ender and
familiar ties were, and come to New York, where the literary enterprise
which formed his chance was to be founded.
It was then a magazine of a new sort, which his business partner had
imagined in such leisure as the management of a newspaper syndicate
afforded him, and had always thought of getting March to edit. The
magazine which is also a book has since been realized elsewhere on more
or less prosperous terms, but not for any long period, and 'Every Other
Week' was apparently--the only periodical of the kind conditioned for
survival. It was at first backed by unlimited capital, and it had the
instant favor of a popular mood, which has since changed, but which did
not change so soon that the magazine had not time to establish itself in
a wide acceptance. It was now no longer a novelty, it was no longer
in the maiden blush of its first success, but it had entered upon its
second youth with the reasonable hope of many years of prosperity before
it. In fact it was a very comfortable living for all concerned, and the
Marches had the conditions, almost dismayingly perfect, in which they
had often promised themselves to go and be young again in Europe, when
they rebelled at finding themselves elderly in America. Their daughter
was married, and so very much to her mother's mind that she did not
worry about her, even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a
wild frontier town to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon
as he left college, had taken hold on 'Every Other Week', under his
father's instruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him
Fulkerson's praise as a chip of the old block. These two liked each
other, and worked into each other's hands as cordially and aptly as
Fulkerson and March had ever done. It amused the father to see his son
offering Fulkerson the same deference which the Business End paid
to seniority in March himself; but in fact, Fulkerson's forehead was
getting, as he said, more intellectual every day; and the years were
pushing them all along together.
Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one day he fell down in it.
He had a long sickness, and when he was well of it, he was so slow in
getting his grip of work again that he was sometimes deeply discouraged.
His wife shared his depression, whether he showed or whether he hid it,
and when the doctor advised his going abroad, she abetted the doctor
with all the strength of a woman's hygienic intuitions. March him
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