Also, there was a letter from the man of the rolled-up sleeves, stating that he was prepared to run some twenty thousand copies of the paper, and would start the press upon receipt of a check for the amount. This was a severe blow, but as the amount was comparatively small it was not fatal. Besides, they had grown somewhat accustomed to such things. They were not even surprised when their landlord, who, with his family, occupied apartments in the rear, came in to demand his rent in the middle of the month—a thing he had never dreamed of doing since the first year of their occupancy. Not that he was at all afraid, he said, but he was only a poor man who sublet to them, and had met with ill fortune. Later, the Colonel came up with still further strange letters, though none so pathetic as the one of the night before.
However, there were other complications. People in small villages were sending lists containing the same names. Some of the lists were almost identical. When Perner realized this he scowled anxiously, and lay down on the couch to think.
"Good heavens! fellows," he exclaimed, "we'll ruin the nation!"
"What's the matter? What do you mean?" asked Van Dorn.
"Why, see here! People will be sending in the same names, and sending each other's names, till they get us so mixed up we can't straighten the thing out in a hundred years! Then they'll accuse us of fraud, and blame each other for a lot of things, too. The result will be that they'll get into a fight until the whole nation is in one immense wrangle. We'll ruin the country! That's what we'll do! We'll ruin the country!"
Perner had arisen and was walking the floor excitedly.
"I tell you, Van, your 'cash for names' scheme is a fallacy! I said so the other day, and I say so all the more now. I'll admit that I believed in it and abetted it at first. It looked like a big thing, and we all thought it was, but it isn't. In the first place, we can't afford it, as I told you before. In the next place, the people don't understand it, and we're going to be deluged with letters like those that came with the first mail. And even if we could afford it, and even if those letters didn't count, we can't afford to disturb the peace of the whole nation by creating hard feelings in every village and hamlet, that will finally end, not only with the utter ruin of our paper, but in riots and rebellion and government interference, if not in one mighty civil war and the total destruction of the whole English-speaking world!"
Perner's old manner—the manner in which he had set forth the scheme on the night of the golden dinner—had returned to him. It had returned, but with a difference: then he had been painting the glories of the plan; now he was depicting its horrors. The ten years' business experience had wallowed through a cloudland of dreams, but had materialized in very harsh daylight at last. As for Van Dorn and Livingstone, they sat gloomily silent. The Colonel was first to express himself. He said:
"I hardly think we need to disturb ourselves so seriously. At the rate the replies are coming I should say that there is no immediate danger of upsetting the universe with our plans. We have received a number, it is true, but unless there is a marked increase to-morrow, I may safely reduce my force of assistants by one half."
"You don't think, then, we'll get a hundred thousand lists of twenty names each in reply to our 'cash for names' advertisement?" Perner asked—somewhat relieved, it would seem.