beginning to tire of sitting indolently in my office with nothing to do
but clip coupons from my bonds. Money is good enough, in its way, but it
is not interesting unless it is doing something lively--doubling itself
or getting lost. What I wanted was excitement--an adventure--and I knew
that if I could find Perkins I could have both. A scheme is a business
adventure, and Perkins was the greatest schemer in or out of Chicago.
Just then Perkins walked into my office.
"Perkins," I said, as soon as he had arranged his feet comfortably on my
desk, "I'm tired. I'm restless. I have been wishing for you for a month.
I want to go into a big scheme and make a lot of new, up-to-date cash.
I'm sick of this tame, old cash that I have. It isn't interesting. No
cash is interesting except the coming cash."
"I'm with you," said Perkins, "what is your scheme?"
"I have none," I said sadly, "that is just my trouble. I have sat here
for days trying to think of a good practical scheme, but I can't. I
don't believe there is an unworked scheme in the whole wide, wide
world."
Perkins waved his hand.
"My boy," he exclaimed, "there are millions! You've thousands of 'em
right here in your office! You're falling over them, sitting on them,
walking on them! Schemes? Everything is a scheme. Everything has money
in it!"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Yes," I said, "for you. But you are a genius."
"Genius, yes," Perkins said smiling cheerfully, "else why Perkins the
Great? Why Perkins the originator? Why the Great and Only Perkins of
Portland?"
"All right," I said, "what I want is for your genius to get busy. I'll
give you a week to work up a good scheme."
Perkins pushed back his hat and brought his feet to the floor with a
smack.
"Why the delay?" he queried, "time is money. Hand me something from your
desk."
I looked in my pigeonholes and pulled from one a small ball of string.
Perkins took it in his hand and looked at it with great admiration.
"What is it?" he asked seriously.
"That," I said humoring him, for I knew something great would be evolved
from his wonderful brain, "is a ball of red twine I bought at the
ten-cent store. I bought it last Saturday. It was sold to me by a
freckled young lady in a white shirtwaist. I paid--"
"Stop!" Perkins cried, "what is it?"
I looked at the ball of twine curiously. I tried to see something
remarkable in it. I couldn't. It remained a simple ball of red twine and
I told Perkins so.
"The difference," declared Perkins, "between mediocrity and genius!
Mediocrity always sees red twine; genius sees a ball of Crimson Cord!"
He leaned back in his chair and looked at me triumphantly. He folded his
arms as if he had settled the matter. His attitude seemed to say that he
had made a fortune for us. Suddenly he reached forward, and grasping my
scissors, began snipping off small lengths of the twine.
"The Crimson Cord!" he ejaculated. "What does it suggest?"
I told him that it suggested a parcel from the druggist's. I had often
seen just such twine about a druggist's parcel.
Perkins sniffed disdainfully.
"Druggists?" he exclaimed with disgust. "Mystery! Blood! 'The Crimson
Cord.' Daggers! Murder! Strangling! Clues! 'The Crimson Cord'--"
He motioned wildly with his hands as if the possibilities of the phrase
were quite beyond his power of expression.
"It sounds like a book," I suggested.
"Great!" cried Perkins. "A novel! The novel! Think of the words 'A
Crimson Cord' in blood-red letters six feet high on a white ground!" He
pulled his hat over his eyes and spread out his hands, and I think he
shuddered.
"Think of 'A Crimson Cord,'" he muttered, "in blood-red letters on a
ground of dead, sepulchral black, with a crimson cord writhing through
them like a serpent."
He sat up suddenly and threw one hand in the air.
"Think," he cried, "of the words in black on white with a crimson cord
drawn taut across the whole ad!"
He beamed upon me.
"The cover of the book," he said quite calmly, "will be white--virgin,
spotless white--with black lettering, and the cord in crimson. With each
copy we will give a crimson silk cord for a book-mark. Each copy will be
done up in a white box and tied with crimson cord."
He closed his eyes and tilted his head upward.
"A thick book," he said, "with deckel edges and pictures by Christy.
No, pictures by Pyle. Deep, mysterious pictures! Shadows and gloom! And
wide, wide margins. And a gloomy foreword. One fifty per copy, at all
booksellers."
Perkins opened his eyes and set his hat straight with a quick motion of
his hand. He arose and pulled on his gloves.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"Contracts!" he said. "Contracts for advertising! We must boom 'The
Crimson Cord.' We must boom her big!"
He went out and closed the door. Presently, when I supposed him well on
the way down town, he opened the door and inserted his head.
