第93章 PART FOURTH(1)

I.

Not long after Lent,Fulkerson set before Dryfoos one day his scheme for a dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every Other Week.'Dryfoos had never meddled in any manner with the conduct of the periodical;but Fulkerson easily saw that he was proud of his relation to it,and he proceeded upon the theory that he would be willing to have this relation known:On the days when he had been lucky in stocks,he was apt to drop in at the office on Eleventh Street,on his way up-town,and listen to Fulkerson's talk.He was on good enough terms with March,who revised his first impressions of the man,but they had not much to say to each other,and it seemed to March that Dryfoos was even a little afraid of him,as of a piece of mechanism he had acquired,but did not quite understand;he left the working of it to Fulkerson,who no doubt bragged of it sufficiently.The old man seemed to have as little to say to his son;he shut himself up with Fulkerson,where the others could hear the manager begin and go on with an unstinted flow of talk about 'Every Other Week;'for Fulkerson never talked of anything else if he could help it,and was always bringing the conversation back to it if it strayed:

The day he spoke of the dinner he rose and called from his door :"March,I say,come down here a minute,will you?Conrad,I want you,too."The editor and the publisher found the manager and the proprietor seated on opposite sides of the table."It's about those funeral baked meats,you know,"Fulkerson explained,"and I was trying to give Mr.Dryfoos some idea of what we wanted to do.That is,what I wanted to do,"he continued,turning from March to Dryfoos."March,here,is opposed to it,of course.He'd like to publish 'Every Other Week'on the sly;keep it out of the papers,and off the newsstands;he's a modest Boston petunia,and he shrinks from publicity;but I am not that kind of herb myself,and I want all the publicity we can get--beg,borrow,or steal--for this thing.I say that you can't work the sacred rites of hospitality in a better cause,and what I propose is a little dinner for the purpose of recognizing the hit we've made with this thing.My idea was to strike you for the necessary funds,and do the thing on a handsome scale.The term little dinner is a mere figure of speech.A little dinner wouldn't make a big talk,and what we want is the big talk,at present,if we don't lay up a cent.My notion was that pretty soon after Lent,now,when everybody is feeling just right,we should begin to send out our paragraphs,affirmative,negative,and explanatory,and along about the first of May we should sit down about a hundred strong,the most distinguished people in the country,and solemnize our triumph.

There it is in a nutshell.I might expand and I might expound,but that's the sum and substance of it."Fulkerson stopped,and ran his eyes eagerly over the faces of his three listeners,one after the other.March was a little surprised when Dryfoos turned to him,but that reference of the question seemed to give Fulkerson particular pleasure:"What do you think,Mr.March?"The editor leaned back in his chair."I don't pretend to have Mr.

Fulkerson's genius for advertising;but it seems to me a little early yet.We might celebrate later when we've got more to celebrate.At present we're a pleasing novelty,rather than a fixed fact.""Ah,you don't get the idea!"said Fulkerson."What we want to do with this dinner is to fix the fact.""Am I going to come in anywhere?"the old man interrupted.

"You're going to come in at the head of the procession!We are going to strike everything that is imaginative and romantic in the newspaper soul with you and your history and your fancy for going in for this thing.

I can start you in a paragraph that will travel through all the newspapers,from Maine to Texas and from Alaska to Florida.We have had all sorts of rich men backing up literary enterprises,but the natural-gas man in literature is a new thing,and the combination of your picturesque past and your aesthetic present is something that will knock out the sympathies of the American public the first round.I feel,"said Fulkerson,with a tremor of pathos in his voice,"that 'Every Other Week'is at a disadvantage before the public as long as it's supposed to be my enterprise,my idea.As far as I'm known at all,I'm known simply as a syndicate man,and nobody in the press believes that I've got the money to run the thing on a grand scale;a suspicion of insolvency must attach to it sooner or later,and the fellows on the press will work up that impression,sooner or later,if we don't give them something else to work up.Now,as soon as I begin to give it away to the correspondents that you're in it,with your untold millions--that,in fact,it was your idea from the start,that you originated it to give full play to the humanitarian tendencies of Conrad here,who's always had these theories of co-operation,and longed to realize them for the benefit of our struggling young writers and artists--"March had listened with growing amusement to the mingled burlesque and earnest of Fulkerson's self-sacrificing impudence,and with wonder as to how far Dryfoos was consenting to his preposterous proposition,when Conrad broke out:"Mr.Fulkerson,I could not allow you to do that.It would not be true;I did not wish to be here;and--and what I think--what I wish to do--that is something I will not let any one put me in a false position about.No!"The blood rushed into the young man's gentle face,and he met his father's glance with defiance.

Dryfoos turned from him to Fulkerson without speaking,and Fulkerson said,caressingly:"Why,of course,Coonrod!I know how you feel,and Ishouldn't let anything of that sort go out uncontradicted afterward.But there isn't anything in these times that would give us better standing with the public than some hint of the way you feel about such things.