lan looked well,
but it was all wrong; and even if it hadn't been, it would
have taken more money than we could ever have got hold of,
and a long, long time besides, to get started. Of course,
Frisby did it without money, but that was a good while ago,
and he was first in the field. It is like a prize drawn in a
lottery--the chances are against another being won by
anything near the same ticket number. And then, even Frisby
may not have done exactly as he said--people don't always
tell things of this kind just as they happened.

"Barrifield still hopes against hope that sometime he may
find some one with capital who will bring the 'Whole Family'
to life. He has taken the lists and books and things away to
show to such people; but I think it would be better if he
did not show them, for they could not seem much of an
inducement to any one with money already made and safely
locked in the bank. The Colonel has gone, too, and Bates,
and the last is the one bright spot in all this sad affair.
He went some weeks before the Colonel-- I believe I wrote
you at the time. Bates was a great trial to us all--a
greater trial even than I ever told you, for though I did
not speak of it before, he drank to excess, and we also know
now that he was unreliable in many ways. On all the
advertising he placed for us he received a commission, while
from the advertising he obtained for us we received no
returns, for it was all taken on trial, or in some such way,
and he had no contracts at all except the one of two dollars
I once mentioned. That was genuine, and we got the two
dollars.

"We thought, Dorry, with all of us together, we had a good
combination of people for starting a paper, but I realize
now that we probably had about the worst one that could be
imagined. Artists and writers can make a good paper, and the
'Whole Family' was not bad, as papers go, but it takes
somebody else to run it, and even Perny's ten years'
business experience was worse than nothing after being mixed
with about as many more years of bohemia. He says so himself
now. The Colonel was as bad as the rest of us--worse,
because he is older, and with him the habit of getting rich
on paper has had time to grow and become fixed. He will go
on chasing rainbows, I suppose