His work was more in his thoughts than himself, however; and as the time for the publication of the first number of his periodical came nearer, his cares all centred upon it.  Without fixing any date, Fulkerson had announced it, and pushed his announcements with the shameless vigor of a born advertiser.  He worked his interest with the press to the utmost, and paragraphs of a variety that did credit to his ingenuity were afloat everywhere.  Some of them were speciously unfavorable in tone; they criticised and even ridiculed the principles on which the new departure in literary journalism was based.  Others defended it; others yet denied that this rumored principle was really the principle.  All contributed to make talk.  All proceeded from the same fertile invention.

March observed with a degree of mortification that the talk was very little of it in the New York press; there the references to the novel enterprise were slight and cold.  But Fulkerson said:  “Don’t mind that, old man.  It’s the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this; New York has very little to do with it.  Now if it were a play, it would be different.  New York does make or break a play; but it doesn’t make or break a book; it doesn’t make or break a magazine.  The great mass of the readers are outside of New York, and the rural districts are what we have got to go for.  They don’t read much in New York; they write, and talk about what they’ve written.  Don’t you worry.”

The rumor of Fulkerson’s connection with the enterprise accompanied many of the paragraphs, and he was able to stay March’s thirst for employment by turning over to him from day to day heaps of the manuscripts which began to pour in from his old syndicate writers, as well as from adventurous volunteers all over the country.  With these in hand March began practically to plan the first number, and to concrete a general scheme from the material and the experience they furnished.  They had intended to issue the first number with the new year, and if it had been an affair of literature alone, it would have been very easy; but it was the art leg they limped on, as Fulkerson phrased it.  They had not merely to deal with the question of specific illustrations for this article or that, but to decide the whole character of their illustrations, and first of all to get a design for a cover which should both ensnare the heedless and captivate the fastidious.  These things did not come properly within March’s province—­that had been clearly understood—­and for a while Fulkerson tried to run the art leg himself.  The phrase was again his, but it was simpler to make the phrase than to run the leg.  The difficult generation, at once stiff-backed and slippery, with which he had to do in this endeavor, reduced even so buoyant an optimist to despair, and after wasting some valuable weeks in trying to work the artists himself, he determined to get an artist to work them.  But what artist?  It could not be a man with fixed reputation and a