Hazard of New Fortunes - Volume 4 , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. 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

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947912
Langue	English

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PART FOURTH
I.
Not long after Lent, Fulkerson set before Dryfoosone day his scheme for a dinner in celebration of the success of'Every Other Week. ' Dryfoos had never meddled in any manner withthe conduct of the periodical; but Fulkerson easily saw that he wasproud of his relation to it, and he proceeded upon the theory thathe would be willing to have this relation known: On the days whenhe had been lucky in stocks, he was apt to drop in at the office onEleventh Street, on his way up-town, and listen to Fulkerson'stalk. He was on good enough terms with March, who revised his firstimpressions 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 ofhim, as of a piece of mechanism he had acquired, but did not quiteunderstand; he left the working of it to Fulkerson, who no doubtbragged of it sufficiently. The old man seemed to have as little tosay to his son; he shut himself up with Fulkerson, where the otherscould hear the manager begin and go on with an unstinted flow oftalk about 'Every Other Week; ' for Fulkerson never talked ofanything else if he could help it, and was always bringing theconversation back to it if it strayed:
The day he spoke of the dinner he rose and calledfrom his door: "March,
I say, come down here a minute, will you? Conrad, Iwant you, too. "
The editor and the publisher found the manager andthe proprietor seated on opposite sides of the table. “It's aboutthose funeral baked meats, you know, ” Fulkerson explained, “and Iwas 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 toDryfoos. “March, here, is opposed to it, of course. He'd like topublish 'Every Other Week' on the sly; keep it out of the papers,and off the newsstands; he's a modest Boston petunia, and heshrinks from publicity; but I am not that kind of herb myself, andI want all the publicity we can get— beg, borrow, or steal— forthis thing. I say that you can't work the sacred rites ofhospitality in a better cause, and what I propose is a littledinner for the purpose of recognizing the hit we've made with thisthing. My idea was to strike you for the necessary funds, and dothe thing on a handsome scale. The term little dinner is a merefigure of speech. A little dinner wouldn't make a big talk, andwhat we want is the big talk, at present, if we don't lay up acent. My notion was that pretty soon after Lent, now, wheneverybody is feeling just right, we should begin to send out ourparagraphs, affirmative, negative, and explanatory, and along aboutthe first of May we should sit down about a hundred strong, themost distinguished people in the country, and solemnize ourtriumph. There it is in a nutshell. I might expand and I mightexpound, but that's the sum and substance of it. ”
Fulkerson stopped, and ran his eyes eagerly over thefaces of his three listeners, one after the other. March was alittle surprised when Dryfoos turned to him, but that reference ofthe question seemed to give Fulkerson particular pleasure: “What doyou think, Mr. March? ”
The editor leaned back in his chair. “I don'tpretend to have Mr. Fulkerson's genius for advertising; but itseems to me a little early yet. We might celebrate later when we'vegot more to celebrate. At present we're a pleasing novelty, ratherthan a fixed fact. ”
“Ah, you don't get the idea! ” said Fulkerson. “Whatwe want to do with this dinner is to fix the fact. ”
“Am I going to come in anywhere? ” the old maninterrupted.
“You're going to come in at the head of theprocession! We are going to strike everything that is imaginativeand romantic in the newspaper soul with you and your history andyour fancy for going in for this thing. I can start you in aparagraph that will travel through all the newspapers, from Maineto Texas and from Alaska to Florida. We have had all sorts of richmen backing up literary enterprises, but the natural-gas man inliterature is a new thing, and the combination of your picturesquepast and your aesthetic present is something that will knock outthe sympathies of the American public the first round. I feel, ”said Fulkerson, with a tremor of pathos in his voice, “that 'EveryOther Week' is at a disadvantage before the public as long as it'ssupposed 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 pressbelieves 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, andthe fellows on the press will work up that impression, sooner orlater, if we don't give them something else to work up. Now, assoon as I begin to give it away to the correspondents that you'rein it, with your untold millions— that, in fact, it was your ideafrom the start, that you originated it to give full play to thehumanitarian tendencies of Conrad here, who's always had thesetheories of co-operation, and longed to realize them for thebenefit of our struggling young writers and artists— ”
March had listened with growing amusement to themingled burlesque and earnest of Fulkerson's self-sacrificingimpudence, and with wonder as to how far Dryfoos was consenting tohis 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 todo— that is something I will not let any one put me in a falseposition about. No! ” The blood rushed into the young man's gentleface, and he met his father's glance with defiance.
