THE THIRD PERIOD On the voyage home, Edward Bok decided that, now the war was over, he would ask his company to release him from the editorship of _The Ladies' Home Journal_.

His original plan had been to retire at the end of a quarter of a century of editorship, when in his fiftieth year.

He was, therefore, six years behind his schedule.

In October, 1919, he would reach his thirtieth anniversary as editor, and he fixed upon this as an appropriate time for the relinquishment of his duties.
He felt he had carried out the conditions under which the editorship of the magazine had been transferred to him by Mrs.Curtis, that he had brought them to fruition, and that any further carrying on of the periodical by him would be of a supplementary character.

He had, too, realized his hope of helping to create a national institution of service to the American woman, and he felt that his part in the work was done.
He considered carefully where he would leave an institution which the public had so thoroughly associated with his personality, and he felt that at no point in its history could he so safely transfer it to other hands.