The publics expects to be interested,and nothing would interest it more than to be told that the success of 'Every Other Week'sprang from the first application of the principle of Live and let Live to a literary enterprise.It would look particularly well,coming from you and your father,but if you object,we can leave that part out;though if you approve of the principle I don't see why you need object.The main thing is to let the public know that it owes this thing to the liberal and enlightened spirit of one of the foremost capitalists of the country;and that his purposes are not likely to be betrayed in the hands of his son,I should get a little cut made from a photograph of your father,and supply it gratis with the paragraphs.""I guess,"said the old man,"we will get along without the cut."Fulkerson laughed."Well,well!Have it your own way,But the sight of your face in the patent outsides of the country press would be worth half a dozen subscribers in every school district throughout the length and breadth of this fair land."There was a fellow,"Dryfoos explained,in an aside to March,"that was getting up a history of Moffitt,and he asked me to let him put a steel engraving of me in.He said a good many prominent citizens were going to have theirs in,and his price was a hundred and fifty dollars.I told him I couldn't let mine go for less than two hundred,and when he said he could give me a splendid plate for that money,I said I should want it cash,You never saw a fellow more astonished when he got it through him.
that I expected him to pay the two hundred."Fulkerson laughed in keen appreciation of the joke."Well,sir,I guess 'Every Other Week'will pay you that much.But if you won't sell at any price,all right;we must try to worry along without the light of your countenance on,the posters,but we got to have it for the banquet.""I don't seem to feel very hungry,yet,"said they old man,dryly.
"Oh,'l'appeit vient en mangeant',as our French friends say.You'll be hungry enough when you see the preliminary Little Neck clam.It's too late for oysters.""Doesn't that fact seem to point to a postponement till they get back,sometime in October,"March suggested,"No,no!"said Fulkerson,"you don't catch on to the business end of this thing,my friends.You're proceeding on something like the old exploded idea that the demand creates the supply,when everybody knows,if he's watched the course of modern events,that it's just as apt to be the other way.I contend that we've got a real substantial success to celebrate now;but even if we hadn't,the celebration would do more than anything else to create the success,if we got it properly before the public.People will say:Those fellows are not fools;they wouldn't go and rejoice over their magazine unless they had got a big thing in it.
And the state of feeling we should produce in the public mind would make a boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for E.O.W.Heigh?"He looked sunnily from one to the other in succession.The elder Dryfoos said,with his chin on the top of his stick,"I reckon those Little Neck clams will keep.""Well,just as you say,"Fulkerson cheerfully assented."I understand you to agree to the general principle of a little dinner?""The smaller the better,"said the old man.
"Well,I say a little dinner because the idea of that seems to cover the case,even if we vary the plan a little.I had thought of a reception,maybe,that would include the lady contributors and artists,and the wives and daughters of the other contributors.That would give us the chance to ring in a lot of society correspondents and get the thing written up in first-class shape.By-the-way!"cried Fulkerson,slapping himself on the leg,"why not have the dinner and the reception both?""I don't understand,"said Dryfoos.
"Why,have a select little dinner for ten or twenty choice spirits of the male persuasion,and then,about ten o'clock,throw open your palatial drawing-rooms and admit the females to champagne,salads,and ices.It is the very thing!Come!""What do you think of it,Mr.March?"asked Dryfoos,on whose social inexperience Fulkerson's words projected no very intelligible image,and who perhaps hoped for some more light.
"It's a beautiful vision,"said March,"and if it will take more time to realize it I think I approve.I approve of anything that will delay Mr.
Fulkerson's advertising orgie."
"Then,"Fulkerson pursued,"we could have the pleasure of Miss Christine and Miss Mela's company;and maybe Mrs.Dryfoos would look in on us in the course of the evening.There's no hurry,as Mr.March suggests,if we can give the thing this shape.I will cheerfully adopt the idea of my honorable colleague."March laughed at his impudence,but at heart he was ashamed of Fulkerson for proposing to make use of Dryfoos and his house in that way.
He fancied something appealing in the look that the old man turned on him,and something indignant in Conrad's flush;but probably this was only his fancy.He reflected that neither of them could feel it as people of more worldly knowledge would,and he consoled himself with the fact that Fulkerson was really not such a charlatan as he seemed.But it went through his mind that this was a strange end for all Dryfoos's money-making to come to;and he philosophically accepted the fact of his own humble fortunes when he reflected how little his money could buy for such a man.It was an honorable use that Fulkerson was putting it to in 'Every Other Week;'it might be far more creditably spent on such an enterprise than on horses,or wines,or women,the usual resources of the brute rich;and if it were to be lost,it might better be lost that way than in stocks.He kept a smiling face turned to Dryfoos while these irreverent considerations occupied him,and hardened his heart against father and son and their possible emotions.
