A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES

By William Dean Howells

PART FOURTH

I. 

Not long after Lent, Fulkerson set before Dryfoos one day his scheme fora dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every Other Week. ' Dryfoos hadnever meddled in any manner with the conduct of the periodical; butFulkerson easily saw that he was proud of his relation to it, and heproceeded upon the theory that he would be willing to have this relationknown: On the days when he had been lucky in stocks, he was apt to dropin at the office on Eleventh Street, on his way up-town, and listen toFulkerson's talk. He was on good enough terms with March, who revised hisfirst 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, asof a piece of mechanism he had acquired, but did not quite understand; heleft the working of it to Fulkerson, who no doubt bragged of itsufficiently. The old man seemed to have as little to say to his son; heshut himself up with Fulkerson, where the others could hear the managerbegin 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 wasalways bringing the conversation back to it if it strayed:

The day he spoke of the dinner he rose and called from his door: "March, I say, come down here a minute, will you? Conrad, I want you, too. "

The editor and the publisher found the manager and the proprietor seatedon opposite sides of the table. "It's about those funeral baked meats, you know, " Fulkerson explained, "and I was trying to give Mr. Dryfoossome idea of what we wanted to do. That is, what I wanted to do, " hecontinued, turning from March to Dryfoos. "March, here, is opposed to it, of course. He'd like to publish 'Every Other Week' on the sly; keep itout of the papers, and off the newsstands; he's a modest Boston petunia, and he shrinks from publicity; but I am not that kind of herb myself, andI want all the publicity we can get--beg, borrow, or steal--for thisthing. I say that you can't work the sacred rites of hospitality in abetter cause, and what I propose is a little dinner for the purpose ofrecognizing the hit we've made with this thing. My idea was to strike youfor the necessary funds, and do the thing on a handsome scale. The termlittle dinner is a mere figure of speech. A little dinner wouldn't make abig talk, and what we want is the big talk, at present, if we don't layup a cent. My notion was that pretty soon after Lent, now, when everybodyis feeling just right, we should begin to send out our paragraphs, affirmative, negative, and explanatory, and along about the first of Maywe should sit down about a hundred strong, the most distinguished peoplein the country, and solemnize our triumph. There it is in a nutshell. Imight expand and I might expound, but that's the sum and substance ofit. "

Fulkerson stopped, and ran his eyes eagerly over the faces of his threelisteners, one after the other. March was a little surprised when Dryfoosturned to him, but that reference of the question seemed to giveFulkerson particular pleasure: "What do you think, Mr. March?"

The editor leaned back in his chair. "I don't pretend to have Mr. Fulkerson's genius for advertising; but it seems to me a little earlyyet. We might celebrate later when we've got more to celebrate. Atpresent we're a pleasing novelty, rather than a fixed fact. "

"Ah, you don't get the idea!" said Fulkerson. "What we want to do withthis dinner is to fix the fact. "

"Am I going to come in anywhere?" the old man interrupted. 

"You're going to come in at the head of the procession! We are going tostrike everything that is imaginative and romantic in the newspaper soulwith you and your history and your fancy for going in for this thing. Ican start you in a paragraph that will travel through all the newspapers, from Maine to Texas and from Alaska to Florida. We have had all sorts ofrich men backing up literary enterprises, but the natural-gas man inliterature is a new thing, and the combination of your picturesque pastand your aesthetic present is something that will knock out thesympathies of the American public the first round. I feel, " saidFulkerson, 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 myenterprise, my idea. As far as I'm known at all, I'm known simply as asyndicate man, and nobody in the press believes that I've got the moneyto run the thing on a grand scale; a suspicion of insolvency must attachto it sooner or later, and the fellows on the press will work up thatimpression, sooner or later, if we don't give them something else to workup. Now, as soon as I begin to give it away to the correspondents thatyou're in 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 these theoriesof co-operation, and longed to realize them for the benefit of ourstruggling young writers and artists--"

March had listened with growing amusement to the mingled burlesque andearnest of Fulkerson's self-sacrificing impudence, and with wonder as tohow far Dryfoos was consenting to his preposterous proposition, whenConrad broke out: "Mr. Fulkerson, I could not allow you to do that. Itwould not be true; I did not wish to be here; and--and what I think--whatI wish to do--that is something I will not let any one put me in a falseposition 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 Fulkersonsaid, caressingly: "Why, of course, Coonrod! I know how you feel, and Ishouldn't let anything of that sort go out uncontradicted afterward. Butthere isn't anything in these times that would give us better standingwith the public than some hint of the way you feel about such things. Thepublics expects to be interested, and nothing would interest it more thanto be told that the success of 'Every Other Week' sprang from the firstapplication of the principle of Live and let Live to a literaryenterprise. It would look particularly well, coming from you and yourfather, but if you object, we can leave that part out; though if youapprove of the principle I don't see why you need object. The main thingis to let the public know that it owes this thing to the liberal andenlightened spirit of one of the foremost capitalists of the country; andthat his purposes are not likely to be betrayed in the hands of his son, I should get a little cut made from a photograph of your father, andsupply it gratis with the paragraphs. "

"I guess, " said the old man, "we will get along without the cut. "

Fulkerson laughed. "Well, well! Have it your own way, But the sight ofyour face in the patent outsides of the country press would be worth halfa dozen subscribers in every school district throughout the length andbreadth of this fair land. "

"There was a fellow, " Dryfoos explained, in an aside to March, "that wasgetting up a history of Moffitt, and he asked me to let him put a steelengraving of me in. He said a good many prominent citizens were going tohave theirs in, and his price was a hundred and fifty dollars. I told himI couldn't let mine go for less than two hundred, and when he said hecould give me a splendid plate for that money, I said I should want itcash, You never saw a fellow more astonished when he got it through him. That I 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. But if you won't sell at anyprice, all right; we must try to worry along without the light of yourcountenance on, the posters, but we got to have it for the banquet. "

"I don't seem to feel very hungry, yet, " said they old man, dryly. 

"Oh, 'l'appeit vient en mangeant', as our French friends say. You'll behungry enough when you see the preliminary Little Neck clam. It's toolate for oysters. "

"Doesn't that fact seem to point to a postponement till they get back, sometime in October, " March suggested, "No, no!" said Fulkerson, "you don't catch on to the business end of thisthing, my friends. You're proceeding on something like the old explodedidea that the demand creates the supply, when everybody knows, if he'swatched the course of modern events, that it's just as apt to be theother way. I contend that we've got a real substantial success tocelebrate now; but even if we hadn't, the celebration would do more thananything else to create the success, if we got it properly before thepublic. People will say: Those fellows are not fools; they wouldn't goand rejoice over their magazine unless they had got a big thing in it. And the state of feeling we should produce in the public mind would makea boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for E. O. W. Heigh?"

He looked sunnily from one to the other in succession. The elder Dryfoossaid, with his chin on the top of his stick, "I reckon those Little Neckclams will keep. "

"Well, just as you say, " Fulkerson cheerfully assented. "I understand youto agree to the general principle of a little dinner?"

"The smaller the better, " said the old man. 

"Well, I say a little dinner because the idea of that seems to cover thecase, even if we vary the plan a little. I had thought of a reception, maybe, that would include the lady contributors and artists, and thewives and daughters of the other contributors. That would give us thechance to ring in a lot of society correspondents and get the thingwritten up in first-class shape. By-the-way!" cried Fulkerson, slappinghimself 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 twenty choice spirits of themale persuasion, and then, about ten o'clock, throw open your palatialdrawing-rooms and admit the females to champagne, salads, and ices. It isthe very thing! Come!"

"What do you think of it, Mr. March?" asked Dryfoos, on whose socialinexperience Fulkerson's words projected no very intelligible image, andwho perhaps hoped for some more light. 

"It's a beautiful vision, " said March, "and if it will take more time torealize it I think I approve. I approve of anything that will delay Mr. Fulkerson's advertising orgie. "

"Then, " Fulkerson pursued, "we could have the pleasure of Miss Christineand Miss Mela's company; and maybe Mrs. Dryfoos would look in on us inthe course of the evening. There's no hurry, as Mr. March suggests, if wecan give the thing this shape. I will cheerfully adopt the idea of myhonorable colleague. "

March laughed at his impudence, but at heart he was ashamed of Fulkersonfor proposing to make use of Dryfoos and his house in that way. Hefancied something appealing in the look that the old man turned on him, and something indignant in Conrad's flush; but probably this was only hisfancy. He reflected that neither of them could feel it as people of moreworldly knowledge would, and he consoled himself with the fact thatFulkerson was really not such a charlatan as he seemed. But it wentthrough his mind that this was a strange end for all Dryfoos'smoney-making to come to; and he philosophically accepted the fact of hisown humble fortunes when he reflected how little his money could buy forsuch a man. It was an honorable use that Fulkerson was putting it to in'Every Other Week;' it might be far more creditably spent on such anenterprise than on horses, or wines, or women, the usual resources of thebrute rich; and if it were to be lost, it might better be lost that waythan in stocks. He kept a smiling face turned to Dryfoos while theseirreverent considerations occupied him, and hardened his heart againstfather and son and their possible emotions. 

The old man rose to put an end to the interview. He only repeated, "Iguess those clams will keep till fall. "

But Fulkerson was apparently satisfied with the progress he had made; andwhen he joined March for the stroll homeward after office hours, he wasable to detach his mind from the subject, as if content to leave it. 

"This is about the best part of the year in New York, " he said; In someof the areas the grass had sprouted, and the tender young foliage hadloosened itself froze the buds on a sidewalk tree here and there; thesoft air was full of spring, and the delicate sky, far aloof, had thelook it never wears at any other season. "It ain't a time of year tocomplain much of, anywhere; but I don't want anything better than themonth of May in New York. Farther South it's too hot, and I've been inBoston in May when that east wind of yours made every nerve in my bodyget up and howl. I reckon the weather has a good deal to do with thelocal temperament. The reason a New York man takes life so easily withall his rush is that his climate don't worry him. But a Boston man mustbe rasped the whole while by the edge in his air. That accounts for hissharpness; and when he's lived through twenty-five or thirty Boston Mays, he gets to thinking that Providence has some particular use for him, orhe wouldn't have survived, and that makes him conceited. See?"

"I see, " said March. "But I don't know how you're going to work that ideainto an advertisement, exactly. "

"Oh, pahaw, now, March! You don't think I've got that on the brain allthe time?"

"You were gradually leading up to 'Every Other Week', somehow. "

"No, sir; I wasn't. I was just thinking what a different creature aMassachusetts man is from a Virginian, And yet I suppose they're both aspure English stock as you'll get anywhere in America. Marsh, I thinkColonel Woodburn's paper is going to make a hit. "

"You've got there! When it knocks down the sale about one-half, I shallknow it's made a hit. "

"I'm not afraid, " said Fulkerson. "That thing is going to attractattention. It's well written--you can take the pomposity out of it, hereand there and it's novel. Our people like a bold strike, and it's goingto shake them up tremendously to have serfdom advocated on high moralgrounds as the only solution of the labor problem. You see, in the firstplace, he goes for their sympathies by the way he portrays the actualrelations of capital and labor; he shows how things have got to go frombad to worse, and then he trots out his little old hobby, and proves thatif slavery had not been interfered with, it would have perfected itselfin the interest of humanity. He makes a pretty strong plea for it. "

March threw back his head and laughed. "He's converted you! I swear, Fulkerson, if we had accepted and paid for an article advocatingcannibalism as the only resource for getting rid of the superfluous poor, you'd begin to believe in it. "

Fulkerson smiled in approval of the joke, and only said: "I wish youcould meet the colonel in the privacy of the domestic circle, March. You'd like him. He's a splendid old fellow; regular type. Talk aboutspring!

"You ought to see the widow's little back yard these days. You know thatglass gallery just beyond the dining-room? Those girls have got thepot-plants out of that, and a lot more, and they've turned the edges ofthat back yard, along the fence, into a regular bower; they've got sweetpeas planted, and nasturtiums, and we shall be in a blaze of glory aboutthe beginning of June. Fun to see 'em work in the garden, and the birdbossing the job in his cage under the cherry-tree. Have to keep themiddle of the yard for the clothesline, but six days in the week it's alawn, and I go over it with a mower myself. March, there ain't anythinglike a home, is there? Dear little cot of your own, heigh? I tell you, March, when I get to pushing that mower round, and the colonel is smokinghis cigar in the gallery, and those girls are pottering over the flowers, one of these soft evenings after dinner, I feel like a human being. Yes, I do. I struck it rich when I concluded to take my meals at the widow's. For eight dollars a week I get good board, refined society, and all theadvantages of a Christian home. By-the-way, you've never had much talkwith Miss Woodburn, have you, March?"

"Not so much as with Miss Woodburn's father. "

"Well, he is rather apt to scoop the conversation. I must draw his fire, sometime, when you and Mrs. March are around, and get you a chance withMiss Woodburn. "

"I should like that better, I believe, " said March. 

"Well, I shouldn't wonder if you did. Curious, but Miss Woodburn isn't atall your idea of a Southern girl. She's got lots of go; she's never idlea minute; she keeps the old gentleman in first-class shape, and she don'tbelieve a bit in the slavery solution of the labor problem; says she'sglad it's gone, and if it's anything like the effects of it, she's gladit went before her time. No, sir, she's as full of snap as the liveliestkind of a Northern girl. None of that sunny Southern languor you readabout. "

"I suppose the typical Southerner, like the typical anything else, ispretty difficult to find, " said March. "But perhaps Miss Woodburnrepresents the new South. The modern conditions must be producing amodern type. "

"Well, that's what she and the colonel both say. They say there ain'tanything left of that Walter Scott dignity and chivalry in the risinggeneration; takes too much time. You ought to see her sketch theold-school, high-and-mighty manners, as they survive among some of theantiques in Charlottesburg. If that thing could be put upon the stage itwould be a killing success. Makes the old gentleman laugh in spite ofhimself. But he's as proud of her as Punch, anyway. Why don't you andMrs. March come round oftener? Look here! How would it do to have alittle excursion, somewhere, after the spring fairly gets in its work?"

"Reporters present?"

"No, no! Nothing of that kind; perfectly sincere and disinterestedenjoyment. "

"Oh, a few handbills to be scattered around: 'Buy Every Other Week, ' 'Lookout for the next number of "Every Other Week, "' 'Every Other Week at allthe news-stands. ' Well, I'll talk it over with Mrs. March. I supposethere's no great hurry. "

March told his wife of the idyllic mood in which he had left Fulkerson atthe widow's door, and she said he must be in love. 

"Why, of course! I wonder I didn't think of that. But Fulkerson is suchan impartial admirer of the whole sex that you can't think of his likingone more than another. I don't know that he showed any unjust partiality, though, in his talk of 'those girls, ' as he called them. And I alwaysrather fancied that Mrs. Mandel--he's done so much for her, you know; andshe is such a well-balanced, well-preserved person, and so lady-like andcorrect----"

"Fulkerson had the word for her: academic. She's everything thatinstruction and discipline can make of a woman; but I shouldn't thinkthey could make enough of her to be in love with. "

"Well, I don't know. The academic has its charm. There are moods in whichI could imagine myself in love with an academic person. That regularityof line; that reasoned strictness of contour; that neatness of pose; thatslightly conventional but harmonious grouping of the emotions andmorals--you can see how it would have its charm, the Wedgwood in humannature? I wonder where Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn and her willow. "

"I should think she might have use for them in that family, poor thing!"said Mrs. March. 

"Ah, that reminds me, " said her husband, "that we had another talk withthe old gentleman, this afternoon, about Fulkerson's literary, artistic, and advertising orgie, and it's postponed till October. "

"The later the better, I should think, " said Mrs: March, who did notreally think about it at all, but whom the date fixed for it caused tothink of the intervening time. "We have got to consider what we will doabout the summer, before long, Basil. "

"Oh, not yet, not yet, " he pleaded; with that man's willingness to abidein the present, which is so trying to a woman. "It's only the end ofApril. "

"It will be the end of June before we know. And these people wanting theBoston house another year complicates it. We can't spend the summerthere, as we planned. "

"They oughtn't to have offered us an increased rent; they have taken anadvantage of us. "

"I don't know that it matters, " said Mrs. March. "I had decided not to gothere. "

"Had you? This is a surprise. "

"Everything is a surprise to you, Basil, when it happens. "

"True; I keep the world fresh, that way. "

"It wouldn't have been any change to go from one city to another for thesummer. We might as well have stayed in New York. "

"Yes, I wish we had stayed, " said March, idly humoring a conception ofthe accomplished fact. "Mrs. Green would have let us have the gimcrackeryvery cheap for the summer months; and we could have made all sorts ofnice little excursions and trips off and been twice as well as if we hadspent the summer away. "

"Nonsense! You know we couldn't spend the summer in New York. "

"I know I could. "

"What stuff! You couldn't manage. "

"Oh yes, I could. I could take my meals at Fulkerson's widow's; or atMaroni's, with poor old Lindau: he's got to dining there again. Or, Icould keep house, and he could dine with me here. "

There was a teasing look in March's eyes, and he broke into a laugh, atthe firmness with which his wife said: "I think if there is to be anyhousekeeping, I will stay, too; and help to look after it. I would trynot intrude upon you and your guest. "

"Oh, we should be only too glad to have you join us, " said March, playingwith fire. 

"Very well, then, I wish you would take him off to Maroni's, the nexttime he comes to dine here!" cried his wife. 

The experiment of making March's old friend free of his house had notgiven her all the pleasure that so kind a thing ought to have afforded sogood a woman. She received Lindau at first with robust benevolence, andthe high resolve not to let any of his little peculiarities alienate herfrom a sense of his claim upon her sympathy and gratitude, not only as aman who had been so generously fond of her husband in his youth, but ahero who had suffered for her country. Her theory was that his mutilationmust not be ignored, but must be kept in mind as a monument of hissacrifice, and she fortified Bella with this conception, so that thechild bravely sat next his maimed arm at table and helped him to disheshe could not reach, and cut up his meat for him. As for Mrs. Marchherself, the thought of his mutilation made her a little faint; she wasnot without a bewildered resentment of its presence as a sort ofoppression. She did not like his drinking so much of March's beer, either; it was no harm, but it was somehow unworthy, out of characterwith a hero of the war. But what she really could not reconcile herselfto was the violence of Lindau's sentiments concerning the whole politicaland social fabric. She did not feel sure that he should be allowed to saysuch things before the children, who had been nurtured in the faith ofBunker Hill and Appomattox, as the beginning and the end of all possibleprogress in human rights. As a woman she was naturally an aristocrat, butas an American she was theoretically a democrat; and it astounded, italarmed her, to hear American democracy denounced as a shuffling evasion. She had never cared much for the United States Senate, but she doubted ifshe ought to sit by when it was railed at as a rich man's club. Itshocked her to be told that the rich and poor were not equal before thelaw in a country where justice must be paid for at every step in fees andcosts, or where a poor man must go to war in his own person, and a richman might hire someone to go in his. Mrs. March felt that this rebelliousmind in Lindau really somehow outlawed him from sympathy, andretroactively undid his past suffering for the country: she had alwaysparticularly valued that provision of the law, because in forecasting allthe possible mischances that might befall her own son, she had beencomforted by the thought that if there ever was another war, and Tom weredrafted, his father could buy him a substitute. Compared with suchblasphemy as this, Lindau's declaration that there was not equality ofopportunity in America, and that fully one-half the people were debarredtheir right to the pursuit of happiness by the hopeless conditions oftheir lives, was flattering praise. She could not listen to such thingsin silence, though, and it did not help matters when Lindau met herarguments with facts and reasons which she felt she was merely notsufficiently instructed to combat, and he was not quite gentlemanly tourge. "I am afraid for the effect on the children, " she said to herhusband. "Such perfectly distorted ideas--Tom will be ruined by them. "

"Oh, let Tom find out where they're false, " said March. "It will be goodexercise for his faculties of research. At any rate, those things aregetting said nowadays; he'll have to hear them sooner or later. "

"Had he better hear them at home?" demanded his wife. 