"Gilt tops," he announced. "One million copies the first impression!"
And then he was gone.
II
A week later Chicago and the greater part of the United States was
placarded with "The Crimson Cord." Perkins did his work thoroughly and
well, and great was the interest in the mysterious title. It was an old
dodge, but a good one. Nothing appeared on the advertisements but the
mere title. No word as to what "The Crimson Cord" was. Perkins merely
announced the words and left them to rankle in the reader's mind, and as
a natural consequence each new advertisement served to excite new
interest.
When we made our contracts for magazine advertising--and we took a full
page in every worthy magazine--the publishers were at a loss to classify
the advertisement, and it sometimes appeared among the breakfast foods,
and sometimes sandwiched in between the automobiles and the hot water
heaters. Only one publication placed it among the books.
But it was all good advertising, and Perkins was a busy man. He racked
his inventive brain for new methods of placing the title before the
public. In fact so busy was he at his labor of introducing the title
that he quite forgot the book itself.
One day he came to the office with a small, rectangular package. He
unwrapped it in his customary enthusiastic manner, and set on my desk a
cigar box bound in the style he had selected for the binding of "The
Crimson Cord." It was then I spoke of the advisability of having
something to the book besides the cover and a boom.
"Perkins," I said, "don't you think it is about time we got hold of the
novel--the reading, the words?"
For a moment he seemed stunned. It was clear that he had quite forgotten
that book-buyers like to have a little reading matter in their books.
But he was only dismayed for a moment.
"Tut!" he cried presently. "All in good time! The novel is easy.
Anything will do. I'm no literary man. I don't read a book in a year.
You get the novel."
"But I don't read a book in five years!" I exclaimed. "I don't know
anything about books. I don't know where to get a novel."
"Advertise!" he exclaimed. "Advertise! You can get anything, from an
apron to an ancestor, if you advertise for it. Offer a prize--offer a
thousand dollars for the best novel. There must be thousands of novels
not in use."
Perkins was right. I advertised as he suggested and learned that there
were thousands of novels not in use. They came to us by basketfuls and
cartloads. We had novels of all kinds--historical and hysterical,
humorous and numerous, but particularly numerous. You would be
surprised to learn how many ready-made novels can be had on short
notice. It beats quick lunch. And most of them are equally indigestible.
I read one or two but I was no judge of novels. Perkins suggested that
we draw lots to see which we should use.
It really made little difference what the story was about. "The Crimson
Cord" fits almost any kind of a book. It is a nice, non-committal sort
of title, and might mean the guilt that bound two sinners, or the tie of
affection that binds lovers, or a blood relationship, or it might be a
mystification title with nothing in the book about it.
But the choice settled itself. One morning a manuscript arrived that was
tied with a piece of red twine, and we chose that one for good luck
because of the twine. Perkins said that was a sufficient excuse for the
title, too. We would publish the book anonymously, and let it be known
that the only clue to the writer was the crimson cord with which the
manuscript was tied when we received it. It would be a first-class
advertisement.
Perkins, however, was not much interested in the story, and he left me
to settle the details. I wrote to the author asking him to call, and he
turned out to be a young woman.
Our interview was rather shy. I was a little doubtful about the proper
way to talk to a real author, being purely a Chicagoan myself, and I had
an idea that while my usual vocabulary was good enough for business
purposes it might be too easy-going to impress a literary person
properly, and in trying to talk up to her standard I had to be very
careful in my choice of words. No publisher likes to have his authors
think he is weak in the grammar line.
Miss Rosa Belle Vincent, however, was quite as flustered as I was. She
seemed ill-at-ease and anxious to get away, which I supposed was because
she had not often conversed with publishers who paid a thousand dollars
cash in advance for a manuscript.
She was not at all what I had thought an author would look like. She
didn't even wear glasses. If I had met her on the street I should have
said: "There goes a pretty flip stenographer." She was that kind--big
picture hat and high pompadour.
I was afraid she would try to run the talk into literary lines and Ibsen
and Gorky, where I would have been swamped in a minute, but she didn't,
and, although I had wondered how to break the subject of money when
conversing with one who must be thinking of nobler things, I found she
was less shy when on that subject than when talking about her book.
"Well now," I said, as soon as I had got her seated, "we have decided to
buy this novel of yours. Can you recommend it as a thoroughly
respectable and intellectual production?"
She said she could.
"Haven't you read it?" she asked in some surprise.
