orida. 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 I
shouldn'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.
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
approv