"Why, you know, as you're here to refute them, Isabel, " he teased, "perhaps it's the best place. But don't mind poor old Lindau, my dear. Hesays himself that his parg is worse than his pidte, you know. "

"Ah, it's too late now to mind him, " she sighed. In a moment of rash goodfeeling, or perhaps an exalted conception of duty, she had herselfproposed that Lindau should come every week and read German with Tom; andit had become a question first how they could get him to take pay for it, and then how they could get him to stop it. Mrs. March never ceased towonder at herself for having brought this about, for she had warned herhusband against making any engagement with Lindau which would bring himregularly to the house: the Germans stuck so, and were so unscrupulouslydependent. Yet, the deed being done, she would not ignore the duty ofhospitality, and it was always she who made the old man stay to theirSunday-evening tea when he lingered near the hour, reading Schiller andHeine and Uhland with the boy, in the clean shirt with which he observedthe day; Lindau's linen was not to be trusted during the week. She nowconcluded a season of mournful reflection by saying, "He will get youinto trouble, somehow, Basil. "

"Well, I don't know how, exactly. I regard Lindau as a politicaleconomist of an unusual type; but I shall not let him array me againstthe constituted authorities. Short of that, I think I am safe. "

"Well, be careful, Basil; be careful. You know you are so rash. "

"I suppose I may continue to pity him? He is such a poor, lonely oldfellow. Are you really sorry he's come into our lives, my dear?"

"No, no; not that. I feel as you do about it; but I wish I felt easierabout him--sure, that is, that we're not doing wrong to let him keep ontalking so. "

"I suspect we couldn't help it, " March returned, lightly. "It's one ofwhat Lindau calls his 'brincibles' to say what he thinks. "

II. 

The Marches had no longer the gross appetite for novelty which urgesyouth to a surfeit of strange scenes, experiences, ideas; and makestravel, with all its annoyances and fatigues, an inexhaustible delight. But there is no doubt that the chief pleasure of their life in New Yorkwas from its quality of foreignness: the flavor of olives, which, oncetasted, can never be forgotten. The olives may not be of the firstexcellence; they may be a little stale, and small and poor, to beginwith, but they are still olives, and the fond palate craves them. Thesort which grew in New York, on lower Sixth Avenue and in the region ofJefferson Market and on the soft exposures south of Washington Square, were none the less acceptable because they were of the commonest Italianvariety. 

The Marches spent a good deal of time and money in a grocery of thatnationality, where they found all the patriotic comestibles and potables, and renewed their faded Italian with the friendly family in charge. Italian table d'hotes formed the adventure of the week, on the day whenMrs. March let her domestics go out, and went herself to dine abroad withher husband and children; and they became adepts in the restaurants wherethey were served, and which they varied almost from dinner to dinner. Theperfect decorum of these places, and their immunity from offence in any, emboldened the Marches to experiment in Spanish restaurants, where redpepper and beans insisted in every dinner, and where once they chancedupon a night of 'olla podrida', with such appeals to March's memory of aboyish ambition to taste the dish that he became poetic and then pensiveover its cabbage and carrots, peas and bacon. For a rare combination ofinternational motives they prized most the table d'hote of a French lady, who had taken a Spanish husband in a second marriage, and had a Cubannegro for her cook, with a cross-eyed Alsation for waiter, and a slimyoung South-American for cashier. March held that some thing of thecatholic character of these relations expressed itself in the generousand tolerant variety of the dinner, which was singularly abundant forfifty cents, without wine. At one very neat French place he got a dinnerat the same price with wine, but it was not so abundant; and Marchinquired in fruitless speculation why the table d'hote of the Italians, anotoriously frugal and abstemious people, should be usually more than youwanted at seventy-five cents and a dollar, and that of the French ratherless at half a dollar. He could not see that the frequenters were greatlydifferent at the different places; they were mostly Americans, of subduedmanners and conjecturably subdued fortunes, with here and there a tablefull of foreigners. There was no noise and not much smoking anywhere;March liked going to that neat French place because there Madame satenthroned and high behind a 'comptoir' at one side of the room, and everybody saluted her in going out. It was there that a gentle-looking youngcouple used to dine, in whom the Marches became effectlessly interested, because they thought they looked like that when they were young. The wifehad an aesthetic dress, and defined her pretty head by wearing herback-hair pulled up very tight under her bonnet; the husband had dreamyeyes set wide apart under a pure forehead. "They are artists, August, Ithink, " March suggested to the waiter, when he had vainly asked aboutthem. "Oh, hartis, cedenly, " August consented; but Heaven knows whetherthey were, or what they were: March never learned. 

This immunity from acquaintance, this touch-and go quality in their NewYork sojourn, this almost loss of individuality at times, after theintense identification of their Boston life, was a relief, though Mrs. March had her misgivings, and questioned whether it were not perhaps toorelaxing to the moral fibre. March refused to explore his conscience; heallowed that it might be so; but he said he liked now and then to feelhis personality in that state of solution. They went and sat a good dealin the softening evenings among the infants and dotards of Latinextraction in Washington Square, safe from all who ever knew them, andenjoyed the advancing season, which thickened the foliage of the treesand flattered out of sight the church warden's Gothic of the UniversityBuilding. The infants were sometimes cross, and cried in their wearymothers' or little sisters' arms; but they did not disturb the dotards, who slept, some with their heads fallen forward, and some with theirheads fallen back; March arbitrarily distinguished those with thedrooping faces as tipsy and ashamed to confront the public. The smallItalian children raced up and down the asphalt paths, playing Americangames of tag and hide and-whoop; larger boys passed ball, in training forpotential championships. The Marches sat and mused, or quarrelledfitfully about where they should spend the summer, like sparrows, he oncesaid, till the electric lights began to show distinctly among the leaves, and they looked round and found the infants and dotards gone and thebenches filled with lovers. That was the signal for the Marches to gohome. He said that the spectacle of so much courtship as the eye mighttake in there at a glance was not, perhaps, oppressive, but the thoughtthat at the same hour the same thing was going on all over the country, wherever two young fools could get together, was more than he could bear;he did not deny that it was natural, and, in a measureuthorized, buthe declared that it was hackneyed; and the fact that it must go onforever, as long as the race lasted, made him tired. 

At home, generally, they found that the children had not missed them, andwere perfectly safe. It was one of the advantages of a flat that theycould leave the children there whenever they liked without anxiety. Theyliked better staying there than wandering about in the evening with theirparents, whose excursions seemed to them somewhat aimless, and theirpleasures insipid. They studied, or read, or looked out of the window atthe street sights; and their mother always came back to them with a pangfor their lonesomeness. Bella knew some little girls in the house, but ina ceremonious way; Tom had formed no friendships among the boys at schoolsuch as he had left in Boston; as nearly as he could explain, the NewYork fellows carried canes at an age when they would have had them brokenfor them by the other boys at Boston; and they were both sissyish andfast. It was probably prejudice; he never could say exactly what theirdemerits were, and neither he nor Bella was apparently so homesick asthey pretended, though they answered inquirers, the one that New York wasa hole, and the other that it was horrid, and that all they lived for wasto get back to Boston. In the mean time they were thrown much upon eachother for society, which March said was well for both of them; he did notmind their cultivating a little gloom and the sense of a common wrong; itmade them better comrades, and it was providing them with amusingreminiscences for the future. They really enjoyed Bohemianizing in thatharmless way: though Tom had his doubts of its respectability; he wasvery punctilious about his sister, and went round from his own schoolevery day to fetch her home from hers. The whole family went to thetheatre a good deal, and enjoyed themselves together in their desultoryexplorations of the city. 

They lived near Greenwich Village, and March liked strolling through itsquaintness toward the waterside on a Sunday, when a hereditarySabbatarianism kept his wife at home; he made her observe that it evenkept her at home from church. He found a lingering quality of pureAmericanism in the region, and he said the very bells called to worshipin a nasal tone. He liked the streets of small brick houses, with hereand there one painted red, and the mortar lines picked out in white, andwith now and then a fine wooden portal of fluted pillars and a bowedtransom. The rear of the tenement-houses showed him the picturesquenessof clothes-lines fluttering far aloft, as in Florence; and the newapartment-houses, breaking the old sky-line with their towering stories, implied a life as alien to the American manner as anything in continentalEurope. In fact, foreign faces and foreign tongues prevailed in GreenwichVillage, but no longer German or even Irish tongues or faces. The eyesand earrings of Italians twinkled in and out of the alleyways andbasements, and they seemed to abound even in the streets, where longranks of trucks drawn up in Sunday rest along the curbstones suggestedthe presence of a race of sturdier strength than theirs. March liked theswarthy, strange visages; he found nothing menacing for the future inthem; for wickedness he had to satisfy himself as he could with thesneering, insolent, clean-shaven mug of some rare American of the b'hoytype, now almost as extinct in New York as the dodo or the volunteerfireman. When he had found his way, among the ash-barrels and the groupsof decently dressed church-goers, to the docks, he experienced asufficient excitement in the recent arrival of a French steamer, whosesheds were thronged with hacks and express-wagons, and in a tacit inquiryinto the emotions of the passengers, fresh from the cleanliness of Paris, and now driving up through the filth of those streets. 

Some of the streets were filthier than others; there was at least achoice; there were boxes and barrels of kitchen offal on all thesidewalks, but not everywhere manure-heaps, and in some places the stenchwas mixed with the more savory smell of cooking. One Sunday morning, before the winter was quite gone, the sight of the frozen refuse meltingin heaps, and particularly the loathsome edges of the rotting ice nearthe gutters, with the strata of waste-paper and straw litter, andegg-shells and orange peel, potato-skins and cigar-stumps, made himunhappy. He gave a whimsical shrug for the squalor of the neighboringhouses, and said to himself rather than the boy who was with him: "It'scurious, isn't it, how fond the poor people are of these unpleasantthoroughfares? You always find them living in the worst streets. "

"The burden of all the wrong in the world comes on the poor, " said theboy. "Every sort of fraud and swindling hurts them the worst. The citywastes the money it's paid to clean the streets with, and the poor haveto suffer, for they can't afford to pay twice, like the rich. "

March stopped short. "Hallo, Tom! Is that your wisdom?"

"It's what Mr. Lindau says, " answered the boy, doggedly, as if notpleased to have his ideas mocked at, even if they were second-hand. 

"And you didn't tell him that the poor lived in dirty streets becausethey liked them, and were too lazy and worthless to have them cleaned?"

"No; I didn't. "

"I'm surprised. What do you think of Lindau, generally speaking, Tom?"

"Well, sir, I don't like the way he talks about some things. I don'tsuppose this country is perfect, but I think it's about the best thereis, and it don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time. "

"Sound, my son, " said March, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder andbeginning to walk on. "Well?"

"Well, then, he says that it isn't the public frauds only that the poorhave to pay for, but they have to pay for all the vices of the rich; thatwhen a speculator fails, or a bank cashier defaults, or a firm suspends, or hard times come, it's the poor who have to give up necessaries wherethe rich give up luxuries. "

"Well, well! And then?"

"Well, then I think the crank comes in, in Mr. Lindau. He says there's noneed of failures or frauds or hard times. It's ridiculous. There alwayshave been and there always will be. But if you tell him that, it seems tomake him perfectly furious. "

March repeated the substance of this talk to his wife. "I'm glad to knowthat Tom can see through such ravings. He has lots of good common sense. "

It was the afternoon of the same Sunday, and they were sauntering upFifth Avenue, and admiring the wide old double houses at the lower end;at one corner they got a distinct pleasure out of the gnarled elbows thata pollarded wistaria leaned upon the top of a garden wall--for itsconvenience in looking into the street, he said. The line of thesecomfortable dwellings, once so fashionable, was continually broken by thefacades of shops; and March professed himself vulgarized by a want ofstyle in the people they met in their walk to Twenty-third Street. 

"Take me somewhere to meet my fellow-exclusives, Isabel, " he demanded. "Ipine for the society of my peers. "

He hailed a passing omnibus, and made his wife get on the roof with him. "Think of our doing such a thing in Boston!" she sighed, with a littleshiver of satisfaction in her immunity from recognition and comment. 

"You wouldn't be afraid to do it in London or Paris?"

"No; we should be strangers there--just as we are in New York. I wonderhow long one could be a stranger here. "

"Oh, indefinitely, in our way of living. The place is really vast, somuch larger than it used to seem, and so heterogeneous. "

When they got down very far up-town, and began to walk back by MadisonAvenue, they found themselves in a different population from that theydwelt among; not heterogeneous at all; very homogeneous, and almostpurely American; the only qualification was American Hebrew. Such awell-dressed, well-satisfied, well-fed looking crowd poured down thebroad sidewalks before the handsome, stupid houses that March couldeasily pretend he had got among his fellow-plutocrats at last. Still heexpressed his doubts whether this Sunday afternoon parade, which seemedto be a thing of custom, represented the best form among the young peopleof that region; he wished he knew; he blamed himself for becoming of afastidious conjecture; he could not deny the fashion and the richness andthe indigeneity of the spectacle; the promenaders looked New-Yorky; theywere the sort of people whom you would know for New-Yorkerselsewhere, --so well equipped and so perfectly kept at all points. Theirsilk hats shone, and their boots; their frocks had the right distensionbehind, and their bonnets perfect poise and distinction. 

The Marches talked of these and other facts of their appearance, andcuriously questioned whether this were the best that a great materialcivilization could come to; it looked a little dull. The men's faces wereshrewd and alert, and yet they looked dull; the women's were pretty andknowing, and yet dull. It was, probably, the holiday expression of thevast, prosperous commercial class, with unlimited money, and no idealsthat money could not realize; fashion and comfort were all that theydesired to compass, and the culture that furnishes showily, thatdecorates and that tells; the culture, say, of plays and operas, ratherthan books. 

Perhaps the observers did the promenaders injustice; they might not havebeen as common-minded as they looked. "But, " March said, "I understandnow why the poor people don't come up here and live in this clean, handsome, respectable quarter of the town; they would be bored to death. On the whole, I think I should prefer Mott Street myself. "

In other walks the Marches tried to find some of the streets they hadwandered through the first day of their wedding journey in New York, solong ago. They could not make sure of them; but once they ran down to theBattery, and easily made sure of that, though not in its old aspect. Theyrecalled the hot morning, when they sauntered over the trodden weed thatcovered the sickly grass-plots there, and sentimentalized the swelteringpaupers who had crept out of the squalid tenements about for a breath ofair after a sleepless night. Now the paupers were gone, and where the oldmansions that had fallen to their use once stood, there towered aloft andabroad those heights and masses of many-storied brick-work for whicharchitecture has yet no proper form and aesthetics no name. The trees andshrubs, all in their young spring green, blew briskly over the guardedturf in the south wind that came up over the water; and in the well-pavedalleys the ghosts of eighteenth-century fashion might have met each otherin their old haunts, and exchanged stately congratulations upon itsvastly bettered condition, and perhaps puzzled a little over the colossallady on Bedloe's Island, with her lifted torch, and still more over thecurving tracks and chalet-stations of the Elevated road. It is an outlookof unrivalled beauty across the bay, that smokes and flashes with the innumerable stacks and sails of commerce, to the hills beyond, where themoving forest of masts halts at the shore, and roots itself in the grovesof the many villaged uplands. The Marches paid the charming prospects awilling duty, and rejoiced in it as generously as if it had been theirown. Perhaps it was, they decided. He said people owned more things incommon than they were apt to think; and they drew the consolations ofproprietorship from the excellent management of Castle Garden, which theypenetrated for a moment's glimpse of the huge rotunda, where theimmigrants first set foot on our continent. It warmed their hearts, soeasily moved to any cheap sympathy, to see the friendly care the nationtook of these humble guests; they found it even pathetic to hear theproper authority calling out the names of such as had kin or acquaintancewaiting there to meet them. No one appeared troubled or anxious; theofficials had a conscientious civility; the government seemed to managetheir welcome as well as a private company or corporation could havedone. In fact, it was after the simple strangers had left the governmentcare that March feared their woes might begin; and he would have likedthe government to follow each of them to his home, wherever he meant tofix it within our borders. He made note of the looks of the licensedrunners and touters waiting for the immigrants outside the governmentpremises; he intended to work them up into a dramatic effect in somesketch, but they remained mere material in his memorandum-book, togetherwith some quaint old houses on the Sixth Avenue road, which he hadnoticed on the way down. On the way up, these were superseded in hisregard by some hip-roof structures on the Ninth Avenue, which he thoughtmore Dutch-looking. The perspectives of the cross-streets toward theriver were very lively, with their turmoil of trucks and cars and cartsand hacks and foot passengers, ending in the chimneys and masts ofshipping, and final gleams of dancing water. At a very noisy corner, clangorous with some sort of ironworking, he made his wife enjoy with himthe quiet sarcasm of an inn that called itself the Home-like Hotel, andhe speculated at fantastic length on the gentle associations of one whoshould have passed his youth under its roof. 

III. 

First and last, the Marches did a good deal of travel on the Elevatedroads, which, he said, gave you such glimpses of material aspects in thecity as some violent invasion of others' lives might afford in humannature. Once, when the impulse of adventure was very strong in them, theywent quite the length of the West Side lines, and saw the city pushingits way by irregular advances into the country. Some spaces, probablyheld by the owners for that rise in value which the industry of othersprovidentially gives to the land of the wise and good, it left vacantcomparatively far down the road, and built up others at remoter points. It was a world of lofty apartment houses beyond the Park, springing up inisolated blocks, with stretches of invaded rusticity between, and hereand there an old country-seat standing dusty in its budding vines withthe ground before it in rocky upheaval for city foundations. But whereverit went or wherever it paused, New York gave its peculiar stamp; and theadventurers were amused to find One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Streetinchoately like Twenty-third Street and Fourteenth Street in its shopsand shoppers. The butchers' shops and milliners' shops on the avenuemight as well have been at Tenth as at One Hundredth Street. 

The adventurers were not often so adventurous. They recognized that intheir willingness to let their fancy range for them, and to letspeculation do the work of inquiry, they were no longer young. Theirpoint of view was singularly unchanged, and their impressions of New Yorkremained the same that they had been fifteen years before: huge, noisy, ugly, kindly, it seemed to them now as it seemed then. The maindifference was that they saw it more now as a life, and then they onlyregarded it as a spectacle; and March could not release himself from asense of complicity with it, no matter what whimsical, or alien, orcritical attitude he took. A sense of the striving and the sufferingdeeply possessed him; and this grew the more intense as he gained someknowledge of the forces at work-forces of pity, of destruction, ofperdition, of salvation. He wandered about on Sunday not only through thestreets, but into this tabernacle and that, as the spirit moved him, andlistened to those who dealt with Christianity as a system of economics aswell as a religion. He could not get his wife to go with him; shelistened to his report of what he heard, and trembled; it all seemedfantastic and menacing. She lamented the literary peace, the intellectualrefinement of the life they had left behind them; and he owned it wasvery pretty, but he said it was not life--it was death-in-life. She likedto hear him talk in that strain of virtuous self-denunciation, but sheasked him, "Which of your prophets are you going to follow?" and heanswered: "All-all! And a fresh one every Sunday. " And so they got theirlaugh out of it at last, but with some sadness at heart, and with a dimconsciousness that they had got their laugh out of too many things inlife. 

