"No, no!" said Fulkerson, "you don't catch on to the business end of this
thing, my friends. You're proceeding on something like the old exploded
idea that the demand creates the supply, when everybody knows, if he's
watched the course of modern events, that it's just as apt to be the
other way. I contend that we've got a real substantial success to
celebrate now; but even if we hadn't, the celebration would do more than
anything else to create the success, if we got it properly before the
public. People will say: Those fellows are not fools; they wouldn't go
and rejoice over their magazine unless they had got a big thing in it.
And the state of feeling we should produce in the public mind would make
a boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for E. O. W. Heigh?"

He looked sunnily from one to the other in succession. The elder Dryfoos
said, with his chin on the top of his stick, "I reckon those Little Neck
clams will keep."

"Well, just as you say," Fulkerson cheerfully assented. "I understand you
to agree to the general principle of a little dinner?"

"The smaller the better," said the old man.

"Well, I say a little dinner because the idea of that seems to cover the
case, even if we vary the plan a little. I had thought of a reception,
maybe, that would include the lady contributors and artists, and the
wives and daughters of the other contributors. That would give us the
chance to ring in a lot of society correspondents and get the thing
written up in first-class shape. By-the-way!" cried Fulkerson, slapping
himself on the leg, "why not have the dinner and the reception both?"

"I don't understand," said Dryfoos.