d leave
Boston, where they had lived all their married life, where Mrs. March as
well as their children was born, and where all their tender and familiar
ties were, and come to New York, where the literary enterprise which
formed his chance was to be founded.

It was then a magazine of a new sort, which his business partner had
imagined in such leisure as the management of a newspaper syndicate
afforded him, and had always thought of getting March to edit. The
magazine which is also a book has since been realized elsewhere on more
or less prosperous terms, but not for any long period, and 'Every Other
Week' was apparently--the only periodical of the kind conditioned for
survival. It was at first backed by unlimited capital, and it had the
instant favor of a popular mood, which has since changed, but which did
not change so soon that the magazine had not time to establish itself in
a wide acceptance. It was now no longer a novelty, it was no longer in
the maiden blush of its first success, but it had entered upon its second
youth with the reasonable hope of many years of prosperity before it. In
fact it was a very comfortable living for all concerned, and the Marches
had the conditions, almost dismayingly perfect, in which they had often
promised themselves to go and be young again in Europe, when they
rebelled at finding themselves elderly in America. Their daughter was
married, and so very much to her mother's mind that she did not worry
about her, even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a wild
frontier town to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon as he
left college, had taken hold on 'Every Other Week', under his father's
instruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him Fulkerson's
praise as a chip of the old block. These two liked each other, and worked
into each other's hands as cordially and aptly as Fulkerson and March had
ever done. It amused the father to see his son offering Fulkerson the
same deference which the Business End paid to seniority in March himself;
but in fact, Fulkerson's forehead was getting, as he said, more
intellectual every day; and the years were pushing them all along
together.

Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one day he fell down in it.
He had a long sickness, and when he was well of it, he was so slow in
getting his grip of work again that he was sometimes deeply discouraged.
His wife shared his depression, whether he showed or whether he hid it,