What really occupied and compassed his activities, in spite of hisstrenuous reveries of work beyond it, was his editorship. On its socialside it had not fulfilled all the expectations which Fulkerson's radiantsketch of its duties and relations had caused him to form of it. Most ofthe contributions came from a distance; even the articles written in NewYork reached him through the post, and so far from having his valuabletime, as they called it, consumed in interviews with his collaborators, he rarely saw any of them. The boy on the stairs, who was to fence himfrom importunate visitors, led a life of luxurious disoccupation, andwhistled almost uninterruptedly. When any one came, March found himselfembarrassed and a little anxious. The visitors were usually young men, terribly respectful, but cherishing, as he imagined, ideals and opinionschasmally different from his; and he felt in their presence somethinglike an anachronism, something like a fraud. He tried to freshen up hissympathies on them, to get at what they were really thinking and feeling, and it was some time before he could understand that they were not reallythinking and feeling anything of their own concerning their art, but werenecessarily, in their quality of young, inexperienced men, mereacceptants of older men's thoughts and feelings, whether they weretremendously conservative, as some were, or tremendously progressive, asothers were. Certain of them called themselves realists, certainromanticists; but none of them seemed to know what realism was, or whatromanticism; they apparently supposed the difference a difference ofmaterial. March had imagined himself taking home to lunch or dinner theaspirants for editorial favor whom he liked, whether he liked their workor not; but this was not an easy matter. Those who were at allinteresting seemed to have engagements and preoccupations; after two orthree experiments with the bashfuller sort--those who had come up to themetropolis with manuscripts in their hands, in the good old literarytradition--he wondered whether he was otherwise like them when he wasyoung like them. He could not flatter himself that he was not; and yet hehad a hope that the world had grown worse since his time, which his wifeencouraged:

Mrs. March was not eager to pursue the hospitalities which she had atfirst imagined essential to the literary prosperity of 'Every OtherWeek'; her family sufficed her; she would willingly have seen no one outof it but the strangers at the weekly table-d'hote dinner, or theaudiences at the theatres. March's devotion to his work made himreluctant to delegate it to any one; and as the summer advanced, and thequestion of where to go grew more vexed, he showed a man's basewillingness to shirk it for himself by not going anywhere. He asked hiswife why she did not go somewhere with the children, and he joined her ina search for non-malarial regions on the map when she consented toentertain this notion. But when it came to the point she would not go; heoffered to go with her then, and then she would not let him. She said sheknew he would be anxious about his work; he protested that he could takeit with him to any distance within a few hours, but she would not bepersuaded. She would rather he stayed; the effect would be better withMr. Fulkerson; they could make excursions, and they could all get off aweek or two to the seashore near Boston--the only real seashore--inAugust. The excursions were practically confined to a single day at ConeyIsland; and once they got as far as Boston on the way to the seashorenear Boston; that is, Mrs. March and the children went; an editorialexigency kept March at the last moment. The Boston streets seemed veryqueer and clean and empty to the children, and the buildings little; inthe horse-cars the Boston faces seemed to arraign their mother with adown-drawn severity that made her feel very guilty. She knew that thiswas merely the Puritan mask, the cast of a dead civilization, whichpeople of very amiable and tolerant minds were doomed to wear, and shesighed to think that less than a year of the heterogeneous gayety of NewYork should have made her afraid of it. The sky seemed cold and gray; theeast wind, which she had always thought so delicious in summer, cut herto the heart. She took her children up to the South End, and in thepretty square where they used to live they stood before their alienatedhome, and looked up at its close-shuttered windows. The tenants must havebeen away, but Mrs. March had not the courage to ring and make sure, though she had always promised herself that she would go all over thehouse when she came back, and see how they had used it; she could pretenda desire for something she wished to take away. She knew she could notbear it now; and the children did not seem eager. She did not push on tothe seaside; it would be forlorn there without their father; she was gladto go back to him in the immense, friendly homelessness of New York, andhold him answerable for the change, in her heart or her mind, which madeits shapeless tumult a refuge and a consolation. 

She found that he had been giving the cook a holiday, and dining abouthither and thither with Fulkerson. Once he had dined with him at thewidow's (as they always called Mrs. Leighton), and then had spent theevening there, and smoked with Fulkerson and Colonel Woodburn on thegallery overlooking the back yard. They were all spending the summer inNew York. The widow had got so good an offer for her house at St. Barnabyfor the summer that she could not refuse it; and the Woodburns found NewYork a watering-place of exemplary coolness after the burning Augusts andSeptembers of Charlottesburg. 

"You can stand it well enough in our climate, sir, " the colonelexplained, "till you come to the September heat, that sometimes runs wellinto October; and then you begin to lose your temper, sir. It's neverquite so hot as it is in New York at times, but it's hot longer, sir. " Healleged, as if something of the sort were necessary, the example of afamous Southwestern editor who spent all his summers in a New York hotelas the most luxurious retreat on the continent, consulting the weatherforecasts, and running off on torrid days to the mountains or the sea, and then hurrying back at the promise of cooler weather. The colonel hadnot found it necessary to do this yet; and he had been reluctant to leavetown, where he was working up a branch of the inquiry which had so longoccupied him, in the libraries, and studying the great problem of laborand poverty as it continually presented itself to him in the streets. Hesaid that he talked with all sorts of people, whom he found monstrouslycivil, if you took them in the right way; and he went everywhere in thecity without fear and apparently without danger. March could not find outthat he had ridden his hobby into the homes of want which he visited, orhad proposed their enslavement to the inmates as a short and simplesolution of the great question of their lives; he appeared to havecontented himself with the collection of facts for the persuasion of thecultivated classes. It seemed to March a confirmation of this impressionthat the colonel should address his deductions from these facts sounsparingly to him; he listened with a respectful patience, for whichFulkerson afterward personally thanked him. Fulkerson said it was notoften the colonel found such a good listener; generally nobody listenedbut Mrs. Leighton, who thought his ideas were shocking, but honored himfor holding them so conscientiously. Fulkerson was glad that March, asthe literary department, had treated the old gentleman so well, becausethere was an open feud between him and the art department. Beaton wasoutrageously rude, Fulkerson must say; though as for that, the oldcolonel seemed quite able to take care of himself, and gave Beaton anunqualified contempt in return for his unmannerliness. The worst of itwas, it distressed the old lady so; she admired Beaton as much as sherespected the colonel, and she admired Beaton, Fulkerson thought, rathermore than Miss Leighton did; he asked March if he had noticed themtogether. March had noticed them, but without any very definiteimpression except that Beaton seemed to give the whole evening to thegirl. Afterward he recollected that he had fancied her rather harassed byhis devotion, and it was this point that he wished to present for hiswife's opinion. 

"Girls often put on that air, " she said. "It's one of their ways ofteasing. But then, if the man was really very much in love, and she wasonly enough in love to be uncertain of herself, she might very well seemtroubled. It would be a very serious question. Girls often don't knowwhat to do in such a case. "

"Yes, " said March, "I've often been glad that I was not a girl, on thataccount. But I guess that on general principles Beaton is not more inlove than she is. I couldn't imagine that young man being more in lovewith anybody, unless it was himself. He might be more in love withhimself than any one else was. "

"Well, he doesn't interest me a great deal, and I can't say Miss Leightondoes, either. I think she can take care of herself. She has herself verywell in hand. "

"Why so censorious?" pleaded March. "I don't defend her for havingherself in hand; but is it a fault?"

Mrs. March did not say. She asked, "And how does Mr. Fulkerson's affairget on?"

"His affair? You really think it is one? Well, I've fancied so myself, and I've had an idea of some time asking him; Fulkerson strikes one astruly domesticable, conjugable at heart; but I've waited for him tospeak. "

"I should think so. "

"Yes. He's never opened on the subject yet. Do you know, I thinkFulkerson has his moments of delicacy. "

"Moments! He's all delicacy in regard to women. "

"Well, perhaps so. There is nothing in them to rouse his advertisinginstincts. "

IV

The Dryfoos family stayed in town till August. Then the father went Westagain to look after his interests; and Mrs. Mandel took the two girls toone of the great hotels in Saratoga. Fulkerson said that he had neverseen anything like Saratoga for fashion, and Mrs. Mandel remembered thatin her own young ladyhood this was so for at least some weeks of theyear. She had been too far withdrawn from fashion since her marriage toknow whether it was still so or not. In this, as in so many othermatters, the Dryfoos family helplessly relied upon Fulkerson, in spite ofDryfoos's angry determination that he should not run the family, and inspite of Christine's doubt of his omniscience; if he did not knoweverything, she was aware that he knew more than herself. She thoughtthat they had a right to have him go with them to Saratoga, or at leastgo up and engage their rooms beforehand; but Fulkerson did not offer todo either, and she did not quite see her way to commanding his services. The young ladies took what Mela called splendid dresses with them; theysat in the park of tall, slim trees which the hotel's quadrangleenclosed, and listened to the music in the morning, or on the long piazzain the afternoon and looked at the driving in the street, or in the vastparlors by night, where all the other ladies were, and they felt thatthey were of the best there. But they knew nobody, and Mrs. Mandel was soparticular that Mela was prevented from continuing the acquaintance evenof the few young men who danced with her at the Saturday-night hops. Theydrove about, but they went to places without knowing why, except that thecarriage man took them, and they had all the privileges of a proudexclusivism without desiring them. Once a motherly matron seemed toperceive their isolation, and made overtures to them, but then desisted, as if repelled by Christine's suspicion, or by Mela's too instant andhilarious good-fellowship, which expressed itself in hoarse laughter andin a flow of talk full of topical and syntactical freedom. From time totime she offered to bet Christine that if Mr. Fulkerson was only therethey would have a good time; she wondered what they were all doing in NewYork, where she wished herself; she rallied her sister about Beaton, andasked her why she did not write and tell him to come up there. 

Mela knew that Christine had expected Beaton to follow them. Some banterhad passed between them to this effect; he said he should take them in onhis way home to Syracuse. Christine would not have hesitated to write tohim and remind him of his promise; but she had learned to distrust herliterature with Beaton since he had laughed at the spelling in a scrap ofwriting which dropped out of her music-book one night. She believed thathe would not have laughed if he had known it was hers; but she felt thatshe could hide better the deficiencies which were not committed to paper;she could manage with him in talking; she was too ignorant of herignorance to recognize the mistakes she made then. Through her ownpassion she perceived that she had some kind of fascination for him; shewas graceful, and she thought it must be that; she did not understandthat there was a kind of beauty in her small, irregular features thatpiqued and haunted his artistic sense, and a look in her black eyesbeyond her intelligence and intention. Once he sketched her as they sattogether, and flattered the portrait without getting what he wanted init; he said he must try her some time in color; and he said things which, when she made Mela repeat them, could only mean that he admired her morethan anybody else. He came fitfully, but he came often, and she restedcontent in a girl's indefiniteness concerning the affair; if her thoughtwent beyond lovemaking to marriage, she believed that she could have himif she wanted him. Her father's money counted in this; she divined thatBeaton was poor; but that made no difference; she would have enough forboth; the money would have counted as an irresistible attraction if therehad been no other. 

The affair had gone on in spite of the sidelong looks of restless dislikewith which Dryfoos regarded it; but now when Beaton did not come toSaratoga it necessarily dropped, and Christine's content with it. Shebore the trial as long as she could; she used pride and resentmentagainst it; but at last she could not bear it, and with Mela's help shewrote a letter, bantering Beaton on his stay in New York, and playfullyboasting of Saratoga. It seemed to them both that it was a very brightletter, and would be sure to bring him; they would have had no scrupleabout sending it but for the doubt they had whether they had got some ofthe words right. Mela offered to bet Christine anything she dared thatthey were right, and she said, Send it anyway; it was no difference ifthey were wrong. But Christine could not endure to think of that laugh ofBeaton's, and there remained only Mrs. Mandel as authority on thespelling. Christine dreaded her authority on other points, but Mela saidshe knew she would not interfere, and she undertook to get round her. Mrs. Mandel pronounced the spelling bad, and the taste worse; she forbadethem to send the letter; and Mela failed to get round her, though shethreatened, if Mrs. Mandel would not tell her how to spell the wrongwords, that she would send the letter as it was; then Mrs. Mandel saidthat if Mr. Beaton appeared in Saratoga she would instantly take themboth home. When Mela reported this result, Christine accused her ofhaving mismanaged the whole business; she quarrelled with her, and theycalled each other names. Christine declared that she would not stay inSaratoga, and that if Mrs. Mandel did not go back to New York with hershe should go alone. They returned the first week in September; but bythat time Beaton had gone to see his people in Syracuse. 

Conrad Dryfoos remained at home with his mother after his father wentWest. He had already taken such a vacation as he had been willing toallow himself, and had spent it on a charity farm near the city, wherethe fathers with whom he worked among the poor on the East Side in thewinter had sent some of their wards for the summer. It was not possibleto keep his recreation a secret at the office, and Fulkerson found apleasure in figuring the jolly time Brother Conrad must have teachingfarm work among those paupers and potential reprobates. He inventeddetails of his experience among them, and March could not always helpjoining in the laugh at Conrad's humorless helplessness under Fulkerson'sburlesque denunciation of a summer outing spent in such dissipation. 

They had time for a great deal of joking at the office during the seasonof leisure which penetrates in August to the very heart of business, andthey all got on terms of greater intimacy if not greater friendlinessthan before. Fulkerson had not had so long to do with the advertisingside of human nature without developing a vein of cynicism, of no greatdepth, perhaps, but broad, and underlying his whole point of view; hemade light of Beaton's solemnity, as he made light of Conrad's humanity. The art editor, with abundant sarcasm, had no more humor than thepublisher, and was an easy prey in the manager's hands; but when he hadbeen led on by Fulkerson's flatteries to make some betrayal of egotism, he brooded over it till he had thought how to revenge himself inelaborate insult. For Beaton's talent Fulkerson never lost hisadmiration; but his joke was to encourage him to give himself airs ofbeing the sole source of the magazine's prosperity. No bait of this sortwas too obvious for Beaton to swallow; he could be caught with it asoften as Fulkerson chose; though he was ordinarily suspicious as to themotives of people in saying things. With March he got on no better thanat first. He seemed to be lying in wait for some encroachment of theliterary department on the art department, and he met it now and thenwith anticipative reprisal. After these rebuffs, the editor delivered himover to the manager, who could turn Beaton's contrary-mindedness toaccount by asking the reverse of what he really wanted done. This waswhat Fulkerson said; the fact was that he did get on with Beaton andMarch contented himself with musing upon the contradictions of acharacter at once so vain and so offensive, so fickle and so sullen, soconscious and so simple. 

After the first jarring contact with Dryfoos, the editor ceased to feelthe disagreeable fact of the old man's mastery of the financialsituation. None of the chances which might have made it painful occurred;the control of the whole affair remained in Fulkerson's hands; before hewent West again, Dryfoos had ceased to come about the office, as if, having once worn off the novelty of the sense of owning a literaryperiodical, he was no longer interested in it. 

Yet it was a relief, somehow, when he left town, which he did not dowithout coming to take a formal leave of the editor at his office. Heseemed willing to leave March with a better impression than he hadhitherto troubled himself to make; he even said some civil things aboutthe magazine, as if its success pleased him; and he spoke openly to Marchof his hope that his son would finally become interested in it to theexclusion of the hopes and purposes which divided them. It seemed toMarch that in the old man's warped and toughened heart he perceived adisappointed love for his son greater than for his other children; butthis might have been fancy. Lindau came in with some copy while Dryfooswas there, and March introduced them. When Lindau went out, Marchexplained to Dryfoos that he had lost his hand in the war; and he toldhim something of Lindau's career as he had known it. Dryfoos appearedgreatly pleased that 'Every Other Week' was giving Lindau work. He saidthat he had helped to enlist a good many fellows for the war, and hadpaid money to fill up the Moffitt County quota under the later calls fortroops. He had never been an Abolitionist, but he had joined theAnti-Nebraska party in '55, and he had voted for Fremont and for everyRepublican President since then. 

At his own house March saw more of Lindau than of any other contributor, but the old man seemed to think that he must transact all his businesswith March at his place of business. The transaction had somepeculiarities which perhaps made this necessary. Lindau always expectedto receive his money when he brought his copy, as an acknowledgment ofthe immediate right of the laborer to his hire; and he would not take itin a check because he did not approve of banks, and regarded the wholesystem of banking as the capitalistic manipulation of the people's money. He would receive his pay only from March's hand, because he wished to beunderstood as working for him, and honestly earning money honestlyearned; and sometimes March inwardly winced a little at letting the oldman share the increase of capital won by such speculation as Dryfoos's, but he shook off the feeling. As the summer advanced, and the artists andclasses that employed Lindau as a model left town one after another, hegave largely of his increasing leisure to the people in the office of'Every Other Week. ' It was pleasant for March to see the respect withwhich Conrad Dryfoos always used him, for the sake of his hurt and hisgray beard. There was something delicate and fine in it, and there wasnothing unkindly on Fulkerson's part in the hostilities which usuallypassed between himself and Lindau. Fulkerson bore himself reverently attimes, too, but it was not in him to keep that up, especially when Lindauappeared with more beer aboard than, as Fulkerson said, he could manageshipshape. On these occasions Fulkerson always tried to start him on thetheme of the unduly rich; he made himself the champion of monopolies, andenjoyed the invectives which Lindau heaped upon him as a slave ofcapital; he said that it did him good. 

One day, with the usual show of writhing under Lindau's scorn, he said, "Well, I understand that although you despise me now, Lindau--"

"I ton't desbise you, " the old man broke in, his nostrils swelling andhis eyes flaming with excitement, "I bity you. "

"Well, it seems to come to the same thing in the end, " said Fulkerson. "What I understand is that you pity me now as the slave of capital, butyou would pity me a great deal more if I was the master of it. "

"How you mean?"

"If I was rich. "

"That would tebendt, " said Lindau, trying to control himself. "If you hatinheritedt your money, you might pe innocent; but if you hat mate it, efery man that resbectedt himself would haf to ask how you mate it, andif you hat mate moch, he would know--"

"Hold on; hold on, now, Lindau! Ain't that rather un-American doctrine?We're all brought up, ain't we, to honor the man that made his money, andlook down--or try to look down; sometimes it's difficult on the fellowthat his father left it to?"

