and knees, as he said, in abject gratitude at Beaton’s
feet, though he had his qualms, his questions; and
he declared that Beaton was the most inspired ass since
Balaam’s. “We’re all asses,
of course,” he admitted, in semi-apology to
March; “but we’re no such asses as Beaton.”
He said that if the tasteful decorativeness of the
thing did not kill it with the public outright, its
literary excellence would give it the finishing stroke.
Perhaps that might be overlooked in the impression
of novelty which a first number would give, but it
must never happen again. He implored March to
promise that it should never happen again; he said
their only hope was in the immediate cheapening of
the whole affair. It was bad enough to give the
public too much quantity for their money, but to throw
in such quality as that was simply ruinous; it must
be stopped. These were the expressions of his
intimate moods; every front that he presented to the
public wore a glow of lofty, of devout exultation.
His pride in the number gushed out in fresh bursts
of rhetoric to every one whom he could get to talk
with him about it. He worked the personal kindliness
of the press to the utmost. He did not mind making
himself ridiculous or becoming a joke in the good
cause, as he called it. He joined in the applause
when a humorist at the club feigned to drop dead from
his chair at Fulkerson’s introduction of the
topic, and he went on talking that first number into
the surviving spectators. He stood treat upon
all occasions, and he lunched attaches of the press
at all hours. He especially befriended the correspondents
of the newspapers of other cities, for, as he explained
to March, those fellows could give him any amount
of advertising simply as literary gossip. Many
of the fellows were ladies who could not be so summarily
asked out to lunch, but Fulkerson’s ingenuity
was equal to every exigency, and he contrived somehow
to make each of these feel that she had been possessed
of exclusive information. There was a moment when
March conjectured a willingness in Fulkerson to work
Mrs. March into the advertising department, by means
of a tea to these ladies and their friends which she
should administer in his apartment, but he did not
encourage Fulkerson to be explicit, and the moment
passed. Afterward, when he told his wife about
it, he was astonished to find that she would not have
minded doing it for Fulkerson, and he experienced another
proof of the bluntness of the feminine instincts in
some directions, and of the personal favor which Fulkerson
seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. This alone
was enough to account for the willingness of these
correspondents to write about the first number, but
March accused him of sending it to their addresses
with boxes of Jacqueminot roses and Huyler candy.
Fulkerson let him enjoy his joke. He said that he would do that or anything else for the good cause, short of marrying the whole circle of female correspondents.