The editor was in a quandary what to do with the two remaining columns of the Kipling tale.

There were only two pages open, and these were at the back.

He remade those pages, and continued the story from pages 6 and 7 to pages 38 and 39.
At once Bok saw that this was an instance where "necessity was the mother of invention." He realized that if he could run some of his front material over to the back he would relieve the pressure at the front, present a more varied contents there, and make his advertisements more valuable by putting them next to the most expensive material in the magazine.
In the next issue he combined some of his smaller departments in the back; and thus, in 1896, he inaugurated the method of "running over into the back" which has now become a recognized principle in the make-up of magazines of larger size.

At first, Bok's readers objected, but he explained why he did it; that they were the benefiters by the plan; and, so far as readers can be satisfied with what is, at best, an awkward method of presentation, they were content.

To-day the practice is undoubtedly followed to excess, some magazines carrying as much as eighty and ninety columns over from the front to the back; from such abuse it will, of course, free itself either by a return to the original method of make-up or by the adoption of some other less irritating plan.
In his reading about the America of the past, Bok had been impressed by the unusual amount of interesting personal material that constituted what is termed unwritten history--original events of tremendous personal appeal in which great personalities figured but which had not sufficient historical importance to have been included in American history.