"No," I stammered. "At least, not yet. I'm going to as soon as I can
find the requisite leisure. You see, we are very busy just now--very
busy. But if you can vouch for the story being a first-class
article--something, say, like 'The Vicar of Wakefield' or 'David
Harum'--we'll take it."
"Now you're talking," she said. "And do I get the check now?"
"Wait," I said; "not so fast. I have forgotten one thing," and I saw her
face fall. "We want the privilege of publishing the novel under a title
of our own, and anonymously. If that is not satisfactory the deal is
off."
She brightened in a moment.
"It's a go, if that's all," she said. "Call it whatever you please, and
the more anonymous it is the better it will suit yours truly."
So we settled the matter then and there, and when I gave her our check
for a thousand she said I was all right.
III
Half an hour after Miss Vincent had left the office Perkins came in with
his arms full of bundles, which he opened, spreading their contents on
my desk.
He had a pair of suspenders with nickel-silver mountings, a tie, a
lady's belt, a pair of low shoes, a shirt, a box of cigars, a package of
cookies, and a half-dozen other things of divers and miscellaneous
character. I poked them over and examined them, while he leaned against
the desk with his legs crossed. He was beaming upon me.
"Well," I said, "what is it--a bargain sale?"
Perkins leaned over and tapped the pile with his long fore-finger.
"Aftermath!" he crowed, "aftermath!"
"The dickens it is," I exclaimed, "and what has aftermath got to do with
this truck? It looks like the aftermath of a notion store."
He tipped his "Air-the-Hair" hat over one ear and put his thumbs in the
armholes of his "ready-tailored" vest.
"Genius!" he announced. "Brains! Foresight! Else why Perkins the Great?
Why not Perkins the Nobody?"
He raised the suspenders tenderly from the pile and fondled them in his
hands.
"See this?" he asked, running his finger along the red corded edge of
the elastic. He took up the tie and ran his nail along the red stripe
that formed the selvedge on the back, and said: "See this?" He pointed
to the red laces of the low shoes and asked, "See this?" And so through
the whole collection.
"What is it?" he asked. "It's genius! It's foresight."
He waved his hand over the pile.
"The aftermath!" he exclaimed.
"These suspenders are the Crimson Cord suspenders. These shoes are the
Crimson Cord shoes. This tie is the Crimson Cord tie. These crackers are
the Crimson Cord brand. Perkins & Co. get out a great book, 'The Crimson
Cord!' Sell five million copies. Dramatized, it runs three hundred
nights. Everybody talking Crimson Cord. Country goes Crimson Cord crazy.
Result--up jump Crimson Cord this and Crimson Cord that. Who gets the
benefit? Perkins & Co.? No! We pay the advertising bills and the other
man sells his Crimson Cord cigars. That is usual."
"Yes," I said, "I'm smoking a David Harum cigar this minute, and I am
wearing a Carvel collar."
"How prevent it?" asked Perkins. "One way only,--discovered by Perkins.
Copyright the words 'Crimson Cord' as trade-mark for every possible
thing. Sell the trade-mark on royalty; ten per cent. of all receipts for
'Crimson Cord' brands comes to Perkins & Co. Get a cinch on the
aftermath!"
"Perkins!" I cried, "I admire you. You _are_ a genius. And have you
contracts with all these--notions?"
"Yes," said Perkins, "that's Perkins' method. Who originated the Crimson
Cord? Perkins did. Who is entitled to the profits on the Crimson Cord?
Perkins is. Perkins is wide awake _all_ the time. Perkins gets a profit
on the aftermath and the math and the before the math."
And so he did. He made his new contracts with the magazines on the
exchange plan--we gave a page of advertising in the "Crimson Cord" for
a page of advertising in the magazine. We guaranteed five million
circulation. We arranged with all the manufacturers of the Crimson Cord
brands of goods to give coupons, one hundred of which entitled the
holder to a copy of "The Crimson Cord." With a pair of Crimson Cord
suspenders you get five coupons; with each Crimson Cord cigar, one
coupon; and so on.
IV
On the first of October we announced in our advertisement that "The
Crimson Cord" was a book; the greatest novel of the century; a
thrilling, exciting tale of love. Miss Vincent had told me it was a love
story. Just to make everything sure, however, I sent the manuscript to
Professor Wiggins, who is the most erudite man I ever met. He knows
eighteen languages, and reads Egyptian as easily as I read English. In
fact his specialty is old Egyptian ruins and so on. He has written
several books on them.