The old man rose and struck his breast. "On Amerigan!" he roared, and, ashe went on, his accent grew more and more uncertain. "What iss Amerigan?Dere iss no Ameriga any more! You start here free and brafe, and youglaim for efery man de right to life, liperty, and de bursuit ofhabbiness. And where haf you entedt? No man that vorks vith his handtsamong you has the liperty to bursue his habbiness. He iss the slafe ofsome richer man, some gompany, some gorporation, dat crindt him down tothe least he can lif on, and that rops him of the marchin of his earningsthat he knight pe habby on. Oh, you Amerigans, you haf cot it down goldt, as you say! You ton't puy foters; you puy lechislatures and goncressmen;you puy gourts; you puy gombetitors; you pay infentors not to infent; youatfertise, and the gounting-room sees dat de etitorial-room toesn'ttink. "

"Yes, we've got a little arrangement of that sort with March here, " saidFulkerson. 

"Oh, I am sawry, " said the old man, contritely, "I meant noting bersonal. I ton't tink we are all cuilty or gorrubt, and efen among the rich thereare goodt men. But gabidal"--his passion rose again--"where you findgabidal, millions of money that a man hass cot togeder in fife, ten, twenty years, you findt the smell of tears and ploodt! Dat iss what Isay. And you cot to loog oudt for yourself when you meet a rich manwhether you meet an honest man. "

"Well, " said Fulkerson, "I wish I was a subject of suspicion with you, Lindau. By-the-way, " he added, "I understand that you think capital wasat the bottom of the veto of that pension of yours. "

"What bension? What feto?"--The old man flamed up again. "No bension ofmine was efer fetoedt. I renounce my bension, begause I would sgorn todake money from a gofernment that I ton't peliefe in any more. Where youhear that story?"

"Well, I don't know, " said Fulkerson, rather embarrassed. "It's commontalk. "

"It's a gommon lie, then! When the time gome dat dis iss a free gountryagain, then I dake a bension again for my woundts; but I would sdarfebefore I dake a bension now from a rebublic dat iss bought oap bymonobolies, and ron by drusts and gompines, and railroadts andt oilgompanies. "

"Look out, Lindau, " said Fulkerson. "You bite yourself mit dat dog someday. " But when the old man, with a ferocious gesture of renunciation, whirled out of the place, he added: "I guess I went a little too far thattime. I touched him on a sore place; I didn't mean to; I heard some talkabout his pension being vetoed from Miss Leighton. " He addressed theseexculpations to March's grave face, and to the pitying deprecation in theeyes of Conrad Dryfoos, whom Lindau's roaring wrath had summoned to thedoor. "But I'll make it all right with him the next time he comes. Ididn't know he was loaded, or I wouldn't have monkeyed with him. "

"Lindau does himself injustice when he gets to talking in that way, " saidMarch. "I hate to hear him. He's as good an American as any of us; andit's only because he has too high an ideal of us--"

"Oh, go on! Rub it in--rub it in!" cried Fulkerson, clutching his hair insuffering, which was not altogether burlesque. "How did I know he hadrenounced his 'bension'? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know it myself. I only knew that he had none, and I didn't ask, for I had a notion that it might be a painful subject. "

Fulkerson tried to turn it off lightly. "Well, he's a noble old fellow;pity he drinks. " March would not smile, and Fulkerson broke out: "Dog onit! I'll make it up to the old fool the next time he comes. I don't likethat dynamite talk of his; but any man that's given his hand to thecountry has got mine in his grip for good. Why, March! You don't supposeI wanted to hurt his feelings, do you?"

"Why, of course not, Fulkerson. "

But they could not get away from a certain ruefulness for that time, andin the evening Fulkerson came round to March's to say that he had gotLindau's address from Conrad, and had looked him up at his lodgings. 

"Well, there isn't so much bric-a-brac there, quite, as Mrs. Green leftyou; but I've made it all right with Lindau, as far as I'm concerned. Itold him I didn't know when I spoke that way, and I honored him forsticking to his 'brinciples'; I don't believe in his 'brincibles'; and wewept on each other's necks--at least, he did. Dogged if he didn't kiss mebefore I knew what he was up to. He said I was his chenerous gongfriendt, and he begged my barton if he had said anything to wound me. Itell you it was an affecting scene, March; and rats enough round in thatold barracks where he lives to fit out a first-class case of deliriumtremens. What does he stay there for? He's not obliged to?"

Lindau's reasons, as March repeated them, affected Fulkerson asdeliciously comical; but after that he confined his pleasantries at theoffice to Beaton and Conrad Dryfoos, or, as he said, he spent the rest ofthe summer in keeping Lindau smoothed up. 

It is doubtful if Lindau altogether liked this as well. Perhaps he missedthe occasions Fulkerson used to give him of bursting out against themillionaires; and he could not well go on denouncing as the slafe ofgabidal a man who had behaved to him as Fulkerson had done, thoughFulkerson's servile relations to capital had been in nowise changed byhis nople gonduct. 

Their relations continued to wear this irksome character of mutualforbearance; and when Dryfoos returned in October and Fulkerson revivedthe question of that dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every OtherWeek, ' he carried his complaisance to an extreme that alarmed March forthe consequences. 

V. 

"You see, " Fulkerson explained, "I find that the old man has got an ideaof his own about that banquet, and I guess there's some sense in it. Hewants to have a preliminary little dinner, where we can talk the thing upfirst-half a dozen of us; and he wants to give us the dinner at hishouse. Well, that's no harm. I don't believe the old man ever gave adinner, and he'd like to show off a little; there's a good deal of humannature in the old man, after all. He thought of you, of course, andColonel Woodburn, and Beaton, and me at the foot of the table; andConrad; and I suggested Kendricks: he's such a nice little chap; and theold man himself brought up the idea of Lindau. He said you told himsomething about him, and he asked why couldn't we have him, too; and Ijumped at it. "

"Have Lindau to dinner?" asked March. 

"Certainly; why not? Father Dryfoos has a notion of paying the old fellowa compliment for what he done for the country. There won't be any troubleabout it. You can sit alongside of him, and cut up his meat for him, andhelp him to things--"

"Yes, but it won't do, Fulkerson! I don't believe Lindau ever had on adress-coat in his life, and I don't believe his 'brincibles' would lethim wear one. "

"Well, neither had Dryfoos, for the matter of that. He's ashigh-principled as old Pan-Electric himself, when it comes to adress-coat, " said Fulkerson. "We're all going to go in business dress;the old man stipulated for that. 

"It isn't the dress-coat alone, " March resumed. "Lindau and Dryfooswouldn't get on. You know they're opposite poles in everything. Youmustn't do it. Dryfoos will be sure to say something to outrage Lindau's'brincibles, ' and there'll be an explosion. It's all well enough forDryfoos to feel grateful to Lindau, and his wish to honor him does himcredit; but to have Lindau to dinner isn't the way. At the best, the oldfellow would be very unhappy in such a house; he would have a badconscience; and I should be sorry to have him feel that he'd beenrecreant to his 'brincibles'; they're about all he's got, and whatever wethink of them, we're bound to respect his fidelity to them. " March warmedtoward Lindau in taking this view of him. "I should feel ashamed if Ididn't protest against his being put in a false position. After all, he'smy old friend, and I shouldn't like to have him do himself injustice ifhe is a crank. "

"Of course, " said Fulkerson, with some trouble in his face. "I appreciateyour feeling. But there ain't any danger, " he added, buoyantly. "Anyhow, you spoke too late, as the Irishman said to the chicken when he swallowedhim in a fresh egg. I've asked Lindau, and he's accepted with blayzure;that's what he says. "

March made no other comment than a shrug. 

"You'll see, " Fulkerson continued, "it 'll go off all right. I'll engageto make it, and I won't hold anybody else responsible. "

In the course of his married life March had learned not to censure theirretrievable; but this was just what his wife had not learned; and shepoured out so much astonishment at what Fulkerson had done, and so muchdisapproval, that March began to palliate the situation a little. 

"After all, it isn't a question of life and death; and, if it were, Idon't see how it's to be helped now. "

"Oh, it's not to be helped now. But I am surprised at Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Well, Fulkerson has his moments of being merely human, too. "

Mrs. March would not deign a direct defence of her favorite. "Well, I'mglad there are not to be ladies. "

"I don't know. Dryfoos thought of having ladies, but it seems yourinfallible Fulkerson overruled him. Their presence might have kept Lindauand our host in bounds. "

It had become part of the Marches' conjugal joke for him to pretend thatshe could allow nothing wrong in Fulkerson, and he now laughed with amocking air of having expected it when she said: "Well, then, if Mr. Fulkerson says he will see that it all comes out right, I suppose youmust trust his tact. I wouldn't trust yours, Basil. The first wrong stepwas taken when Mr. Lindau was asked to help on the magazine. "

"Well, it was your infallible Fulkerson that took the step, or at leastsuggested it. I'm happy to say I had totally forgotten my early friend. "

Mrs. March was daunted and silenced for a moment. Then she said: "Oh, pshaw! You know well enough he did it to please you. "

"I'm very glad he didn't do it to please you, Isabel, " said her husband, with affected seriousness. "Though perhaps he did. "

He began to look at the humorous aspect of the affair, which it certainlyhad, and to comment on the singular incongruities which 'Every OtherWeek' was destined to involve at every moment of its career. "I wonder ifI'm mistaken in supposing that no other periodical was ever like it. Perhaps all periodicals are like it. But I don't believe there's anotherpublication in New York that could bring together, in honor of itself, afraternity and equality crank like poor old Lindau, and a belatedsociological crank like Woodburn, and a truculent speculator like oldDryfoos, and a humanitarian dreamer like young Dryfoos, and asentimentalist like me, and a nondescript like Beaton, and a pureadvertising essence like Fulkerson, and a society spirit like Kendricks. If we could only allow one another to talk uninterruptedly all the time, the dinner would be the greatest success in the world, and we should comehome full of the highest mutual respect. But I suspect we can't managethat--even your infallible Fulkerson couldn't work it--and I'm afraidthat there'll be some listening that 'll spoil the pleasure of the time. "

March was so well pleased with this view of the case that he suggestedthe idea involved to Fulkerson. Fulkerson was too good a fellow not tolaugh at another man's joke, but he laughed a little ruefully, and heseemed worn with more than one kind of care in the interval that passedbetween the present time and the night of the dinner. 

Dryfoos necessarily depended upon him for advice concerning the scope andnature of the dinner, but he received the advice suspiciously, andcontested points of obvious propriety with pertinacious stupidity. Fulkerson said that when it came to the point he would rather have hadthe thing, as he called it, at Delmonico's or some other restaurant; butwhen he found that Dryfoos's pride was bound up in having it at his ownhouse, he gave way to him. Dryfoos also wanted his woman-cook to preparethe dinner, but Fulkerson persuaded him that this would not do; he musthave it from a caterer. Then Dryfoos wanted his maids to wait at table, but Fulkerson convinced him that this would be incongruous at a man'sdinner. It was decided that the dinner should be sent in fromFrescobaldi's, and Dryfoos went with Fulkerson to discuss it with thecaterer. He insisted upon having everything explained to him, and thereason for having it, and not something else in its place; and he treatedFulkerson and Frescobaldi as if they were in league to impose upon him. There were moments when Fulkerson saw the varnish of professionalpoliteness cracking on the Neapolitan's volcanic surface, and caught aglimpse of the lava fires of the cook's nature beneath; he trembled forDryfoos, who was walking rough-shod over him in the security of anAmerican who had known how to make his money, and must know how to spendit; but he got him safely away at last, and gave Frescobaldi a wink ofsympathy for his shrug of exhaustion as they turned to leave him. 

It was at first a relief and then an anxiety with Fulkerson that Lindaudid not come about after accepting the invitation to dinner, until heappeared at Dryfoos's house, prompt to the hour. There was, to be sure, nothing to bring him; but Fulkerson was uneasily aware that Dryfoosexpected to meet him at the office, and perhaps receive some verbalacknowledgment of the honor done him. Dryfoos, he could see, thought hewas doing all his invited guests a favor; and while he stood in a certainawe of them as people of much greater social experience than himself, regarded them with a kind of contempt, as people who were going to have abetter dinner at his house than they could ever afford to have at theirown. He had finally not spared expense upon it; after pushing Frescobaldito the point of eruption with his misgivings and suspicions at the firstinterview, he had gone to him a second time alone, and told him not tolet the money stand between him and anything he would like to do. In theabsence of Frescobaldi's fellow-conspirator he restored himself in thecaterer's esteem by adding whatever he suggested; and Fulkerson, aftertrembling for the old man's niggardliness, was now afraid of a fantasticprofusion in the feast. Dryfoos had reduced the scale of the banquet asregarded the number of guests, but a confusing remembrance of whatFulkerson had wished to do remained with him in part, and up to the dayof the dinner he dropped in at Frescobaldi's and ordered more dishes andmore of them. He impressed the Italian as an American original of a novelkind; and when he asked Fulkerson how Dryfoos had made his money, andlearned that it was primarily in natural gas, he made note of some of hiseccentric tastes as peculiarities that were to be caressed in any futurenatural-gas millionaire who might fall into his hands. He did notbegrudge the time he had to give in explaining to Dryfoos the relation ofthe different wines to the different dishes; Dryfoos was apt tosubstitute a costlier wine where he could for a cheaper one, and he gaveFrescobaldi carte blanche for the decoration of the table with pieces ofartistic confectionery. Among these the caterer designed one for asurprise to his patron and a delicate recognition of the source of hiswealth, which he found Dryfoos very willing to talk about, when heintimated that he knew what it was. 

Dryfoos left it to Fulkerson to invite the guests, and he found readyacceptance of his politeness from Kendricks, who rightly regarded thedinner as a part of the 'Every Other Week' business, and was too sweetand kind-hearted, anyway, not to seem very glad to come. March was amatter of course; but in Colonel Woodburn, Fulkerson encountered areluctance which embarrassed him the more because he was conscious ofhaving, for motives of his own, rather strained a point in suggesting thecolonel to Dryfoos as a fit subject for invitation. There had been onlyone of the colonel's articles printed as yet, and though it had made asensation in its way, and started the talk about that number, still itdid not fairly constitute him a member of the staff, or even entitle himto recognition as a regular contributor. Fulkerson felt so sure ofpleasing him with Dryfoos's message that he delivered it in full familycouncil at the widow's. His daughter received it with all the enthusiasmthat Fulkerson had hoped for, but the colonel said, stiffly, "I have notthe pleasure of knowing Mr. Dryfoos. " Miss Woodburn appeared ready tofall upon him at this, but controlled herself, as if aware that filialauthority had its limits, and pressed her lips together without sayinganything. 

"Yes, I know, " Fulkerson admitted. "But it isn't a usual case. Mr. Dryfoos don't go in much for the conventionalities; I reckon he don'tknow much about 'em, come to boil it down; and he hoped"--here Fulkersonfelt the necessity of inventing a little--"that you would excuse any wantof ceremony; it's to be such an informal affair, anyway; we're all goingin business dress, and there ain't going to be any ladies. He'd have comehimself to ask you, but he's a kind of a bashful old fellow. It's allright, Colonel Woodburn. "

"I take it that it is, sir, " said the colonel, courteously, but withunabated state, "coming from you. But in these matters we have no rightto burden our friends with our decisions. "

"Of course, of course, " said Fulkerson, feeling that he had beendelicately told to mind his own business. 

"I understand, " the colonel went on, "the relation that Mr. Dryfoos bearsto the periodical in which you have done me the honor to print my papah, but this is a question of passing the bounds of a purely businessconnection, and of eating the salt of a man whom you do not definitelyknow to be a gentleman. "

"Mah goodness!" his daughter broke in. "If you bah your own salt with hismoney--"

"It is supposed that I earn his money before I buy my salt with it, "returned her father, severely. "And in these times, when money is got inheaps, through the natural decay of our nefarious commercialism, itbehooves a gentleman to be scrupulous that the hospitality offered him isnot the profusion of a thief with his booty. I don't say that Mr. Dryfoos's good-fortune is not honest. I simply say that I know nothingabout it, and that I should prefer to know something before I sat down athis board. "

"You're all right, colonel, " said Fulkerson, "and so is Mr. Dryfoos. Igive you my word that there are no flies on his personal integrity, ifthat's what you mean. He's hard, and he'd push an advantage, but I don'tbelieve he would take an unfair one. He's speculated and made money everytime, but I never heard of his wrecking a railroad or belonging to anyswindling company or any grinding monopoly. He does chance it in stocks, but he's always played on the square, if you call stocks gambling. "

"May I, think this over till morning?" asked the colonel. 

"Oh, certainly, certainly, " said Fulkerson, eagerly. "I don't know asthere's any hurry. "

Miss Woodburn found a chance to murmur to him before he went: "He'llcome. And Ah'm so much oblahged, Mr. Fulkerson. Ah jost know it's allyou' doing, and it will give papa a chance to toak to some new people, and get away from us evahlastin' women for once. "

"I don't see why any one should want to do that, " said Fulkerson, withgrateful gallantry. "But I'll be dogged, " he said to March when he toldhim about this odd experience, "if I ever expected to find ColonelWoodburn on old Lindau's ground. He did come round handsomely thismorning at breakfast and apologized for taking time to think theinvitation over before he accepted. 'You understand, ' he says, 'that ifit had been to the table of some friend not so prosperous as Mr. Dryfoos--your friend Mr. March, for instance--it would have beensufficient to know that he was your friend. But in these days it is aduty that a gentleman owes himself to consider whether he wishes to knowa rich man or not. The chances of making money disreputably are so greatthat the chances are against a man who has made money if he's made agreat deal of it. '"

March listened with a face of ironical insinuation. "That was very good;and he seems to have had a good deal of confidence in your patience andin your sense of his importance to the occasion--"

"No, no, " Fulkerson protested, "there's none of that kind of thing aboutthe colonel. I told him to take time to think it over; he's thesimplest-hearted old fellow in the world. "

"I should say so. After all, he didn't give any reason he had foraccepting. But perhaps the young lady had the reason. "

"Pshaw, March!" said Fulkerson. 

VI. 

So far as the Dryfoos family was concerned, the dinner might as well havebeen given at Frescobaldi's rooms. None of the ladies appeared. Mrs. Dryfoos was glad to escape to her own chamber, where she sat before anautumnal fire, shaking her head and talking to herself at times, with theforeboding of evil which old women like her make part of their religion. The girls stood just out of sight at the head of the stairs, and disputedwhich guest it was at each arrival; Mrs. Mandel had gone to her room towrite letters, after beseeching them not to stand there. When Kendrickscame, Christine gave Mela a little pinch, equivalent to a little mockingshriek; for, on the ground of his long talk with Mela at Mrs. Horn's, inthe absence of any other admirer, they based a superstition of hisinterest in her; when Beaton came, Mela returned the pinch, butawkwardly, so that it hurt, and then Christine involuntarily struck her. 

