public wore a
glow of lofty, of devout exultation. His pride in the number gushed out
in fresh bursts of rhetoric to every one whom he could get to talk with
him about it. He worked the personal kindliness of the press to the
utmost. He did not mind making himself ridiculous or becoming a joke in
the good cause, as he called it. He joined in the applause when a
humorist at the club feigned to drop dead from his chair at Fulkerson's
introduction of the topic, and he went on talking that first number into
the surviving spectators. He stood treat upon all occasions, and he
lunched attaches of the press at all hours. He especially befriended the
correspondents of the newspapers of other cities, for, as he explained to
March, those fellows could give him any amount of advertising simply as
literary gossip. Many of the fellows were ladies who could not be so
summarily asked out to lunch, but Fulkerson's ingenuity was equal to
every exigency, and he contrived somehow to make each of these feel that
she had been possessed of exclusive information. There was a moment when
March conjectured a willingness in Fulkerson to work Mrs. March into the
advertising department, by means of a tea to these ladies and their
friends which she should administer in his apartment, but he did not
encourage Fulkerson to be explicit, and the moment passed. Afterward,
when he told his wife about it, he was astonished to find that she would
not have minded doing it for Fulkerson, and he experienced another proof
of the bluntness of the feminine instincts in some directions, and of the
personal favor which Fulkerson seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. This
alone was enough to account for the willingness of these correspondents
to write about the first number, but March accused him of sending it to
their addresses with boxes of Jacqueminot roses and Huyler candy.

Fulkerson let him enjoy his joke. He said that he would do that or
anything else for the good cause, short of marrying the whole circle of
female correspondents.

March was inclined to hope that if the first number had been made too
good for the country at large, the more enlightened taste of metropolitan
journalism would invite a compensating favor for it in New York. But
first Fulkerson and then the event proved him wrong. In spite of the
quality of the magazine, and in spite of the kindness which so many
newspaper men felt for Fulkerson, the notices in the New York papers
seemed grudging a