it; others yet denied
that this rumored principle was really the principle. All contributed to
make talk. All proceeded from the same fertile invention.

March observed with a degree of mortification that the talk was very
little of it in the New York press; there the references to the novel
enterprise were slight and cold. But Fulkerson said: "Don't mind that,
old man. It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this;
New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would
be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or
break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the
readers are outside of New York, and the rural districts are what we have
got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write, and talk
about what they've written. Don't you worry."

The rumor of Fulkerson's connection with the enterprise accompanied many
of the paragraphs, and he was able to stay March's thirst for employment
by turning over to him from day to day heaps of the manuscripts which
began to pour in from his old syndicate writers, as well as from
adventurous volunteers all over the country. With these in hand March
began practically to plan the first number, and to concrete a general
scheme from the material and the experience they furnished. They had
intended to issue the first number with the new year, and if it had been
an affair of literature alone, it would have been very easy; but it was
the art leg they limped on, as Fulkerson phrased it. They had not merely
to deal with the question of specific illustrations for this article or
that, but to decide the whole character of their illustrations, and first
of all to get a design for a cover which should both ensnare the heedless
and captivate the fastidious. These things did not come properly within
March's province--that had been clearly understood--and for a while
Fulkerson tried to run the art leg himself. The phrase was again his, but
it was simpler to make the phrase than to run the leg. The difficult
generation, at once stiff-backed and slippery, with which he had to do in
this endeavor, reduced even so buoyant an optimist to despair, and after
wasting some valuable weeks in trying to work the artists himself, he
determined to get an artist to work them. But what artist? It could not
be a man with fixed reputation and a following: he would be too costly,
and would have too many enemies among his bre