Frescobaldi's men were in possession everywhere they had turned the cookout of her kitchen and the waitress out of her pantry; the reluctantIrishman at the door was supplemented by a vivid Italian, who spokeFrench with the guests, and said, "Bien, Monsieur, " and "toute suite, "and "Merci!" to all, as he took their hats and coats, and effused ahospitality that needed no language but the gleam of his eyes and teethand the play of his eloquent hands. From his professional dress-coat, lustrous with the grease spotted on it at former dinners and parties, they passed to the frocks of the elder and younger Dryfoos in thedrawing-room, which assumed informality for the affair, but did not puttheir wearers wholly at their ease. The father's coat was of blackbroadcloth, and he wore it unbuttoned; the skirts were long, and thesleeves came down to his knuckles; he shook hands with his guests, andthe same dryness seemed to be in his palm and throat, as he huskily askedeach to take a chair. Conrad's coat was of modern texture and cut, andwas buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience within itslapels; he met March with his entreating smile, and he seemed no morecapable of coping with the situation than his father. They both waitedfor Fulkerson, who went about and did his best to keep life in the partyduring the half-hour that passed before they sat down at dinner. Beatonstood gloomily aloof, as if waiting to be approached on the right basisbefore yielding an inch of his ground; Colonel Woodburn, awaiting themoment when he could sally out on his hobby, kept himself intrenchedwithin the dignity of a gentleman, and examined askance the figure of oldLindau as he stared about the room, with his fine head up, and his emptysleeve dangling over his wrist. March felt obliged to him for wearing anew coat in the midst of that hostile luxury, and he was glad to seeDryfoos make up to him and begin to talk with him, as if he wished toshow him particular respect, though it might have been because he wasless afraid of him than of the others. He heard Lindau saying, "Boat, thename is Choarman?" and Dryfoos beginning to explain his PennsylvaniaDutch origin, and he suffered himself, with a sigh of relief, to fallinto talk with Kendricks, who was always pleasant; he was willing to talkabout something besides himself, and had no opinions that he was notready to hold in abeyance for the time being out of kindness to others. In that group of impassioned individualities, March felt him a refuge andcomfort--with his harmless dilettante intention of some day writing anovel, and his belief that he was meantime collecting material for it. 

Fulkerson, while breaking the ice for the whole company, was mainlyengaged in keeping Colonel Woodburn thawed out. He took Kendricks awayfrom March and presented him to the colonel as a person who, likehimself, was looking into social conditions; he put one hand onKendricks's shoulder, and one on the colonel's, and made some flatteringjoke, apparently at the expense of the young fellow, and then left them. March heard Kendricks protest in vain, and the colonel say, gravely: "Ido not wonder, sir, that these things interest you. They constitute aproblem which society must solve or which will dissolve society, " and heknew from that formula, which the colonel had, once used with him, thathe was laying out a road for the exhibition of the hobby's paces later. 

Fulkerson came back to March, who had turned toward Conrad Dryfoos, andsaid, "If we don't get this thing going pretty soon, it 'll be the deathof me, " and just then Frescobaldi's butler came in and announced toDryfoos that dinner was served. The old man looked toward Fulkerson witha troubled glance, as if he did not know what to do; he made a gesture totouch Lindau's elbow. Fulkerson called out, "Here's Colonel Woodburn, Mr. Dryfoos, " as if Dryfoos were looking for him; and he set the example ofwhat he was to do by taking Lindau's arm himself. "Mr. Lindau is going tosit at my end of the table, alongside of March. Stand not upon the orderof your going, gentlemen, but fall in at once. " He contrived to getDryfoos and the colonel before him, and he let March follow withKendricks. Conrad came last with Beaton, who had been turning over themusic at the piano, and chafing inwardly at the whole affair. At thetable Colonel Woodburn was placed on Dryfoos's right, and March on hisleft. March sat on Fulkerson's right, with Lindau next him; and the youngmen occupied the other seats. 

"Put you next to March, Mr. Lindau, " said Fulkerson, "so you can begin toput Apollinaris in his champagne-glass at the right moment; you know hislittle weakness of old; sorry to say it's grown on him. "

March laughed with kindly acquiescence in Fulkerson's wish to start thegayety, and Lindau patted him on the shoulder. "I know hiss veakness. Ifhe liges a class of vine, it iss begause his loaf ingludes efen hissenemy, as Shakespeare galled it. "

"Ah, but Shakespeare couldn't have been thinking of champagne, " saidKendricks. 

"I suppose, sir, " Colonel Woodburn interposed, with lofty courtesy, "champagne could hardly have been known in his day. "

"I suppose not, colonel, " returned the younger man, deferentially. "Heseemed to think that sack and sugar might be a fault; but he didn'tmention champagne. "

"Perhaps he felt there was no question about that, " suggested Beaton, whothen felt that he had not done himself justice in the sally. 

"I wonder just when champagne did come in, " said March. 

"I know when it ought to come in, " said Fulkerson. "Before the soup!"

They all laughed, and gave themselves the air of drinking champagne outof tumblers every day, as men like to do. Dryfoos listened uneasily; hedid not quite understand the allusions, though he knew what Shakespearewas, well enough; Conrad's face expressed a gentle deprecation of jokingon such a subject, but he said nothing. 

The talk ran on briskly through the dinner. The young men tossed the ballback and forth; they made some wild shots, but they kept it going, andthey laughed when they were hit. The wine loosed Colonel Woodburn'stongue; he became very companionable with the young fellows; with thefeeling that a literary dinner ought to have a didactic scope, he praisedScott and Addison as the only authors fit to form the minds of gentlemen. 

Kendricks agreed with him, but wished to add the name of Flaubert as amaster of style. "Style, you know, " he added, "is the man. "

"Very true, sir; you are quite right, sir, " the colonel assented; hewondered who Flaubert was. 

Beaton praised Baudelaire and Maupassant; he said these were the masters. He recited some lurid verses from Baudelaire; Lindau pronounced them adisgrace to human nature, and gave a passage from Victor Hugo on LouisNapoleon, with his heavy German accent, and then he quoted Schiller. "Ach, boat that is a peaudifool! Not zo?" he demanded of March. 

"Yes, beautiful; but, of course, you know I think there's nobody likeHeine!"

Lindau threw back his great old head and laughed, showing a want of teethunder his mustache. He put his hand on March's back. "This poy--he was apoy den--wars so gracy to pekin reading Heine that he gommence with thetictionary bevore he knows any Grammar, and ve bick it out vort by vorttogeder. "

"He was a pretty cay poy in those days, heigh, Lindau?" asked Fulkerson, burlesquing the old man's accent, with an impudent wink that made Lindauhimself laugh. "But in the dark ages, I mean, there in Indianapolis. Justhow long ago did you old codgers meet there, anyway?" Fulkerson saw therestiveness in Dryfoos's eye at the purely literary course the talk hadtaken; he had intended it to lead up that way to business, to 'EveryOther Week;' but he saw that it was leaving Dryfoos too far out, and hewished to get it on the personal ground, where everybody is at home. 

"Ledt me zee, " mused Lindau. "Wass it in fifty-nine or zixty, Passil? Idtwass a year or dwo pefore the war proke oudt, anyway. "

"Those were exciting times, " said Dryfoos, making his first entry intothe general talk. "I went down to Indianapolis with the first companyfrom our place, and I saw the red-shirts pouring in everywhere. They hada song, "Oh, never mind the weather, but git over double trouble, For we're bound for the land of Canaan. "

The fellows locked arms and went singin' it up and down four or fiveabreast in the moonlight; crowded everybody' else off the sidewalk. "

"I remember, I remember, " said Lindau, nodding his head slowly up anddown. "A coodt many off them nefer gome pack from that landt of Ganaan, Mr. Dryfoos?"

"You're right, Mr. Lindau. But I reckon it was worth it--the countrywe've got now. Here, young man!" He caught the arm of the waiter who wasgoing round with the champagne bottle. "Fill up Mr. Lindau's glass, there. I want to drink the health of those old times with him. Here's toyour empty sleeve, Mr. Lindau. God bless it! No offence to you, ColonelWoodburn, " said Dryfoos, turning to him before he drank. 

"Not at all, sir, not at all, " said the colonel. "I will drink with you, if you will permit me. "

"We'll all drink--standing!" cried Fulkerson. "Help March to get up, somebody! Fill high the bowl with Samian Apollinaris for Coonrod! Now, then, hurrah for Lindau!"

They cheered, and hammered on the table with the butts of theirknife-handles. Lindau remained seated. The tears came into his eyes; hesaid, "I thank you, chendlemen, " and hiccoughed. 

"I'd 'a' went into the war myself, " said Dryfoos, "but I was raisin' afamily of young children, and I didn't see how I could leave my farm. ButI helped to fill up the quota at every call, and when the volunteeringstopped I went round with the subscription paper myself; and we offeredas good bounties as any in the State. My substitute was killed in one ofthe last skirmishes--in fact, after Lee's surrender--and I've took careof his family, more or less, ever since. "

"By-the-way, March, " said Fulkerson, "what sort of an idea would it be tohave a good war story--might be a serial--in the magazine? The war hasnever fully panned out in fiction yet. It was used a good deal just afterit was over, and then it was dropped. I think it's time to take it upagain. I believe it would be a card. "

It was running in March's mind that Dryfoos had an old rankling shame inhis heart for not having gone into the war, and that he had often madethat explanation of his course without having ever been satisfied withit. He felt sorry for him; the fact seemed pathetic; it suggested adormant nobleness in the man. 

Beaton was saying to Fulkerson: "You might get a series of sketches bysubstitutes; the substitutes haven't been much heard from in the warliterature. How would 'The Autobiography of a Substitute' do? You mightfollow him up to the moment he was killed in the other man's place, andinquire whether he had any right to the feelings of a hero when he wasonly hired in the place of one. Might call it 'The Career of a DeputyHero. '"

"I fancy, " said March, "that there was a great deal of mixed motive inthe men who went into the war as well as in those who kept out of it. Wecanonized all that died or suffered in it, but some of them must havebeen self-seeking and low-minded, like men in other vocations. " He foundhimself saying this in Dryfoos's behalf; the old man looked at himgratefully at first, he thought, and then suspiciously. 

Lindau turned his head toward him and said: "You are righdt, Passil; youare righdt. I haf zeen on the fieldt of pattle the voarst eggsipitions ofhuman paseness--chelousy, fanity, ecodistic bridte. I haf zeen men in theface off death itself gofferned by motifes as low as--as pusinessmotifes. "

"Well, " said Fulkerson, "it would be a grand thing for 'Every Other Week'if we could get some of those ideas worked up into a series. It wouldmake a lot of talk. "

Colonel Woodburn ignored him in saying, "I think, Major Lindau--"

"High brifate; prefet gorporal, " the old man interrupted, in rejection ofthe title. 

Hendricks laughed and said, with a glance of appreciation at Lindau, "Brevet corporal is good. "

Colonel Woodburn frowned a little, and passed over the joke. "I think Mr. Lindau is right. Such exhibitions were common to both sides, though ifyou gentlemen will pardon me for saying so, I think they were lessfrequent on ours. We were fighting more immediately for existence. Wewere fewer than you were, and we knew it; we felt more intensely that ifeach were not for all, then none was for any. "

The colonel's words made their impression. Dryfoos said, with authority, "That is so. "

"Colonel Woodburn, " Fulkerson called out, "if you'll work up those ideasinto a short paper--say, three thousand words--I'll engage to make Marchtake it. "

The colonel went on without replying: "But Mr. Lindau is right incharacterizing some of the motives that led men to the cannon's mouth asno higher than business motives, and his comparison is the most forciblethat he could have used. I was very much struck by it. "

The hobby was out, the colonel was in the saddle with so firm a seat thatno effort sufficed to dislodge him. The dinner went on from course tocourse with barbaric profusion, and from time to time Fulkerson tried tobring the talk back to 'Every Other Week. ' But perhaps because that wasonly the ostensible and not the real object of the dinner, which was tobring a number of men together under Dryfoos's roof, and make them thewitnesses of his splendor, make them feel the power of his wealth, Fulkerson's attempts failed. The colonel showed how commercialism was thepoison at the heart of our national life; how we began as a simple, agricultural people, who had fled to these shores with the instinct, divinely implanted, of building a state such as the sun never shone uponbefore; how we had conquered the wilderness and the savage; how we hadflung off, in our struggle with the mother-country, the trammels oftradition and precedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to thepractice of the arts of peace; how the spirit of commercialism had stoleninsidiously upon us, and the infernal impulse of competition hadembroiled us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing the worstpassions of our nature, and teaching us to trick and betray and destroyone another in the strife for money, till now that impulse had exhausteditself, and we found competition gone and the whole economic problem inthe hands of monopolies--the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, theRubber Trust, and what not. And now what was the next thing? Affairscould not remain as they were; it was impossible; and what was the nextthing?

The company listened for the main part silently. Dryfoos tried to graspthe idea of commercialism as the colonel seemed to hold it; he conceivedof it as something like the dry-goods business on a vast scale, and heknew he had never been in that. He did not like to hear competitioncalled infernal; he had always supposed it was something sacred; but heapproved of what Colonel Woodburn said of the Standard Oil Company; itwas all true; the Standard Oil has squeezed Dryfoos once, and made himsell it a lot of oil-wells by putting down the price of oil so low inthat region that he lost money on every barrel he pumped. 

All the rest listened silently, except Lindau; at every point the colonelmade against the present condition of things he said more and morefiercely, "You are righdt, you are righdt. " His eyes glowed, his handplayed with his knife-hilt. When the colonel demanded, "And what is thenext thing?" he threw himself forward, and repeated: "Yes, sir! What isthe next thing?"

"Natural gas, by thunder!" shouted Fulkerson. 

One of the waiters had profited by Lindau's posture to lean over him andput down in the middle of the table a structure in white sugar. Itexpressed Frescobaldi's conception of a derrick, and a touch of naturehad been added in the flame of brandy, which burned luridly up from asmall pit in the centre of the base, and represented the gas incombustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson burst into a roar oflaughter with the words that recognized Frescobaldi's personal tribute toDryfoos. Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, while he explainedthe work of sinking a gas-well, as he had already explained it toFrescobaldi. In the midst of his lecture he caught sight of the catererhimself, where he stood in the pantry doorway, smiling with an artist'sanxiety for the effect of his masterpiece. 

"Come in, come in, Frescobaldi! We want to congratulate you, " Fulkersoncalled to him. "Here, gentlemen! Here's Frescobaldi's health. "

They all drank; and Frescobaldi, smiling brilliantly and rubbing hishands as he bowed right and left, permitted himself to say to Dryfoos:"You are please; no? You like?"

"First-rate, first-rate!" said the old man; but when the Italian hadbowed himself out and his guests had sunk into their seats again, he saiddryly to Fulkerson, "I reckon they didn't have to torpedo that well, orthe derrick wouldn't look quite so nice and clean. "

"Yes, " Fulkerson answered, "and that ain't quite the style--that littlewiggly-waggly blue flame--that the gas acts when you touch off a goodvein of it. This might do for weak gas"; and he went on to explain:

"They call it weak gas when they tap it two or three hundred feet down;and anybody can sink a well in his back yard and get enough gas to lightand heat his house. I remember one fellow that had it blazing up from apipe through a flower-bed, just like a jet of water from a fountain. My, my, my! You fel--you gentlemen--ought to go out and see that country, allof you. Wish we could torpedo this well, Mr. Dryfoos, and let 'em see howit works! Mind that one you torpedoed for me? You know, when they sink awell, " he went on to the company, "they can't always most generallysometimes tell whether they're goin' to get gas or oil or salt water. Why, when they first began to bore for salt water out on the Kanawha, back about the beginning of the century, they used to get gas now andthen, and then they considered it a failure; they called a gas-well ablower, and give it up in disgust; the time wasn't ripe for gas yet. Nowthey bore away sometimes till they get half-way to China, and don't seemto strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put a dynamite torpedodown in the well and explode it. They have a little bar of iron that theycall a Go-devil, and they just drop it down on the business end of thetorpedo, and then stand from under, if you please! You hear a noise, andin about half a minute you begin to see one, and it begins to rain oiland mud and salt water and rocks and pitchforks and adoptive citizens;and when it clears up the derrick's painted--got a coat on that 'll wearin any climate. That's what our honored host meant. Generally get somevisiting lady, when there's one round, to drop the Go-devil. But that daywe had to put up with Conrad here. They offered to let me drop it, but Ideclined. I told 'em I hadn't much practice with Go-devils in thenewspaper syndicate business, and I wasn't very well myself, anyway. Astonishing, " Fulkerson continued, with the air of relieving hisexplanation by an anecdote, "how reckless they get using dynamite whenthey're torpedoing wells. We stopped at one place where a fellow washandling the cartridges pretty freely, and Mr. Dryfoos happened tocaution him a little, and that ass came up with one of 'em in his hand, and began to pound it on the buggy-wheel to show us how safe it was. Iturned green, I was so scared; but Mr. Dryfoos kept his color, and kindof coaxed the fellow till he quit. You could see he was the fool kind, that if you tried to stop him he'd keep on hammering that cartridge, justto show that it wouldn't explode, till he blew you into Kingdom Come. When we got him to go away, Mr. Dryfoos drove up to his foreman. 'PaySheney off, and discharge him on the spot, ' says he. 'He's too safe a manto have round; he knows too much about dynamite. ' I never saw anybody socool. "

Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Fulkerson's flattery and, withoutlifting it, turned his eyes toward Colonel Woodburn. "I had all sorts ofmen to deal with in developing my property out there, but I had verylittle trouble with them, generally speaking. "

"Ah, ah! you foundt the laboring-man reasonable--dractable--tocile?"Lindau put in. 

"Yes, generally speaking, " Dryfoos answered. "They mostly knew which sideof their bread was buttered. I did have one little difficulty at onetime. It happened to be when Mr. Fulkerson was out there. Some of the mentried to form a union--"

"No, no!" cried Fulkerson. "Let me tell that! I know you wouldn't doyourself justice, Mr. Dryfoos, and I want 'em to know how a strike can bemanaged, if you take it in time. You see, some of those fellows got anotion that there ought to be a union among the working-men to keep upwages, and dictate to the employers, and Mr. Dryfoos's foreman was theringleader in the business. They understood pretty well that as soon ashe found it out that foreman would walk the plank, and so they watchedout till they thought they had Mr. Dryfoos just where they wantedhim--everything on the keen jump, and every man worth his weight indiamonds--and then they came to him, and--told him to sign a promise tokeep that foreman to the end of the season, or till he was through withthe work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under penalty of having themall knock off. Mr. Dryfoos smelled a mouse, but he couldn't tell wherethe mouse was; he saw that they did have him, and he signed, of course. There wasn't anything really against the fellow, anyway; he was afirst-rate man, and he did his duty every time; only he'd got some ofthose ideas into his head, and they turned it. Mr. Dryfoos signed, andthen he laid low. "

March saw Lindau listening with a mounting intensity, and heard himmurmur in German, "Shameful! shameful!"

Fulkerson went on: "Well, it wasn't long before they began to show theirhand, but Mr. Dryfoos kept dark. He agreed to everything; there never wassuch an obliging capitalist before; there wasn't a thing they asked ofhim that he didn't do, with the greatest of pleasure, and all went merryas a marriage-bell till one morning a whole gang of fresh men marchedinto the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under the escort of a dozenPinkertons with repeating rifles at half-cock, and about fifty fellowsfound themselves out of a job. You never saw such a mad set. "

"Pretty neat, " said Kendricks, who looked at the affair purely from anaesthetic point of view. "Such a coup as that would tell tremendously ina play. "

"That was vile treason, " said Lindau in German to March. "He's aninfamous traitor! I cannot stay here. I must go. "

He struggled to rise, while March held him by the coat, and implored himunder his voice: "For Heaven's sake, don't, Lindau! You owe it toyourself not to make a scene, if you come here. " Something in it allaffected him comically; he could not help laughing. 

