stricken in Italy on his first trip Abroad. He was put in a hospital near Boston, where I visited him on one occasion. After a stay of a year and a half, he had recovered sufficiently - having had no seizure for six months — so Bud Lyon could get him released.

"His business had been sold, but Alfred bravely started again at a new address and built up a new list of greeting cards. He used to make annual trips as far west as Chicago and Minneapolis, and always stayed with me in Chicago.

"Alfred was devoted to the Class of '94, and I think the fellows will be glad to know more of his contribution to the greeting card industry, which now includes 400 publishers, with the production of four billion cards last year with a retail value of $350,000,000."

At the Fall Roundup, Wednesday, October 2, at Phil Marden's club in Lowell, a tribute to Alfred will be read from a book by Ernest Dudley Chase entitled "The Romance of Greeting Cards." This will be published in a later issue.

Secretary, 74 Kirkland St. Cambridge 38, Mass.

Class Agent, 45 Chase St., Nutley, N. J.