"P.P.S.--Bates was in, too. He was flourishing a paper triumphantly and saying, 'You fellows don't think I have any contracts, do you?' He said that two or three times, and then sat down and told us all over a lot of stuff we've heard before--at least, it sounded like it. When he went out he accidentally dropped the paper on the floor. Perny picked it up and looked at it. It was a contract for a two-line cosmetic ad in two issues for two dollars! Perny figured up and found that it made our space worth less than five hundred dollars a page, or about seven thousand dollars a year in all, when we had been figuring on a million or so. Perny is going to investigate to-morrow.
To the proprietors of the "Whole Family" the discovery that Mr. Bates was over-fond of strong liquors was not altogether in the nature of a surprise. Indeed, this weakness was rather condoned at first as being one believed to be common to some of the brightest minds. Barrifield, it will be remembered, had put it in this way about the time of Bates's engagement, and in his opinion had been ably seconded by Perner, against whose judgment neither Van Dorn nor Livingstone had, at this period, dared to oppose themselves. It will be seen from his letters to Miss Castle of Cleveland, however, that Livingstone's faith in the bibulous solicitor of advertising was by no means complete; also that Mr. Bates had become to all of them the unmitigated bore which the man of his temperament and habit is more than likely to become toward evening after a day of persistent enterprise.
Could they have seen the following letter, prepared and forwarded by Mr. Bates during one of his more lucid intervals, the faith of all might have crumbled somewhat sooner than it did:
_To Richard Cleaver, c/o Jackson & Marsh Adv. Agency, New York,_
FRIEND DICK: I have gone into this business as deep as possible, and as near as I can find out these fellows have got some money. I don't know how much yet, but at least they pay salaries regular and any bills that come.
There is a broken-down old stuff here by the name of Hazard. He calls himself Colonel, and has been mixed up in all kinds of wild-cat enterprises for the past forty years. He knows something about running a paper of the vintage of '68 and they think he's a great man. He says they're backed by millions, but probably knows no more about it than I do. Whatever they've got, they are "lambs," and one of them, Livingstone, is a regular infant in arms. They're going to lose their "bundle," of course, whatever it is, and we want to get as much of it as we can and as quick as possible. Here's what _you_ want to do.