Lorimer

Benjamin Franklin founded the Saturday Evening Post. George Horace Lorimer made it great. The Post is 196 years old. Lorimer has been its editor for just 25 years. Last week he celebrated this 25th anniversary with a plethora of flowers and innumerable congratulations.

In 1899 when Mr. Lorimer became editor of the Post it was a little magazine of 16 pages without a cover. Its circulation was about 2,000 copies. Today it runs close to the 200-page mark, and has a circulation of about 2,500,000.

The man who performed this transmorphosis is extremely modest. Irvin S. Cobb, famed humorist, described him by saying: "He likes double- breasted sack coats, large brunette cigars, his friends, chocolate bonbons, his family, the Grand Canyon, two cups of coffee for breakfast, and rhododendrons on his front lawn."

Aside from that there isn't much in his history. He was born at Louisville in 1868, attended Yale, and worked for Armour, the packer. He wrote Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, a volume translated into many tongues. He became editor of the Saturday Evening Post.

One of his habits is to read every word of the Post each week. In 1899 that may not have been much of a difficulty. Nowadays that task must be rather a burden.