The others were discussing the matter, and seemed not to have noticedLindau, who controlled himself and sighed: "You are right. I must havepatience. "

Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, "Pity your Pinkertons couldn't have giventhem a few shots before they left. "

"No, that wasn't necessary, " said Dryfoos. "I succeeded in breaking upthe union. I entered into an agreement with other parties not to employany man who would not swear that he was non-union. If they had attemptedviolence, of course they could have been shot. But there was no fear ofthat. Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut one another'sthroats in the long run. "

"But sometimes, " said Colonel Woodburn, who had been watching throughout. For a chance to mount his hobby again, "they make a good deal of troublefirst. How was it in the great railroad strike of '77?"

"Well, I guess there was a little trouble that time, colonel, " saidFulkerson. "But the men that undertake to override the laws and paralyzethe industries of a country like this generally get left in the end. "

"Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, always. But it's theexceptional that is apt to happen, as well as the unexpected. And alittle reflection will convince any gentleman here that there is always adanger of the exceptional in your system. The fact is, those fellows havethe game in their own hands already. A strike of the whole body of theBrotherhood of Engineers alone would starve out the entire Atlanticseaboard in a week; labor insurrection could make head at a dozen givenpoints, and your government couldn't move a man over the roads withoutthe help of the engineers. "

"That is so, " said Kendrick, struck by the dramatic character of theconjecture. He imagined a fiction dealing with the situation as somethingalready accomplished. 

"Why don't some fellow do the Battle of Dorking act with that thing?"said Fulkerson. "It would be a card. "

"Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson, " said Kendricks. 

Fulkerson laughed. "Telepathy--clear case of mind transference. Bettersee March, here, about it. I'd like to have it in 'Every Other Week. ' Itwould make talk. "

"Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as well as talking, " saidthe colonel. 

"Well, sir, " said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tightly together that hisimperial stuck straight outward, "if I had my way, there wouldn't be anyBrotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor union in the wholecountry. "

"What!" shouted Lindau. "You would sobbress the unionss of thevoarking-men?"

"Yes, I would. "

"And what would you do with the unionss of the gabidalists--thedrosts--and gompines, and boolss? Would you dake the righdt from one andgif it to the odder?"

"Yes, sir, I would, " said Dryfoos, with a wicked look at him. 

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some furious protest, but Marchput his hand on his shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to him to sayin German: "But it is infamous--infamous! What kind of man is this? Whois he? He has the heart of a tyrant. "

Colonel Woodburn cut in. "You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under yoursystem. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that kindof thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Yourcommercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have togo. But I should be sorry if it went before its time. "

"You are righdt, sir, " said Lindau. "It would be a bity. I hobe it willlast till it feelss its rottenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its hourgomes, when it trope to bieces with the veight off its owngorrubtion--what then?"

"It's not to be supposed that a system of things like this can drop topieces of its own accord, like the old Republic of Venice, " said thecolonel. "But when the last vestige of commercial society is gone, thenwe can begin to build anew; and we shall build upon the central idea, not of the false liberty you now worship, but of responsibility--responsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the cultivated class shallbe responsible to the central authority--emperor, duke, president; thename does not matter--for the national expense and the national defence, and it shall be responsible to the working-classes of all kinds for homesand lands and implements, and the opportunity to labor at all times. 

"The working-classes shall be responsible to the leisure class for thesupport of its dignity in peace, and shall be subject to its command inwar. The rich shall warrant the poor against planless production and theruin that now follows, against danger from without and famine fromwithin, and the poor--"

"No, no, no!" shouted Lindau. "The State shall do that--the whole beople. The men who voark shall have and shall eat; and the men that will notvoark, they shall sdarfe. But no man need sdarfe. He will go to theState, and the State will see that he haf voark, and that he haf foodt. All the roadts and mills and mines and landts shall be the beople's andbe ron by the beople for the beople. There shall be no rich and no boor;and there shall not be war any more, for what bower wouldt dare to addacka beople bound togeder in a broderhood like that?"

"Lion and lamb act, " said Fulkerson, not well knowing, after so muchchampagne, what words he was using. 

No one noticed him, and Colonel Woodburn said coldly to Lindau, "You aretalking paternalism, sir. "

"And you are dalking feutalism!" retorted the old man. 

The colonel did not reply. A silence ensued, which no one broke tillFulkerson said: "Well, now, look here. If either one of these millenniumswas brought about, by force of arms, or otherwise, what would become of'Every Other Week'? Who would want March for an editor? How would Beatonsell his pictures? Who would print Mr. Kendricks's little society versesand short stories? What would become of Conrad and his good works?" Thosenamed grinned in support of Fulkerson's diversion, but Lindau and thecolonel did not speak; Dryfoos looked down at his plate, frowning. 

A waiter came round with cigars, and Fulkerson took one. "Ah, " he said, as he bit off the end, and leaned over to the emblematic masterpiece, where the brandy was still feebly flickering, "I wonder if there's enoughnatural gas left to light my cigar. " His effort put the flame out andknocked the derrick over; it broke in fragments on the table. Fulkersoncackled over the ruin: "I wonder if all Moffitt will look that way afterlabor and capital have fought it out together. I hope this ain't ominousof anything personal, Dryfoos?"

"I'll take the risk of it, " said the old man, harshly. 

He rose mechanically, and Fulkerson said to Frescobaldi's man, "You canbring us the coffee in the library. "

The talk did not recover itself there. Landau would not sit down; herefused coffee, and dismissed himself with a haughty bow to the company;Colonel Woodburn shook hands elaborately all round, when he had smokedhis cigar; the others followed him. It seemed to March that his owngood-night from Dryfoos was dry and cold. 

VII. 

March met Fulkerson on the steps of the office next morning, when hearrived rather later than his wont. Fulkerson did not show any of thesigns of suffering from the last night's pleasure which paintedthemselves in March's face. He flirted his hand gayly in the air, andsaid, "How's your poor head?" and broke into a knowing laugh. "You don'tseem to have got up with the lark this morning. The old gentleman is inthere with Conrad, as bright as a biscuit; he's beat you down. Well, wedid have a good time, didn't we? And old Lindau and the colonel, didn'tthey have a good time? I don't suppose they ever had a chance before togive their theories quite so much air. Oh, my! how they did ride over us!I'm just going down to see Beaton about the cover of the Christmasnumber. I think we ought to try it in three or four colors, if we aregoing to observe the day at all. " He was off before March could pullhimself together to ask what Dryfoos wanted at the office at that hour ofthe morning; he always came in the afternoon on his way up-town. 

The fact of his presence renewed the sinister misgivings with which Marchhad parted from him the night before, but Fulkerson's cheerfulness seemedto gainsay them; afterward March did not know whether to attribute thismood to the slipperiness that he was aware of at times in Fulkerson, orto a cynical amusement he might have felt at leaving him alone to the oldman, who mounted to his room shortly after March had reached it. 

A sort of dumb anger showed itself in his face; his jaw was set so firmlythat he did not seem able at once to open it. He asked, without theceremonies of greeting, "What does that one-armed Dutchman do on thisbook?"

"What does he do?" March echoed, as people are apt to do with a questionthat is mandatory and offensive. 

"Yes, sir, what does he do? Does he write for it?"

"I suppose you mean Lindau, " said March. He saw no reason for refusing toanswer Dryfoos's demand, and he decided to ignore its terms. "No, hedoesn't write for it in the usual way. He translates for it; he examinesthe foreign magazines, and draws my attention to anything he thinks ofinterest. But I told you about this before--"

"I know what you told me, well enough. And I know what he is. He is ared-mouthed labor agitator. He's one of those foreigners that come herefrom places where they've never had a decent meal's victuals in theirlives, and as soon as they get their stomachs full, they begin to maketrouble between our people and their hands. There's where the strikescome from, and the unions and the secret societies. They come here andbreak our Sabbath, and teach their atheism. They ought to be hung! Let'em go back if they don't like it over here. They want to ruin thecountry. "

March could not help smiling a little at the words, which came fastenough now in the hoarse staccato of Dryfoos's passion. "I don't knowwhom you mean by they, generally speaking; but I had the impression thatpoor old Lindau had once done his best to save the country. I don'talways like his way of talking, but I know that he is one of the truestand kindest souls in the world; and he is no more an atheist than I am. He is my friend, and I can't allow him to be misunderstood. "

"I don't care what he is, " Dryfoos broke out, "I won't have him round. Hecan't have any more work from this office. I want you to stop it. I wantyou to turn him off. "

March was standing at his desk, as he had risen to receive Dryfoos whenhe entered. He now sat down, and began to open his letters. 

"Do you hear?" the old man roared at him. "I want you to turn him off. "

"Excuse me, Mr. Dryfoos, " said March, succeeding in an effort to speakcalmly, "I don't know you, in such a matter as this. My arrangements aseditor of 'Every Other Week' were made with Mr. Fulkerson. I have alwayslistened to any suggestion he has had to make. "

"I don't care for Mr. Fulkerson? He has nothing to do with it, " retortedDryfoos; but he seemed a little daunted by March's position. 

"He has everything to do with it as far as I am concerned, " Marchanswered, with a steadiness that he did not feel. "I know that you arethe owner of the periodical, but I can't receive any suggestion from you, for the reason that I have given. Nobody but Mr. Fulkerson has any rightto talk with me about its management. "

Dryfoos glared at him for a moment, and demanded, threateningly: "Thenyou say you won't turn that old loafer off? You say that I have got tokeep on paying my money out to buy beer for a man that would cut mythroat if he got the chance?"

"I say nothing at all, Mr. Dryfoos, " March answered. The blood came intohis face, and he added: "But I will say that if you speak again of Mr. Lindau in those terms, one of us must leave this room. I will not hearyou. "

Dryfoos looked at him with astonishment; then he struck his hat down onhis head, and stamped out of the room and down the stairs; and a vaguepity came into March's heart that was not altogether for himself. Hemight be the greater sufferer in the end, but he was sorry to have gotthe better of that old man for the moment; and he felt ashamed of theanger into which Dryfoos's anger had surprised him. He knew he could notsay too much in defence of Lindau's generosity and unselfishness, and hehad not attempted to defend him as a political economist. He could nothave taken any ground in relation to Dryfoos but that which he held, andhe felt satisfied that he was right in refusing to receive instructionsor commands from him. Yet somehow he was not satisfied with the wholeaffair, and not merely because his present triumph threatened his finaladvantage, but because he felt that in his heat he had hardly donejustice to Dryfoos's rights in the matter; it did not quite console himto reflect that Dryfoos had himself made it impossible. He was tempted togo home and tell his wife what had happened, and begin his preparationsfor the future at once. But he resisted this weakness and keptmechanically about his work, opening the letters and the manuscriptsbefore him with that curious double action of the mind common in men ofvivid imaginations. It was a relief when Conrad Dryfoos, havingapparently waited to make sure that his father would not return, came upfrom the counting-room and looked in on March with a troubled face. 

"Mr. March, " he began, "I hope father hasn't been saying anything to youthat you can't overlook. I know he was very much excited, and when he isexcited he is apt to say things that he is sorry for. "

The apologetic attitude taken for Dryfoos, so different from any attitudethe peremptory old man would have conceivably taken for himself, madeMarch smile. "Oh no. I fancy the boot is on the other leg. I suspect I'vesaid some things your father can't overlook, Conrad. " He called the youngman by his Christian name partly to distinguish him from his father, partly from the infection of Fulkerson's habit, and partly from akindness for him that seemed naturally to express itself in that way. 

"I know he didn't sleep last night, after you all went away, " Conradpursued, "and of course that made him more irritable; and he was tried agood deal by some of the things that Mr. Lindau said. "

"I was tried a good deal myself, " said March. "Lindau ought never to havebeen there. "

"No. " Conrad seemed only partially to assent. 

"I told Mr. Fulkerson so. I warned him that Lindau would be apt to breakout in some way. It wasn't just to him, and it wasn't just to yourfather, to ask him. "

"Mr. Fulkerson had a good motive, " Conrad gently urged. "He did itbecause he hurt his feelings that day about the pension. "

"Yes, but it was a mistake. He knew that Lindau was inflexible about hisprinciples, as he calls them, and that one of his first principles is todenounce the rich in season and out of season. I don't remember just whathe said last night; and I really thought I'd kept him from breaking outin the most offensive way. But your father seems very much incensed. "

"Yes, I know, " said Conrad. 

"Of course, I don't agree with Lindau. I think there are as many good, kind, just people among the rich as there are among the poor, and thatthey are as generous and helpful. But Lindau has got hold of one of thosepartial truths that hurt worse than the whole truth, and--"

"Partial truth!" the young man interrupted. "Didn't the Saviour himselfsay, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom ofGod?'"

"Why, bless my soul!" cried March. "Do you agree with Lindau?"

"I agree with the Lord Jesus Christ, " said the young man, solemnly, and astrange light of fanaticism, of exaltation, came into his wide blue eyes. "And I believe He meant the kingdom of heaven upon this earth, as well asin the skies. "

March threw himself back in his chair and looked at him with a kind ofstupefaction, in which his eye wandered to the doorway, where he sawFulkerson standing, it seemed to him a long time, before he heard himsaying: "Hello, hello! What's the row? Conrad pitching into you on oldLindau's account, too?"

The young man turned, and, after a glance at Fulkerson's light, smilingface, went out, as if in his present mood he could not bear the contactof that persiflant spirit. 

March felt himself getting provisionally very angry again. "Excuse me, Fulkerson, but did you know when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted tosee me for?"

"Well, no, I didn't exactly, " said Fulkerson, taking his usual seat on achair and looking over the back of it at March. "I saw he was on his carabout something, and I thought I'd better not monkey with him much. Isupposed he was going to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow. "Fulkerson broke into a laugh. 

March remained serious. "Mr. Dryfoos, " he said, willing to let the simplestatement have its own weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, "came inhere and ordered me to discharge Lindau from his employment on themagazine--to turn him off, as he put it. "

"Did he?" asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheerfulness. "The old man isbusiness, every time. Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody else todo Lindau's work for you. This town is just running over withhalf-starved linguists. What did you say?"

"What did I say?" March echoed. "Look here, Fulkerson; you may regardthis as a joke, but I don't. I'm not used to being spoken to as if I werethe foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sensitive and cultivatedman like Lindau, as if he were a drunken mechanic; and if that's youridea of me--"

"Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn't mind the old man's way. He don't meananything by it--he don't know any better, if you come to that. "

"Then I know better, " said March. "I refused to receive any instructionsfrom Mr. Dryfoos, whom I don't know in my relations with 'Every OtherWeek, ' and I referred him to you. "

"You did?" Fulkerson whistled. "He owns the thing!"

"I don't care who owns the thing, " said March. "My negotiations were withyou alone from the beginning, and I leave this matter with you. What doyou wish done about Lindau?"

"Oh, better let the old fool drop, " said Fulkerson. "He'll light on hisfeet somehow, and it will save a lot of rumpus. "

"And if I decline to let him drop?"

"Oh, come, now, March; don't do that, " Fulkerson began. 

"If I decline to let him drop, " March repeated, "what will you do?"

"I'll be dogged if I know what I'll do, " said Fulkerson. "I hope youwon't take that stand. If the old man went so far as to speak to youabout it, his mind is made up, and we might as well knock under first aslast. "

"And do you mean to say that you would not stand by me in what Iconsidered my duty-in a matter of principle?"

"Why, of course, March, " said Fulkerson, coaxingly, "I mean to do theright thing. But Dryfoos owns the magazine--"

"He doesn't own me, " said March, rising. "He has made the little mistakeof speaking to me as if he did; and when"--March put on his hat and tookhis overcoat down from its nail--"when you bring me his apologies, orcome to say that, having failed to make him understand they werenecessary, you are prepared to stand by me, I will come back to thisdesk. Otherwise my resignation is at your service. "

He started toward the door, and Fulkerson intercepted him. "Ah, now, lookhere, March! Don't do that! Hang it all, don't you see where it leavesme? Now, you just sit down a minute and talk it over. I can make yousee--I can show you--Why, confound the old Dutch beer-buzzer! Twenty ofhim wouldn't be worth the trouble he's makin'. Let him go, and the oldman 'll come round in time. "

"I don't think we've understood each other exactly, Mr. Fulkerson, " saidMarch, very haughtily. "Perhaps we never can; but I'll leave you to thinkit out. "

He pushed on, and Fulkerson stood aside to let him pass, with a dazedlook and a mechanical movement. There was something comic in his ruefulbewilderment to March, who was tempted to smile, but he said to himselfthat he had as much reason to be unhappy as Fulkerson, and he did notsmile. His indignation kept him hot in his purpose to suffer anyconsequence rather than submit to the dictation of a man like Dryfoos; hefelt keenly the degradation of his connection with him, and all hisresentment of Fulkerson's original uncandor returned; at the same timehis heart ached with foreboding. It was not merely the work in which hehad constantly grown happier that he saw taken from him; but he felt themisery of the man who stakes the security and plenty and peace of homeupon some cast, and knows that losing will sweep from him most that mostmen find sweet and pleasant in life. He faced the fact, which no good mancan front without terror, that he was risking the support of his family, and for a point of pride, of honor, which perhaps he had no right toconsider in view of the possible adversity. He realized, as everyhireling must, no matter how skillfully or gracefully the tie iscontrived for his wearing, that he belongs to another, whose will is hislaw. His indignation was shot with abject impulses to go back and tellFulkerson that it was all right, and that he gave up. To end the anguishof his struggle he quickened his steps, so that he found he was reachinghome almost at a run. 

VIII. 

He must have made more clatter than he supposed with his key at theapartment door, for his wife had come to let him in when he flung itopen. "Why, Basil, " she said, "what's brought you back? Are you sick?You're all pale. Well, no wonder! This is the last of Mr. Fulkerson'sdinners you shall go to. You're not strong enough for it, and yourstomach will be all out of order for a week. How hot you are! and in adrip of perspiration! Now you'll be sick. " She took his hat away, whichhung dangling in his hand, and pushed him into a chair with tenderimpatience. "What is the matter? Has anything happened?"

"Everything has happened, " he said, getting his voice after one or twohusky endeavors for it; and then he poured out a confused and huddledstatement of the case, from which she only got at the situation byprolonged cross-questioning. 

At the end she said, "I knew Lindau would get you into trouble. "

This cut March to the heart. "Isabel!" he cried, reproachfully. 

"Oh, I know, " she retorted, and the tears began to come. "I don't wonderyou didn't want to say much to me about that dinner at breakfast. Inoticed it; but I thought you were just dull, and so I didn't insist. Iwish I had, now. If you had told me what Lindau had said, I should haveknown what would have come of it, and I could have advised you--"

"Would you have advised me, " March demanded, curiously, "to submit tobullying like that, and meekly consent to commit an act of crueltyagainst a man who had once been such a friend to me?"

