“Splendid! Extraordinary! Are you making money? Do the folks appreciate a good periodical—paper is the commoner term?”
“Some d-does and some doesn’t,” says Mark.
“Ha! Not going as well as would be wished. Talk it over with Zadok. Tell Zadok your troubles. Maybe there will be a resultant benefit. Good words, those. Another man would say that maybe good would come of it, but Zadok Biggs has seen life and studied life, and he knows words. Perhaps I will be able to point out an opportunity. Opportunities are my specialty.”
“You b-bet they are,” says Mark, and I agreed with him, for Zadok had helped us out more than once before.
“Opportunity!” says Zadok. “A fine word and means a fine thing. What is an opportunity? Means something like a chance, only better. An opportunity is something you take hold of and hang onto and it leads you ahead. Always ahead. Opportunities never hold you back. Some folks say there aren’t opportunities, but they don’t know. If they rode all over the State on top of my wagon they would know. I know. I see ’em. Everywhere I see opportunities, and I see folks missing them. Yes, sir, missing opportunities that would make something of them. Why? Because they’re lazy, or because they want somebody to help them instead of helping themselves, or because they haven’t eyes to see. But I don’t take much stock in that. Anybody has eyes to see. What they lack is ambition to git up and hustle. Am I right?”
“You are,” says Mark.
“Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd does not let his opportunities slip. I have seen him catch them by the tail. Oh, many times I have seen him, and Binney, too, and Plunk and Tallow. Don’t be impatient. While I talk I think, I look about to see if there is an opportunity running at large. An opportunity for boys running a newspaper. Ha!”
He stopped and scratched his head, and whistled “Marching Through Georgia,” and got up and walked out to the dining-room, where he yelled at Mr. Tidd and Mark’s mother, and talked to them awhile. Then he came back and says:
“How does a paper make money? Subscribers, say I, and advertising. How do you get subscribers? First by having a good paper they’ll want to read. I can trust you to do that. Mark Tidd would have no other kind. Advertising? There may be advertising your experience has not made you aware of. That you don’t know about would be the vulgar way of expressing it. And Zadok Biggs knows of such advertising. It pays. There is money in it.”
“Good,” says Mark. “What is it?”