The Bread Line: A Story of a Paper. Paine Albert Bigelow

mantel above them Cupid laughing and turning up the clock-hands. We will make that picture together next year, for you will slip in and look over my shoulder, and you will take the pen or the brush and touch here and there; and the editors will like my pictures better because of those touches; and when they are printed in the books and papers I will sit dreaming over my own work because it will not be all mine, but part Dorry's, too.

      "I have never told Perny and Van anything about you, because I have never quite found the opportunity to do it in the way I would like. But I think sometimes they suspect, for the other day, when we went out to look at houses, Perny said he didn't suppose I'd want my house very close to two old hardened sinners like them. Then we came to a vacant lot that was just about large enough for three houses, and I said we wouldn't buy houses at all, but would buy the lot and build there side by side and just to suit us. And I said we would have our studios on the same floor of each, and opening through into each other as they do now, and that Perny's should be between, because we both illustrate his work sometimes, and that then we would be able to hire editors to run the 'Whole Family,' and we would work at the kind of work we liked to do and at no other. And I said that evenings we would sit together and talk just as we do now, and you would be there, too – though, of course, I didn't say that, but I know they understood and liked it, and you would like it too, sweetheart, for you have said so.

      "And then Van said, 'Bully, old man!' and Perny didn't say anything, but he put his arms over Van and me when we came to the stairs, and we went up and took a look at my picture before dark. Perny wants me to finish it and sell it to get the money to put into the paper, and says he is going to buy it back with the first returns that come, to hang over his desk when we get into our new houses. But he isn't, because we are going to give it to him, you and I, when you come, and then we will all go together and try to make the originals of it happier because we are so happy ourselves. The money I have been saving will be enough, I am sure, to pay my share in starting the paper, for we will only have a few little engraving and composition and stationery bills and postage, and maybe some salaries to pay, before the returns begin to come in. But I am going to finish the picture anyway, so's to have it ready, and Perny and Van both say it is the best thing, so far, I have ever done. We don't any of us work as much as we did, but then it has taken such a lot of time to plan for the paper that we couldn't, and, after all, a few dollars invested that way now will count so much for us all by and by. Perny is working at editing, too, a good deal, and Van and I help. We have already got some 'copy' at the printer's, and Van and I have designed some department headings and a title-head that I will send you proofs of as soon as we get them engraved. We are going to have a beautiful paper, and if we can only get presses to print them fast enough when the first issue goes out in November, we will have two or three million circulation anyway by the first of the year.

      "I know we will now, even if I have ever had any doubts of it before. I know, because we have a new scheme that simply cannot fail. I can't tell you just what it is in this letter, because I don't altogether understand it myself yet, but Van does, and Perny, for it is Van's scheme this time, and Perny helped him work it out. We are going to 'spring' it on Barry to-morrow night, and it simply beats the premium idea to death, so Perny says, and he didn't sleep a wink all night thinking about it, nor Van either, and they have been explaining it to each other all day until I don't know 'where I'm at'; but they do, and they are sitting outside now, smoking and figuring up how many people there are in the world who read English. It is called CASH FOR NAMES, and will catch them all, – every one, – so Perny says; and as soon as we get it type-written I will send you a copy, so you can see just how great it is.

      "And now, Dorry dear, I haven't told you anything at all, though I have written a long letter, and there is so much you would rather hear than all the things I have said. When I write I only think of you, Dorry, and how I hunger to see your beautiful face, and how long the time will be until I shall take you in my arms and never let you go again. Oh, sweetheart, I never, never could give you up, unless, of course, something dreadful should happen, such as my going blind or being run over and half killed by a cable car, or if the paper should fail and wreck us all, which I know can't happen now. I have thought I ought to, sometimes, for your sake, but I know now I never could have done it, for, sleeping or waking, I am, Dorothy, through all eternity, your

"True."