"It was an unlucky day when you met him. I suppose we shall have to go. And just when we bad got used to New York, and begun to like it. I don'tknow where we shall go now; Boston isn't like home any more; and wecouldn't live on two thousand there; I should be ashamed to try. I'm sureI don't know where we can live on it. I suppose in some country village, where there are no schools, or anything for the children. I don't knowwhat they'll say when we tell them, poor things. "

Every word was a stab in March's heart, so weakly tender to his own; hiswife's tears, after so much experience of the comparative lightness ofthe griefs that weep themselves out in women, always seemed wrung fromhis own soul; if his children suffered in the least through him, he feltlike a murderer. It was far worse than he could have imagined, the wayhis wife took the affair, though he had imagined certain words, orperhaps only looks, from her that were bad enough. He had allowed fortrouble, but trouble on his account: a svmpathy that might burden andembarrass him; but he had not dreamed of this merely domestic, thispetty, this sordid view of their potential calamity, which left himwholly out of the question, and embraced only what was most crushing anddesolating in the prospect. He could not bear it. He caught up his hatagain, and, with some hope that his wife would try to keep him, rushedout of the house. He wandered aimlessly about, thinking the sameexhausting thoughts over and over, till he found himself horribly hungry;then he went into a restaurant for his lunch, and when he paid he triedto imagine how he should feel if that were really his last dollar. 

He went home toward the middle of the afternoon, basely hoping thatFulkerson had sent him some conciliatory message, or perhaps was waitingthere for him to talk it over; March was quite willing to talk it overnow. But it was his wife who again met him at the door, though it seemedanother woman than the one he had left weeping in the morning. 

"I told the children, " she said, in smiling explanation of his absencefrom lunch, "that perhaps you were detained by business. I didn't knowbut you had gone back to the office. "

"Did you think I would go back there, Isabel?" asked March, with ahaggard look. "Well, if you say so, I will go back, and do what Dryfoosordered me to do. I'm sufficiently cowed between him and you, I canassure you. "

"Nonsense, " she said. "I approve of everything you did. But sit down, now, and don't keep walking that way, and let me see if I understand itperfectly. Of course, I had to have my say out. "

She made him go all over his talk with Dryfoos again, and report his ownlanguage precisely. From time to time, as she got his points, she said, "That was splendid, " "Good enough for him!" and "Oh, I'm so glad you saidthat to him!" At the end she said:

"Well, now, let's look at it from his point of view. Let's be perfectlyjust to him before we take another step forward. "

"Or backward, " March suggested, ruefully. "The case is simply this: heowns the magazine. "

"Of course. "

"And he has a right to expect that I will consider his pecuniaryinterests--"

"Oh, those detestable pecuniary interests! Don't you wish there wasn'tany money in the world?"

"Yes; or else that there was a great deal more of it. And I was perfectlywilling to do that. I have always kept that in mind as one of my dutiesto him, ever since I understood what his relation to the magazine was. "

"Yes, I can bear witness to that in any court of justice. You've done ita great deal more than I could, Basil. And it was just the same way withthose horrible insurance people. "

"I know, " March went on, trying to be proof against her flatteries, or atleast to look as if he did not deserve praise; "I know that what Lindausaid was offensive to him, and I can understand how he felt that he had aright to punish it. All I say is that he had no right to punish itthrough me. "

"Yes, " said Mrs. March, askingly. 

"If it had been a question of making 'Every Other Week' the vehicle ofLindau's peculiar opinions--though they're not so very peculiar; he mighthave got the most of them out of Ruskin--I shouldn't have had any groundto stand on, or at least then I should have had to ask myself whether hisopinions would be injurious to the magazine or not. "

"I don't see, " Mrs. March interpolated, "how they could hurt it muchworse than Colonel Woodburn's article crying up slavery. "

"Well, " said March, impartially, "we could print a dozen articlespraising the slavery it's impossible to have back, and it wouldn't hurtus. But if we printed one paper against the slavery which Lindau claimsstill exists, some people would call us bad names, and the counting-roomwould begin to feel it. But that isn't the point. Lindau's connectionwith 'Every Other Week' is almost purely mechanical; he's merely atranslator of such stories and sketches as he first submits to me, and itisn't at all a question of his opinions hurting us, but of my becoming anagent to punish him for his opinions. That is what I wouldn't do; that'swhat I never will do. "

"If you did, " said his wife, "I should perfectly despise you. I didn'tunderstand how it was before. I thought you were just holding out againstDryfoos because he took a dictatorial tone with you, and because youwouldn't recognize his authority. But now I'm with you, Basil, everytime, as that horrid little Fulkerson says. But who would ever havesupposed he would be so base as to side against you?"

"I don't know, " said March, thoughtfully, "that we had a right to expectanything else. Fulkerson's standards are low; they're merely businessstandards, and the good that's in him is incidental and something quiteapart from his morals and methods. He's naturally a generous andright-minded creature, but life has taught him to truckle and trick, likethe rest of us. "

"It hasn't taught you that, Basil. "

"Don't be so sure. Perhaps it's only that I'm a poor scholar. But I don'tknow, really, that I despise Fulkerson so much for his course thismorning as for his gross and fulsome flatteries of Dryfoos last night. Icould hardly stomach it. "

His wife made him tell her what they were, and then she said, "Yes, thatwas loathsome; I couldn't have believed it of Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Perhaps he only did it to keep the talk going, and to give the old man achance to say something, " March leniently suggested. "It was a worseeffect because he didn't or couldn't follow up Fulkerson's lead. "

"It was loathsome, all the same, " his wife insisted. "It's the end of Mr. Fulkerson, as far as I'm concerned. "

"I didn't tell you before, " March resumed, after a moment, "of my littleinterview with Conrad Dryfoos after his father left, " and now he went onto repeat what had passed between him and the young man. 

"I suspect that he and his father had been having some words before theold man came up to talk with me, and that it was that made him sofurious. "

"Yes, but what a strange position for the son of such a man to take! Doyou suppose he says such things to his father?"

"I don't know; but I suspect that in his meek way Conrad would say whathe believed to anybody. I suppose we must regard him as a kind of crank. "

"Poor young fellow! He always makes me feel sad, somehow. He has such apathetic face. I don't believe I ever saw him look quite happy, exceptthat night at Mrs. Horn's, when he was talking with Miss Vance; and thenhe made me feel sadder than ever. "

"I don't envy him the life he leads at home, with those convictions ofhis. I don't see why it wouldn't be as tolerable there for old Lindauhimself. "

"Well, now, " said Mrs. March, "let us put them all out of our minds andsee what we are going to do ourselves. "

They began to consider their ways and means, and how and where theyshould live, in view of March's severance of his relations with 'EveryOther Week. ' They had not saved anything from the first year's salary;they had only prepared to save; and they had nothing solid but their twothousand to count upon. But they built a future in which they easilylived on that and on what March earned with his pen. He became a freelance, and fought in whatever cause he thought just; he had no ties, nochains. They went back to Boston with the heroic will to do what was mostdistasteful; they would have returned to their own house if they had notrented it again; but, any rate, Mrs. March helped out by taking boarders, or perhaps only letting rooms to lodgers. They had some hard struggles, but they succeeded. 

"The great thing, " she said, "is to be right. I'm ten times as happy asif you had come home and told me that you had consented to do whatDryfoos asked and he had doubled your salary. "

"I don't think that would have happened in any event, " said March, dryly. 

"Well, no matter. I just used it for an example. "

They both experienced a buoyant relief, such as seems to come to peoplewho begin life anew on whatever terms. "I hope we are young enough yet, Basil, " she said, and she would not have it when he said they had oncebeen younger. 

They heard the children's knock on the door; they knocked when they camehome from school so that their mother might let them in. "Shall we tellthem at once?" she asked, and ran to open for them before March couldanswer. 

They were not alone. Fulkerson, smiling from ear to ear, was with them. "Is March in?" he asked. 

"Mr. March is at home, yes, " she said very haughtily. "He's in hisstudy, " and she led the way there, while the children went to theirrooms. 

"Well, March, " Fulkerson called out at sight of him, "it's all right! Theold man has come down. "

"I suppose if you gentlemen are going to talk business--" Mrs. Marchbegan. 

"Oh, we don't want you to go away, " said Fulkerson. "I reckon March hastold you, anyway. "

"Yes, I've told her, " said March. "Don't go, Isabel. What do you mean, Fulkerson?"

"He's just gone on up home, and he sent me round with his apologies. Hesees now that he had no business to speak to you as he did, and hewithdraws everything. He'd 'a' come round himself if I'd said so, but Itold him I could make it all right. "

Fulkerson looked so happy in having the whole affair put right, and theMarches knew him to be so kindly affected toward them, that they couldnot refuse for the moment to share his mood. They felt themselvesslipping down from the moral height which they had gained, and March madea clutch to stay himself with the question, "And Lindau?"

"Well, " said Fulkerson, "he's going to leave Lindau to me. You won't haveanything to do with it. I'll let the old fellow down easy. "

"Do you mean, " asked March, "that Mr. Dryfoos insists on his beingdismissed?"

"Why, there isn't any dismissing about it, " Fulkerson argued. "If youdon't send him any more work, he won't do any more, that's all. Or if hecomes round, you can--He's to be referred to me. "

March shook his head, and his wife, with a sigh, felt herself plucked upfrom the soft circumstance of their lives, which she had sunk back intoso quickly, and set beside him on that cold peak of principle again. "Itwon't do, Fulkerson. It's very good of you, and all that, but it comes tothe same thing in the end. I could have gone on without any apology fromMr. Dryfoos; he transcended his authority, but that's a minor matter. Icould have excused it to his ignorance of life among gentlemen; but Ican't consent to Lindau's dismissal--it comes to that, whether you do itor I do it, and whether it's a positive or a negative thing--because heholds this opinion or that. "

"But don't you see, " said Fulkerson, "that it's just Lindau's opinionsthe old man can't stand? He hasn't got anything against him personally. Idon't suppose there's anybody that appreciates Lindau in some ways morethan the old man does. "

"I understand. He wants to punish him for his opinions. Well, I can'tconsent to that, directly or indirectly. We don't print his opinions, andhe has a perfect right to hold them, whether Mr. Dryfoos agrees with themor not. "

Mrs. March had judged it decorous for her to say nothing, but she nowwent and sat down in the chair next her husband. 

"Ah, dog on it!" cried Fulkerson, rumpling his hair with both his hands. "What am I to do? The old man says he's got to go. "

"And I don't consent to his going, " said March. 

"And you won't stay if he goes. "

Fulkerson rose. "Well, well! I've got to see about it. I'm afraid the oldman won't stand it, March; I am, indeed. I wish you'd reconsider. I--I'dtake it as a personal favor if you would. It leaves me in a fix. You seeI've got to side with one or the other. "

March made no reply to this, except to say, "Yes, you must stand by him, or you must stand by me. "

"Well, well! Hold on awhile! I'll see you in the morning. Don't take anysteps--"

"Oh, there are no steps to take, " said March, with a melancholy smile. "The steps are stopped; that's all. " He sank back into his chair whenFulkerson was gone and drew a long breath. "This is pretty rough. Ithought we had got through it. "

"No, " said his wife. "It seems as if I had to make the fight all overagain. "

"Well, it's a good thing it's a holy war. "

"I can't bear the suspense. Why didn't you tell him outright you wouldn'tgo back on any terms?"

"I might as well, and got the glory. He'll never move Dryfoos. I supposewe both would like to go back, if we could. "

"Oh, I suppose so. "

They could not regain their lost exaltation, their lost dignity. Atdinner Mrs. March asked the children how they would like to go back toBoston to live. 

"Why, we're not going, are we?" asked Tom, without enthusiasm. 

"I was just wondering how you felt about it, now, " she said, with anunderlook at her husband. 

"Well, if we go back, " said Bella, "I want to live on the Back Bay. It'sawfully Micky at the South End. "

"I suppose I should go to Harvard, " said Tom, "and I'd room out atCambridge. It would be easier to get at you on the Back Bay. "

The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and, in view of these grandexpectations of his children, March resolved to go as far as he could inmeeting Dryfoos's wishes. He proposed the theatre as a distraction fromthe anxieties that he knew were pressing equally on his wife. "We mightgo to the 'Old Homestead, '" he suggested, with a sad irony, which onlyhis wife felt. 

"Oh yes, let's!" cried Bella. 

While they were getting ready, some one rang, and Bella went to the door, and then came to tell her father that it was Mr. Lindau. "He says hewants to see you just a moment. He's in the parlor, and he won't sitdown, or anything. "

"What can he want?" groaned Mrs. March, from their common dismay. 

March apprehended a storm in the old man's face. But he only stood in themiddle of the room, looking very sad and grave. "You are Going oudt, " hesaid. "I won't geep you long. I haf gome to pring pack dose macassinesand dis mawney. I can't do any more voark for you; and I can't geep themawney you haf baid me a'ready. It iss not hawnest mawney--that hass beenoarned py voark; it iss mawney that hass peen mate py sbeculation, andthe obbression off lapor, and the necessity of the boor, py a man--Hereit is, efery tollar, efery zent. Dake it; I feel as if dere vas ploodt onit. "

"Why, Lindau, " March began, but the old man interrupted him. 

"Ton't dalk to me, Passil! I could not haf believedt it of you. When youknow how I feel about dose tings, why tidn't you dell me whose mawney youbay oudt to me? Ach, I ton't plame you--I ton't rebroach you. You hafnefer thought of it; boat I have thought, and I should be Guilty, I mustshare that man's Guilt, if I gept hiss mawney. If you hat toldt me at thepeginning--if you hat peen frank with meboat it iss all righdt; you cango on; you ton't see dese tings as I see them; and you haf cot a family, and I am a free man. I voark to myself, and when I ton't voark, I sdarfeto myself. But. I geep my handts glean, voark or sdarfe. Gif him hissmawney pack! I am sawry for him; I would not hoart hiss feelings, boat Icould not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss like boison!"

March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him the folly, the injustice, the absurdity of his course; it ended in their both getting angry, and inLindau's going away in a whirl of German that included Basil in the guiltof the man whom Lindau called his master. 

"Well, " said Mrs. March. "He is a crank, and I think you're well rid ofhim. Now you have no quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you cankeep right on. "

"Yes, " said March, "I wish it didn't make me feel so sneaking. What along day it's been! It seems like a century since I got up. "

"Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else left to happen?"

"I hope not. I'd like to go to bed. "

"Why, aren't you going to the theatre?" wailed Bella, coming in upon herfather's desperate expression. 

"The theatre? Oh yes, certainly! I meant after we got home, " and Marchamused himself at the puzzled countenance of the child. "Come on! Is Tomready?"

IX. 

Fulkerson parted with the Marches in such trouble of mind that he did notfeel able to meet that night the people whom he usually kept so gay atMrs. Leighton's table. He went to Maroni's for his dinner, for thisreason and for others more obscure. He could not expect to do anythingmore with Dryfoos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that he hadalready made an extreme concession to March, and he believed that if hewas to get anything more from him it must be after Dryfoos had dined. Buthe was not without the hope, vague and indefinite as it might be, that heshould find Lindau at Maroni's, and perhaps should get some concessionfrom him, some word of regret or apology which he could report toDryfoos, and at lest make the means of reopening the affair with him;perhaps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would back downaltogether, and for March's sake would withdraw from all connection with'Every Other Week' himself, and so leave everything serene. Fulkersonfelt capable, in his desperation, of delicately suggesting such a courseto Lindau, or even of plainly advising it: he did not care for Lindau agreat deal, and he did care a great deal for the magazine. 

But he did not find Lindau at Maroni's; he only found Beaton. He satlooking at the doorway as Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally cameand took a place at his table. Something in Beaton's large-eyed solemnityof aspect invited Fulkerson to confidence, and he said, as he pulled hisnapkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni's was apt to be), across his knees, "I waslooking for you this morning, to talk with you about the Christmasnumber, and I was a good deal worked up because I couldn't find you; butI guess I might as well have spared myself my emotions. "

"Why?" asked Beaton, briefly. 

"Well, I don't know as there's going to be any Christmas number. "

"Why?" Beaton asked again. 

"Row between the financial angel and the literary editor about the chieftranslator and polyglot smeller. "

"Lindau?"

"Lindau is his name. "

"What does the literary editor expect after Lindau's expression of hisviews last night?"

"I don't know what he expected, but the ground he took with the old manwas that, as Lindau's opinions didn't characterize his work on themagazine, he would not be made the instrument of punishing him for themthe old man wanted him turned off, as he calls it. "

"Seems to be pretty good ground, " said Beaton, impartially, while hespeculated, with a dull trouble at heart, on the effect the row wouldhave on his own fortunes. His late visit home had made him feel that theclaim of his family upon him for some repayment of help given could notbe much longer delayed; with his mother sick and his father growing old, he must begin to do something for them, but up to this time he had spenthis salary even faster than he had earned it. When Fulkerson came in hewas wondering whether he could get him to increase it, if he threatenedto give up his work, and he wished that he was enough in love withMargaret Vance, or even Christine Dryfoos, to marry her, only to end inthe sorrowful conviction that he was really in love with Alma Leighton, who had no money, and who had apparently no wish to be married for love, even. "And what are you going to do about it?" he asked, listlessly. 

"Be dogged if I know what I'm going to do about it, " said Fulkerson. "I've been round all day, trying to pick up the pieces--row began rightafter breakfast this morning--and one time I thought I'd got the thingall put together again. I got the old man to say that he had spoken toMarch a little too authoritatively about Lindau; that, in fact, he oughtto have communicated his wishes through me; and that he was willing tohave me get rid of Lindau, and March needn't have anything to do with it. I thought that was pretty white, but March says the apologies and regretsare all well enough in their way, but they leave the main question wherethey found it. "

"What is the main question?" Beaton asked, pouring himself out someChianti. As he set the flask down he made the reflection that if he woulddrink water instead of Chianti he could send his father three dollars aweek, on his back debts, and he resolved to do it. 

"The main question, as March looks at it, is the question of punishingLindau for his private opinions; he says that if he consents to mybouncing the old fellow it's the same as if he bounced him. "

"It might have that complexion in some lights, " said Beaton. He drank offhis Chianti, and thought he would have it twice a week, or make Maronikeep the half-bottles over for him, and send his father two dollars. "Andwhat are you going to do now?"

"That's what I don't know, " said Fulkerson, ruefully. After a moment hesaid, desperately, "Beaton, you've got a pretty good head; why don't yousuggest something?"

"Why don't you let March go?" Beaton suggested. 

"Ah, I couldn't, " said Fulkerson. "I got him to break up in Boston andcome here; I like him; nobody else could get the hang of the thing likehe has; he's--a friend. " Fulkerson said this with the nearest approach hecould make to seriousness, which was a kind of unhappiness. 

Beaton shrugged. "Oh, if you can afford to have ideals, I congratulateyou. They're too expensive for me. Then, suppose you get rid of Dryfoos?"

Fulkerson laughed forlornly. "Go on, Bildad. Like to sprinkle a few ashesover my boils? Don't mind me!"

They both sat silent a little while, and then Beaton said, "I suppose youhaven't seen Dryfoos the second time?"

"No. I came in here to gird up my loins with a little dinner before Itackled him. But something seems to be the matter with Maroni's cook. Idon't want anything to eat. "

"The cooking's about as bad as usual, " said Beaton. After a moment headded, ironically, for he found Fulkerson's misery a kind of relief fromhis own, and was willing to protract it as long as it was amusing, "Whynot try an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary?"

"What do you mean?"

"Get that other old fool to go to Dryfoos for you!"

"Which other old fool? The old fools seem to be as thick as flies. "

"That Southern one. "

"Colonel Woodburn?"

"Mmmmm. "

"He did seem to rather take to the colonel!" Fulkerson mused aloud. 

"Of course he did. Woodburn, with his idiotic talk about patriarchalslavery, is the man on horseback to Dryfoos's muddy imagination. He'dlisten to him abjectly, and he'd do whatever Woodburn told him to do. "Beaton smiled cynically. 