Dryfoos turned from him to Fulkerson withoutspeaking, and Fulkerson said, caressingly: “Why, of course,Coonrod! I know how you feel, and I shouldn't let anything of thatsort go out uncontradicted afterward. But there isn't anything inthese times that would give us better standing with the public thansome hint of the way you feel about such things. The publicsexpects to be interested, and nothing would interest it more thanto be told that the success of 'Every Other Week' sprang from thefirst application of the principle of Live and let Live to aliterary enterprise. It would look particularly well, coming fromyou 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 needobject. The main thing is to let the public know that it owes thisthing to the liberal and enlightened spirit of one of the foremostcapitalists of the country; and that his purposes are not likely tobe betrayed in the hands of his son, I should get a little cut madefrom a photograph of your father, and supply it gratis with theparagraphs. ”
“I guess, ” said the old man, “we will get alongwithout the cut. ”
Fulkerson laughed. “Well, well! Have it your ownway, But the sight of your face in the patent outsides of thecountry press would be worth half a dozen subscribers in everyschool district throughout the length and breadth of this fairland. ”
“There was a fellow, ” Dryfoos explained, in anaside to March, “that was getting up a history of Moffitt, and heasked me to let him put a steel engraving of me in. He said a goodmany prominent citizens were going to have theirs in, and his pricewas a hundred and fifty dollars. I told him I couldn't let mine gofor less than two hundred, and when he said he could give me asplendid plate for that money, I said I should want it cash, Younever saw a fellow more astonished when he got it through him. thatI 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. Butif you won't sell at any price, all right; we must try to worryalong without the light of your countenance on, the posters, but wegot to have it for the banquet. ”
“I don't seem to feel very hungry, yet, ” said theyold man, dryly.
“Oh, 'l'appeit vient en mangeant', as our Frenchfriends say. You'll be hungry enough when you see the preliminaryLittle Neck clam. It's too late for oysters. ”
“Doesn't that fact seem to point to a postponementtill they get back, sometime in October, ” March suggested,
“No, no! ” said Fulkerson, “you don't catch on tothe business end of this thing, my friends. You're proceeding onsomething like the old exploded idea that the demand creates thesupply, when everybody knows, if he's watched the course of modernevents, that it's just as apt to be the other way. I contend thatwe've got a real substantial success to celebrate now; but even ifwe hadn't, the celebration would do more than anything else tocreate the success, if we got it properly before the public. Peoplewill say: Those fellows are not fools; they wouldn't go and rejoiceover their magazine unless they had got a big thing in it. And thestate of feeling we should produce in the public mind would make aboom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for E. O. W. Heigh? ”
He looked sunnily from one to the other insuccession. The elder Dryfoos said, with his chin on the top of hisstick, “I reckon those Little Neck clams will keep. ”
“Well, just as you say, ” Fulkerson cheerfullyassented. “I understand you to agree to the general principle of alittle dinner? ”
“The smaller the better, ” said the old man.
“Well, I say a little dinner because the idea ofthat seems to cover the case, even if we vary the plan a little. Ihad thought of a reception, maybe, that would include the ladycontributors and artists, and the wives and daughters of the othercontributors. That would give us the chance to ring in a lot ofsociety correspondents and get the thing written up in first-classshape. 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 twentychoice spirits of the male persuasion, and then, about ten o'clock,throw open your palatial drawing-rooms and admit the females t