A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Third

representative artists and authors sitting down to a modest supper in Mrs. Leighton's parlors, he conceived of a dinner at Delmonico's, with the principal literary and artistic, people throughou

ches at the dinner, and the speeches must be reported. Then it would go like wildfire. He asked March whether he thought Mr. Depew could be got to come; Mark Twain, he was sure, would come; he was a literary man. They ought to invite Mr. Evarts, and the Cardinal and the leading Protestant divines. His amb

e dried into the hardened speculator, without even the pretence to any advantage but his own in his ventures. He was aware of painting the character too vividly, and he warned March not to accept it exactly in those tints, but to subdue them and shade it for himself. He said that where his advantage was not concerned, there was ever so much good in Dryfoos, and that if in some things he had grown inflexible, he had expanded in others to the full measure of the vast scale on which he did business. It had seemed a little odd to March that a man should put money into such an enterprise as 'Every Other Week' and go off about other affairs, not only without any sign of anxiety, but without any sort of interest. But Fulkerson said that was the splendid side of Dryfoos. He had a courage, a magnanimity, that was equal to the strain of any such uncertainty. He had faced the music once for all, when he asked Fulkerson what the thing would cost in the different degrees of potential failure; and then he had gone off, leaving everything to Fulkerson and the you

an ever. He was in a royal good-humor, Fulkerson reported, and was going to drop into the office on his way up from the Street (March understood Wa

d shown himself about the public reception of the first number. It gave March a disagreeable feeling of being owned and of being about to be inspected by his proprietor; but

former work in its enlarged knuckles, though it was now as soft as March's, and must once have been small even for a man of Mr. Dryfoos's stature; he was below the average size. But what struck March was the fact that Dryfoos seemed furtively conscious of being a country person, and of being aware that in their meeting he was to be tried by other tests than those which would have availed him as a shrewd speculator. He evidently had some curiosity about March, as the first of his kind whom he bad en

nd I haven't got anything so private to talk about that we want to keep it from the other

es. Everybody belongs more or less in New

ller place. Wouldn't make so much talk, would it?" He glanced at March with a jocose light in his shrewd eyes.

visiting there your wh

le and fierce. "Mr. Fulkerson didn't hardly know as he could get you to

as hardly my city, except by ma

, then," said Dryfoos, with a smil

arch. "Of course, she was very

he drew in his lower lip with a sharp sigh. "But my girls like it;

orn, and brought up. I used to live in

told me you was from our State." He went on to brag of the West, as if March were an Eas

comment on 'Every Other Week'; and there was abundant suggestion of that topic in the manuscripts, pr

olled his head about on his shoulders to take in the character of the

t it be, unless we meant to change the whol

" the old man said, bringing his eyes to bear

e thought that this remark must bring them to some tal

ide streets. I thought I paid a pretty good price for it, too." He went on to talk of real estate, and March began to feel a certain resentment at his con

and tested; at others so simple that March might well have fancied that he needed encouragement, and desired it. He talked of his wife and daughters in a way that invited March to say friendly things of his family, which appeared to give the old man first an undue pleasure and then a final distrust. At moments he tu

f that fellow," he said to March, pointing at Conrad

ying to fall in with the joke. "Do y

there? Well, I've seen enough of 'em to know it don't always take a large pattern of a man to do a large business. But I want

ompassion for the young man reddening

world he preaches against when he's been brought up a preacher? He don't know so much as a bad little boy in his Sunday-school

ion for himself in being witness of the young

now what he's preaching about." The old man smiled his fierce, simple smile, and in his sharp eyes March fancied contempt of the ambition he had balked in his son. The present scene must have been one of many between them, ending in meek submission on the part of the young man, whom his father, perhaps without realizing his cruelty, treated as a child. March took it hard that he should be made to suffer in the presence of a co-or