Fulkerson got up and reached for his coat and hat. "You've struck it, oldman. " The waiter came up to help him on with his coat; Fulkerson slippeda dollar in his hand. "Never mind the coat; you can give the rest of mydinner to the poor, Paolo. Beaton, shake! You've saved my life, littleboy, though I don't think you meant it. " He took Beaton's hand andsolemnly pressed it, and then almost ran out of the door. 

They had just reached coffee at Mrs. Leighton's when he arrived and satdown with them and began to put some of the life of his new hope intothem. His appetite revived, and, after protesting that he would not takeanything but coffee, he went back and ate some of the earlier courses. But with the pressure of his purpose driving him forward, he did notconceal from Miss Woodburn, at least, that he was eager to get her apartfrom the rest for some reason. When he accomplished this, it seemed as ifhe had contrived it all himself, but perhaps he had not wholly contrivedit. 

"I'm so glad to get a chance to speak to you alone, " he said at once; andwhile she waited for the next word he made a pause, and then said, desperately, "I want you to help me; and if you can't help me, there's nohelp for me. "

"Mah goodness, " she said, "is the case so bad as that? What in the woaldis the trouble?"

"Yes, it's a bad case, " said Fulkerson. "I want your father to help me. "

"Oh, I thoat you said me!"

"Yes; I want you to help me with your father. I suppose I ought to go tohim at once, but I'm a little afraid of him. "

"And you awe not afraid of me? I don't think that's very flattering, Mr. Fulkerson. You ought to think Ah'm twahce as awful as papa. "

"Oh, I do! You see, I'm quite paralyzed before you, and so I don't feelanything. "

"Well, it's a pretty lahvely kyand of paralysis. But--go on. "

"I will--I will. If I can only begin. "

"Pohaps Ah maght begin fo' you. "

"No, you can't. Lord knows, I'd like to let you. Well, it's like this. "

Fulkerson made a clutch at his hair, and then, after another hesitation, he abruptly laid the whole affair before her. He did not think itnecessary to state the exact nature of the offence Lindau had givenDryfoos, for he doubted if she could grasp it, and he was profuse of hisexcuses for troubling her with the matter, and of wonder at himself forhaving done so. In the rapture of his concern at having perhaps made afool of himself, he forgot why he had told her; but she seemed to likehaving been confided in, and she said, "Well, Ah don't see what you cando with you' ahdeals of friendship except stand bah Mr. Mawch. "

"My ideals of friendship? What do you mean?"

"Oh, don't you suppose we know? Mr. Beaton said you we' a pofect Bahyardin friendship, and you would sacrifice anything to it. "

"Is that so?" said Fulkerson, thinking how easily he could sacrificeLindau in this case. He had never supposed before that he was chivalrousin such matters, but he now began to see it in that light, and hewondered that he could ever have entertained for a moment the idea ofthrowing March over. 

"But Ah most say, " Miss Woodburn went on, "Ah don't envy you you' nextinterview with Mr. Dryfoos. Ah suppose you'll have to see him at onceaboat it. "

The conjecture recalled Fulkerson to the object of his confidences. "Ah, there's where your help comes in. I've exhausted all the influence I havewith Dryfoos--"

"Good gracious, you don't expect Ah could have any!"

They both laughed at the comic dismay with which she conveyed thepreposterous notion; and Fulkerson said, "If I judged from myself, Ishould expect you to bring him round instantly. "

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Fulkerson, " she said, with mock meekness. 

"Not at all. But it isn't Dryfoos I want you to help me with; it's yourfather. I want your father to interview Dryfoos for me, and I-I'm afraidto ask him. "

"Poo' Mr. Fulkerson!" she said, and she insinuated something through herburlesque compassion that lifted him to the skies. He swore in his heartthat the woman never lived who was so witty, so wise, so beautiful, andso good. "Come raght with me this minute, if the cyoast's clea'. " Shewent to the door of the diningroom and looked in across its gloom to thelittle gallery where her father sat beside a lamp reading his eveningpaper; Mrs. Leighton could be heard in colloquy with the cook below, andAlma had gone to her room. She beckoned Fulkerson with the handoutstretched behind her, and said, "Go and ask him. "

"Alone!" he palpitated. 

"Oh, what a cyowahd!" she cried, and went with him. "Ah suppose you'llwant me to tell him aboat it. "

"Well, I wish you'd begin, Miss Woodburn, " he said. "The fact is, youknow, I've been over it so much I'm kind of sick of the thing. "

Miss Woodburn advanced and put her hand on her father's shoulder. "Lookheah, papa! Mr. Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he wants me todo it fo' him. "

The colonel looked up through his glasses with the sort of ferocityelderly men sometimes have to put on in order to keep their glasses fromfalling off. His daughter continued: "He's got into an awful difficultywith his edito' and his proprieto', and he wants you to pacify them. "

"I do not know whethah I understand the case exactly, " said the colonel, "but Mr. Fulkerson may command me to the extent of my ability. "

"You don't understand it aftah what Ah've said?" cried the girl. "Then Ahdon't see but what you'll have to explain it you'self, Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous about it, colonel, " saidFulkerson, glad of the joking shape she had given the affair, "that I canonly throw in a little side-light here and there. "

The colonel listened as Fulkerson went on, with a grave diplomaticsatisfaction. He felt gratified, honored, even, he said, by Mr. Fulkerson's appeal to him; and probably it gave him something of the highjoy that an affair of honor would have brought him in the days when hehad arranged for meetings between gentlemen. Next to bearing a challenge, this work of composing a difficulty must have been grateful. But he gaveno outward sign of his satisfaction in making a resume of the case so asto get the points clearly in his mind. 

"I was afraid, sir, " he said, with the state due to the serious nature ofthe facts, "that Mr. Lindau had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of hisquestions at the dinner-table last night. "

"Perfect red rag to a bull, " Fulkerson put in; and then he wanted towithdraw his words at the colonel's look of displeasure. 

"I have no reflections to make upon Mr. Landau, " Colonel Woodburncontinued, and Fulkerson felt grateful to him for going on; "I do notagree with Mr. Lindau; I totally disagree with him on sociologicalpoints; but the course of the conversation had invited him to theexpression of his convictions, and he had a right to express them, so faras they had no personal bearing. "

"Of course, " said Fulkerson, while Miss Woodburn perched on the arm ofher father's chair. 

"At the same time, sir, I think that if Mr. Dryfoos felt a personalcensure in Mr. Lindau's questions concerning his suppression of thestrike among his workmen, he had a right to resent it. "

"Exactly, " Fulkerson assented. 

"But it must be evident to you, sir, that a high-spirited gentleman likeMr. March--I confess that my feelings are with him very warmly in thematter--could not submit to dictation of the nature you describe. "

"Yes, I see, " said Fulkerson; and, with that strange duplex action of thehuman mind, he wished that it was his hair, and not her father's, thatMiss Woodburn was poking apart with the corner of her fan. 

"Mr. Lindau, " the colonel concluded, "was right from his point of view, and Mr. Dryfoos was equally right. The position of Mr. March is perfectlycorrect--"

His daughter dropped to her feet from his chair-arm. "Mah goodness! Ifnobody's in the wrong, ho' awe you evah going to get the mattahstraight?"

"Yes, you see, " Fulkerson added, "nobody can give in. "

"Pardon me, " said the colonel, "the case is one in which all can givein. "

"I don't know which 'll begin, " said Fulkerson. 

The colonel rose. "Mr. Lindau must begin, sir. We must begin by seeingMr. Lindau, and securing from him the assurance that in the expression ofhis peculiar views he had no intention of offering any personal offenceto Mr. Dryfoos. If I have formed a correct estimate of Mr. Lindau, thiswill be perfectly simple. "

Fulkerson shook his head. "But it wouldn't help. Dryfoos don't care a rapwhether Lindau meant any personal offence or not. As far as that isconcerned, he's got a hide like a hippopotamus. But what he hates isLindau's opinions, and what he says is that no man who holds suchopinions shall have any work from him. And what March says is that no manshall be punished through him for his opinions, he don't care what theyare. "

The colonel stood a moment in silence. "And what do you expect me to dounder the circumstances?"

"I came to you for advice--I thought you might suggest----?"

"Do you wish me to see Mr. Dryfoos?"

"Well, that's about the size of it, " Fulkerson admitted. "You see, colonel, " he hastened on, "I know that you have a great deal of influencewith him; that article of yours is about the only thing he's ever read in'Every Other Week, ' and he's proud of your acquaintance. Well, youknow"--and here Fulkerson brought in the figure that struck him so muchin Beaton's phrase and had been on his tongue ever since--"you're theman on horseback to him; and he'd be more apt to do what you say than ifanybody else said it. "

"You are very good, sir, " said the colonel, trying to be proof againstthe flattery, "but I am afraid you overrate my influence. " Fulkerson lethim ponder it silently, and his daughter governed her impatience byholding her fan against her lips. Whatever the process was in thecolonel's mind, he said at last: "I see no good reason for declining toact for you, Mr. Fulkerson, and I shall be very happy if I can be ofservice to you. But"--he stopped Fulkerson from cutting in withprecipitate thanks--"I think I have a right, sir, to ask what your coursewill be in the event of failure?"

"Failure?" Fulkerson repeated, in dismay. 

"Yes, sir. I will not conceal from you that this mission is one notwholly agreeable to my feelings. "

"Oh, I understand that, colonel, and I assure you that I appreciate, I--"

"There is no use trying to blink the fact, sir, that there are certainaspects of Mr. Dryfoos's character in which he is not a gentleman. Wehave alluded to this fact before, and I need not dwell upon it now: I maysay, however, that my misgivings were not wholly removed last night. "

"No, " Fulkerson assented; though in his heart he thought the old man hadbehaved very well. 

"What I wish to say now is that I cannot consent to act for you, in thismatter, merely as an intermediary whose failure would leave the affair instate quo. "

"I see, " said Fulkerson. 

"And I should like some intimation, some assurance, as to which partyyour own feelings are with in the difference. "

The colonel bent his eyes sharply on Fulkerson; Miss Woodburn let hersfall; Fulkerson felt that he was being tested, and he said, to gain time, "As between Lindau and Dryfoos?" though he knew this was not the point. 

"As between Mr. Dryfoos and Mr. March, " said the colonel. 

Fulkerson drew a long breath and took his courage in both hands. "Therecan't be any choice for me in such a case. I'm for March, every time. "

The colonel seized his hand, and Miss Woodburn said, "If there had beenany choice fo' you in such a case, I should never have let papa stir astep with you. "

"Why, in regard to that, " said the colonel, with a, literal applicationof the idea, "was it your intention that we should both go?"

"Well, I don't know; I suppose it was. "

"I think it will be better for me to go alone, " said the colonel; and, with a color from his experience in affairs of honor, he added: "In thesematters a principal cannot appear without compromising his dignity. Ibelieve I have all the points clearly in mind, and I think I should actmore freely in meeting Mr. Dryfoos alone. "

Fulkerson tried to hide the eagerness with which he met these agreeableviews. He felt himself exalted in some sort to the level of the colonel'ssentiments, though it would not be easy to say whether this was throughthe desperation bred of having committed himself to March's side, orthrough the buoyant hope he had that the colonel would succeed in hismission. 

"I'm not afraid to talk with Dryfoos about it, " he said. 

"There is no question of courage, " said the colonel. "It is a question ofdignity--of personal dignity. "

"Well, don't let that delay you, papa, " said his daughter, following himto the door, where she found him his hat, and Fulkerson helped him onwith his overcoat. "Ah shall be jost wald to know ho' it's toned oat. "

"Won't you let me go up to the house with you?" Fulkerson began. "Ineedn't go in--"

"I prefer to go alone, " said the colonel. "I wish to turn the points overin my mind, and I am afraid you would find me rather dull company. "

He went out, and Fulkerson returned with Miss Woodburn to thedrawing-room, where she said the Leightons were. They, were not there, but she did not seem disappointed. 

"Well, Mr. Fulkerson, " she said, "you have got an ahdeal of friendship, sure enough. "

"Me?" said Fulkerson. "Oh, my Lord! Don't you see I couldn't do anythingelse? And I'm scared half to death, anyway. If the colonel don't bringthe old man round, I reckon it's all up with me. But he'll fetch him. AndI'm just prostrated with gratitude to you, Miss Woodburn. "

She waved his thanks aside with her fan. "What do you mean by its beingall up with you?"

"Why, if the old man sticks to his position, and I stick to March, we'veboth got to go overboard together. Dryfoos owns the magazine; he can stopit, or he can stop us, which amounts to the same thing, as far as we'reconcerned. "

"And then what?" the girl pursued. 

"And then, nothing--till we pick ourselves up. "

"Do you mean that Mr. Dryfoos will put you both oat of your places?"

"He may. "

"And Mr. Mawch takes the risk of that jost fo' a principle?"

"I reckon. "

"And you do it jost fo' an ahdeal?"

"It won't do to own it. I must have my little axe to grind, somewhere. "

"Well, men awe splendid, " sighed the girl. "Ah will say it. "

"Oh, they're not so much better than women, " said Fulkerson, with anervous jocosity. "I guess March would have backed down if it hadn't beenfor his wife. She was as hot as pepper about it, and you could see thatshe would have sacrificed all her husband's relations sooner than let himback down an inch from the stand he had taken. It's pretty easy for a manto stick to a principle if he has a woman to stand by him. But when youcome to play it alone--"

"Mr. Fulkerson, " said the girl, solemnly, "Ah will stand bah you in this, if all the woald tones against you. " The tears came into her eyes, andshe put out her hand to him. 

"You will?" he shouted, in a rapture. "In every way--and always--as longas you live? Do you mean it?" He had caught her hand to his breast andwas grappling it tight there and drawing her to him. 

The changing emotions chased one another through her heart and over herface: dismay, shame, pride, tenderness. "You don't believe, " she said, hoarsely, "that Ah meant that?"

"No, but I hope you do mean it; for if you don't, nothing else meansanything. "

There was no space, there was only a point of wavering. "Ah do mean it. "

When they lifted their eyes from each other again it was half-past ten. "No' you most go, " she said. 

"But the colonel--our fate?"

"The co'nel is often oat late, and Ah'm not afraid of ouah fate, no' thatwe've taken it into ouah own hands. " She looked at him with dewy eyes oftrust, of inspiration. 

"Oh, it's going to come out all right, " he said. "It can't come out wrongnow, no matter what happens. But who'd have thought it, when I came intothis house, in such a state of sin and misery, half an hour ago--"

"Three houahs and a half ago!" she said. "No! you most jost go. Ah'mtahed to death. Good-night. You can come in the mawning to see-papa. " Sheopened the door and pushed him out with enrapturing violence, and he ranlaughing down the steps into her father's arms. 

"Why, colonel! I was just going up to meet you. " He had really thought hewould walk off his exultation in that direction. 

"I am very sorry to say, Mr. Fulkerson, " the colonel began, gravely, "that Mr. Dryfoos adheres to his position. "

"Oh, all right, " said Fulkerson, with unabated joy. "It's what Iexpected. Well, my course is clear; I shall stand by March, and I guessthe world won't come to an end if he bounces us both. But I'meverlastingly obliged to you, Colonel Woodburn, and I don't know what tosay to you. I--I won't detain you now; it's so late. I'll see you in themorning. Good-ni--"

Fulkerson did not realize that it takes two to part. The colonel laidhold of his arm and turned away with him. "I will walk toward your placewith you. I can understand why you should be anxious to know theparticulars of my interview with Mr. Dryfoos"; and in the statement whichfollowed he did not spare him the smallest. It outlasted their walk anddetained them long on the steps of the 'Every Other Week' building. Butat the end Fulkerson let himself in with his key as light of heart as ifhe had been listening to the gayest promises that fortune could make. 

By the tune he met March at the office next morning, a little, but only avery little, misgiving saddened his golden heaven. He took March's handwith high courage, and said, "Well, the old man sticks to his point, March. " He added, with the sense of saying it before Miss Woodburn: "AndI stick by you. I've thought it all over, and I'd rather be right withyou than wrong with him. "

"Well, I appreciate your motive, Fulkerson, " said March. "Butperhaps--perhaps we can save over our heroics for another occasion. Lindau seems to have got in with his, for the present. "

He told him of Lindau's last visit, and they stood a moment looking ateach other rather queerly. Fulkerson was the first to recover hisspirits. "Well, " he said, cheerily, "that let's us out. "

"Does it? I'm not sure it lets me out, " said March; but he said this intribute to his crippled self-respect rather than as a forecast of anyaction in the matter. 

"Why, what are you going to do?" Fulkerson asked. "If Lindau won't workfor Dryfoos, you can't make him. "

March sighed. "What are you going to do with this money?" He glanced atthe heap of bills he had flung on the table between them. 

Fulkerson scratched his head. "Ah, dogged if I know: Can't we give it tothe deserving poor, somehow, if we can find 'em?"

"I suppose we've no right to use it in any way. You must give it toDryfoos. "

"To the deserving rich? Well, you can always find them. I reckon youdon't want to appear in the transaction! I don't, either; but I guess Imust. " Fulkerson gathered up the money and carried it to Conrad. Hedirected him to account for it in his books as conscience-money, and heenjoyed the joke more than Conrad seemed to do when he was told where itcame from. 

Fulkerson was able to wear off the disagreeable impression the affairleft during the course of the fore-noon, and he met Miss Woodburn withall a lover's buoyancy when he went to lunch. She was as happy as he whenhe told her how fortunately the whole thing had ended, and he took herview that it was a reward of his courage in having dared the worst. Theyboth felt, as the newly plighted always do, that they were in the bestrelations with the beneficent powers, and that their felicity had beenespecially looked to in the disposition of events. They were in a glow ofrapturous content with themselves and radiant worship of each other; shewas sure that he merited the bright future opening to them both, as muchas if he owed it directly to some noble action of his own; he felt thathe was indebted for the favor of Heaven entirely to the still incredibleaccident of her preference of him over other men. 

Colonel Woodburn, who was not yet in the secret of their love, perhapsfailed for this reason to share their satisfaction with a result sounexpectedly brought about. The blessing on their hopes seemed to hisignorance to involve certain sacrifices of personal feeling at which hehinted in suggesting that Dryfoos should now be asked to make someabstract concessions and acknowledgments; his daughter hastened to denythat these were at all necessary; and Fulkerson easily explained why. Thething was over; what was the use of opening it up again?

"Perhaps none, " the colonel admitted. But he added, "I should like theopportunity of taking Mr. Lindau's hand in the presence of Mr. Dryfoosand assuring him that I considered him a man of principle and a man ofhonor--a gentleman, sir, whom I was proud and happy to have known. "

"Well, Ah've no doabt, " said his daughter, demurely, "that you'll havethe chance some day; and we would all lahke to join you. But at the sametahme, Ah think Mr. Fulkerson is well oat of it fo' the present. "

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 Anticipative reprisal Buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience Courtship Got their laugh out of too many things in life Had learned not to censure the irretrievable Had no opinions that he was not ready to hold in abeyance Ignorant of her ignorance It don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time Justice must be paid for at every step in fees and costs Life has taught him to truckle and trick Man's willingness to abide in the present No longer the gross appetite for novelty No right to burden our friends with our decisions Travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues Typical anything else, is pretty difficult to find