"added to our subscription list before December 1 of the present year. By selecting the best names before they are taken by others, and subscribing now, you are certain to get your money back and a snug sum for Christmas besides! Don't wait a moment! Select sure winners and send them to us with the small subscription price of a dollar! You get five for one in return, and the most glorious paper ever printed besides!"
Perner paused and looked straight at Barrifield. The big blond dreamer was regarding them in a dazed way.
"That means," he said at last, huskily, "another list of names with each of our half-million or million subscriptions, and then—"
"And then," said Van Dorn, unable to hold in another second, "sample copies and the same inducements to the new names for another month, and the same to the names these send for still another month, and so on until we have the whole English-reading world on our subscription list, and there are no more names to send, except as people are born and grow up. There are fifteen million English-speaking families in the United States, not to mention Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa, and we'll have them all in a year! In a year! Every one of them!"
"In a year!" said Perner. "We'll have them in six months! Less! Why," he continued excitedly, "even starting with but a single unit and doubling, you get a million with twenty multiplications, and starting, as we will, with half a million or more names to begin with, and getting twenty new names for each on the next round, and so continuing, we'd have—allowing that only one fourth of them subscribe—we'd have fifty million subscribers—if there were that many in the universe—in three rounds! Six months! Why, in less than a month people will be scratching the world with garden-rakes to find anybody that isn't already a subscriber, and even in China and the interior of Africa the 'Whole Family' will have become the great civilizer and diffuser of the English tongue."
Livingstone's face flushed and paled by turns, and his eyes sparkled.
"By gad, yes!" he said. "By gad!"
It was the last word. In the contemplation of this stupendous proposition no one could utter another syllable.
The Martinis came on just then, and went down with a hot sizzle. Barrifield was first to recover his voice. He was slow and deliberate again, though still gasping a little, perhaps from the cocktail.
"Of course you know, fellows," he said, with an air of profound reflection, "that this plan is going to take a little more money. It involves sending out a large number of sample copies, and there'll be some little clerk hire and postage to pay before the money comes in. It won't be much extra, of course,—a few hundred dollars, perhaps,—but we must be prompt paying our help. And then, we want to have a bank-account. Frisby's scheme didn't call for any outlay, you see, until the money began to come, and Frisby started without a dollar. He didn't—"