Professor said the novel seemed to him very light and trashy, but
grammatically O.K. He said he never read novels, not having time, but he
thought that "The Crimson Cord" was just about the sort of thing a silly
public that refused to buy his "Some Light on the Dynastic Proclivities
of the Hyksos" would scramble for. On the whole I considered the report
satisfactory.
We found we would be unable to have Pyle illustrate the book, he being
too busy, so we turned it over to a young man at the Art Institute.
That was the fifteenth of October, and we had promised the book to the
public for the first of November, but we had it already in type and the
young man, his name was Gilkowsky, promised to work night and day on
the illustrations.
The next morning, almost as soon as I reached the office, Gilkowsky came
in. He seemed a little hesitant, but I welcomed him warmly, and he spoke
up.
"I have a girl to go with," he said, and I wondered what I had to do
with Mr. Gilkowsky's girl, but he continued:
"She's a nice girl and a good looker, but she's got bad taste in some
things. She's too loud in hats, and too trashy in literature. I don't
like to say this about her, but it's true and I'm trying to educate her
in good hats and good literature. So I thought it would be a good thing
to take around this 'Crimson Cord' and let her read it to me."
I nodded.
"Did she like it?" I asked.
Mr. Gilkowsky looked at me closely.
"She did," he said, but not so enthusiastically as I had expected.
"It's her favorite book. Now, I don't know what your scheme is, and I
suppose you know what you are doing better than I do; but I thought
perhaps I had better come around before I got to work on the
illustrations and see if perhaps you hadn't given me the wrong
manuscript."
"No, that was the right manuscript," I said. "Was there anything wrong
about it?"
Mr. Gilkowsky laughed nervously.
"Oh, no!" he said. "But did you read it?"
I told him I had not because I had been so rushed with details connected
with advertising the book.
"Well," he said, "I'll tell you. This girl of mine reads pretty trashy
stuff, and she knows about all the cheap novels there are. She dotes on
'The Duchess,' and puts her last dime into Braddon. She knows them all
by heart. Have you ever read 'Lady Audley's Secret'?"
"I see," I said. "One is a sequel to the other."
"No," said Mr. Gilkowsky. "One is the other. Some one has flim-flammed
you and sold you a typewritten copy of 'Lady Audley's Secret' as a new
novel."
V
When I told Perkins he merely remarked that he thought every publishing
house ought to have some one in it who knew something about books, apart
from the advertising end, although that was, of course, the most
important. He said we might go ahead and publish "Lady Audley's Secret"
under the title of "The Crimson Cord," as such things had been done
before, but the best thing to do would be to charge Rosa Belle Vincent's
thousand dollars to Profit and Loss and hustle for another
novel--something reliable and not shop-worn.
Perkins had been studying the literature market a little and he advised
me to get something from Indiana this time, so I telegraphed an
advertisement to the Indianapolis papers and two days later we had
ninety-eight historical novels by Indiana authors from which to choose.
Several were of the right length, and we chose one and sent it to Mr.
Gilkowsky with a request that he read it to his sweetheart. She had
never read it before.
We sent a detective to Dillville, Indiana, where the author lived, and
the report we received was most satisfactory.
The author was a sober, industrious young man, just out of the high
school, and bore a first-class reputation for honesty. He had never been
in Virginia, where the scene of his story was laid, and they had no
library in Dillville, and our detective assured us that the young man
was in every way fitted to write a historical novel.
"The Crimson Cord" made an immense success. You can guess how it boomed
when I say that although it was published at a dollar and a half, it was
sold by every department store for fifty-four cents, away below cost,
just like sugar, or Vandeventer's Baby Food, or Q & Z Corsets, or any
other staple. We sold our first edition of five million copies inside of
three months, and got out another edition of two million, and a
specially illustrated holiday edition and an _edition de luxe_, and "The
Crimson Cord" is still selling in paper-covered cheap edition.
With the royalties received from the aftermath and the profit on the
book itself, we made--well, Perkins has a country place at Lakewood, and
I have my cottage at Newport.
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1904, by Leslie's Magazine.]
THE RHYME OF THE CHIVALROUS SHARK[2]
BY WALLACE IRWIN
Most chivalrous fish of the ocean,
To ladies forbearing and mild,
Though his record be dark, is the man-eating shark
Who will eat neither woman nor child.
He dines upon seamen and skippers,
And tourists his hunger assuage,
And a fresh cabin boy will inspire him with joy
If he's past the maturity age.
A doctor, a lawyer, a preacher,
He'll gobble one any fine day,
But the ladies, God bless 'em, he'll only address 'em
Politely and go on his way.
