VALENTINE'S MANUAL
Dr. J. G. Holland and Roswell Smith

William  Webster Ellsworth

Two men who, with knowledge and sympathy and
money, did much to further the growth of literature and
art in New York in the seventies, were Josiah Gilbert
Holland and Roswell Smith, founders, with the senior
Charles Scribner, of the joint stock company known in
its early years as Scribner & Co. The chief object of
the company at first was the publication of Scribner's
Monthly, the magazine which on the sale of the Scribner
interests to Roswell Smith in 1881 became The Century
and the company publishing it "The Century Company."
The new name was the suggestion of Dr. Holland's asso¬
ciate editor, Richard Watson Gilder, and the thought
came to him from the Century Club, of which he was a
member. The home of the Club was at that time in
Fifteenth Street just off Union Square, next door to the
house occupied by the Gilders, that interesting dwelling
created by Stanford White from a stable which Mr. and
Mrs. Gilder made a center of art and literature and hos¬
pitality for many years.

The two men Dr. Holland and Roswell Smith were
singularly alike in many of their traits, both strongly,
almost sternly religious, both desirous of doing good in
the world and of helping along their fellow men by what
used to be known as "precept and example." Dr. Hol¬
land had been an associate of the elder Samuel Bowles on
that sterling newspaper, the Springfield Republican, and
he was also a writer of poetry and semi-religious essays
intended for the uplift of young people. His poetry was
written in the days when long poems, whole books of a
single poem, were in order, the days of Mrs. Browning's

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