But as to Lindau, the chief thing in his mind was a conception of the
droll irony of a situation in which so fervid a hater of millionaires
should be working, indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a man like
Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his money together out of
every gambler's chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift from
the error and need of others. The situation was not more incongruous,
however, than all the rest of the 'Every Other Week' affair. It seemed to
him that there were no crazy fortuities that had not tended to its
existence, and as time went on, and the day drew near for the issue of
the first number, the sense of this intensified till the whole lost at
moments the quality of a waking fact, and came to be rather a fantastic
fiction of sleep.
Yet the heterogeneous forces did co-operate to a reality which March
could not deny, at least in their presence, and the first number was
representative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. As a
result, it was so respectable that March began to respect these
intentions, began to respect himself for combining and embodying them in
the volume which appealed to him with a novel fascination, when the first
advance copy was laid upon his desk.
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