I can readily cite you an instance
Where a lovely young lady of Breem,
Who was tender and sweet and delicious to eat,
Fell into the bay with a scream.
She struggled and flounced in the water
And signaled in vain for her bark,
And she'd surely been drowned if she hadn't been found
By a chivalrous man-eating shark.
He bowed in a manner most polished,
Thus soothing her impulses wild;
"Don't be frightened," he said, "I've been properly bred
And will eat neither woman nor child."
Then he proffered his fin and she took it--
Such a gallantry none can dispute--
While the passengers cheered as the vessel they neared
And a broadside was fired in salute.
And they soon stood alongside the vessel,
When a life-saving dingey was lowered
With the pick of the crew, and her relatives, too,
And the mate and the skipper aboard.
So they took her aboard in a jiffy,
And the shark stood attention the while,
Then he raised on his flipper and ate up the skipper
And went on his way with a smile.
And this shows that the prince of the ocean,
To ladies forbearing and mild,
Though his record be dark, is the man-eating shark
Who will eat neither woman nor child.
[Footnote 2: From "Nautical Lays of a Landsman," by Wallace Irwin.
Copyright, 1904, by Dodd, Mead & Co.]
THE PLAINT OF JONAH
BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE
Why should I live, when every day
The wicked prospers in his way,
And daily adds unto his hoard,
While cutworms smite the good man's gourd?
When I would rest beneath its shade
Comes the shrill-voiced book-selling maid,
And smites me with her tireless breath--
Then am I angry unto death.
When I would slumber in my booth,
Who comes with accents loud and smooth,
And talks from dawn to midnight late?
The honest labor candidate.
Who pounds mine ear with noisy talk,
Whose brazen gall no ire can balk
And wearies me of life's short span?
The accident insurance man.
And when, all other torments flown,
I think to call one hour mine own,
Who takes my leisure by the throat?
The villain taking up a vote.
A DOS'T O' BLUES
BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
I' got no patience with blues at all!
And I ust to kindo talk
Aginst 'em, and claim, 'tel along last Fall,
They was none in the fambly stock;
But a nephew of mine, from Eelinoy,
That visited us last year,
He kindo convinct me differunt
While he was a-stayin' here.
Frum ever'-which way that blues is from,
They'd tackle him ever' ways;
They'd come to him in the night, and come
On Sundays, and rainy days;
They'd tackle him in corn-plantin' time,
And in harvest, and airly Fall,
But a dose't of blues in the wintertime,
He 'lowed, was the worst of all!
Said all diseases that ever he had--
The mumps, er the rheumatiz--
Er ever'-other-day-aigger's bad
Purt' nigh as anything is!--
Er a cyarbuncle, say, on the back of his neck,
Er a felon on his thumb,--
But you keep the blues away from him,
And all o' the rest could come!
And he'd moan, "They's nary a leaf below!
Ner a spear o' grass in sight!
And the whole wood-pile's clean under snow!
And the days is dark as night!
You can't go out--ner you can't stay in--
Lay down--stand up--ner set!"
And a tetch o' regular tyfoid-blues
Would double him jest clean shet!
I writ his parents a postal-kyard,
He could stay 'tel Spring-time come;
And Aprile first, as I rickollect,
Was the day we shipped him home!
Most o' his relatives, sence then,
Has either give up, er quit,
Er jest died off; but I understand
He's the same old color yit!
MORRIS AND THE HONORABLE TIM[3]
BY MYRA KELLY
On the first day of school, after the Christmas holidays, teacher found
herself surrounded by a howling mob of little savages in which she had
much difficulty in recognizing her cherished First-Reader Class. Isidore
Belchatosky's face was so wreathed in smiles and foreign matter as to be
beyond identification; Nathan Spiderwitz had placed all his trust in a
solitary suspender and two unstable buttons; Eva Kidansky had entirely
freed herself from restraining hooks and eyes; Isidore Applebaum had
discarded shoe-laces; and Abie Ashnewsky had bartered his only necktie
for a yard of "shoe-string" licorice.
Miss Bailey was greatly disheartened by this reversion to the original
type. She delivered daily lectures on nail-brushes, hair-ribbons, shoe
polish, pins, buttons, elastic, and other means to grace. Her talks on
soap and water became almost personal in tone, and her insistence on a
close union between such garments as were meant to be united, led to a
lively traffic in twisted and disreputable safety-pins. And yet the
First-Reader Class, in all other branches of learning so receptive and
responsive, made but halting and uncertain progress toward that state of
virtue which is next to godliness.