ly at least, for the prosperity of a man like
Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his money together out of
every gambler's chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift from
the error and need of others. The situation was not more incongruous,
however, than all the rest of the 'Every Other Week' affair. It seemed
to him that there were no crazy fortuities that had not tended to its
existence, and as time went on, and the day drew near for the issue of
the first number, the sense of this intensified till the whole lost at
moments the quality of a waking fact, and came to be rather a fantastic
fiction of sleep.

Yet the heterogeneous forces did co-operate to a reality which March
could not deny, at least in their presence, and the first number was
representative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. As
a result, it was so respectable that March began to respect these
intentions, began to respect himself for combining and embodying them
in the volume which appealed to him with a novel fascination, when
the first advance copy was laid upon his desk. Every detail of it was
tiresomely familiar already, but the whole had a fresh interest now.
He now saw how extremely fit and effective Miss Leighton's decorative
design for the cover was, printed in black and brick-red on the delicate
gray tone of the paper. It was at once attractive and refined, and he
credited Beaton with quite all he merited in working it over to the
actual shape. The touch and the taste of the art editor were present
throughout the number. As Fulkerson said, Beaton had caught on with the
delicacy of a humming-bird and the tenacity of a bulldog to the virtues
of their illustrative process, and had worked it for all it was worth.
There were seven papers in the number, and a poem on the last page of
the cover, and he had found some graphic comment for each. It was a
larger proportion than would afterward be allowed, but for once in a way
it was allowed. Fulkerson said they could not expect to get their money
back on that first number, anyway. Seven of the illustrations were
Beaton's; two or three he got from practised hands; the rest were the
work of unknown people which he had suggested, and then related and
adapted with unfailing ingenuity to the different papers. He handled
the illustrations with such sympathy as not to destroy their individual
quality, and that indefinable charm which comes from good amateur work
in whatever art.