In spite of the
quality of the magazine, and in spite of the kindness which so many
newspaper men felt for Fulkerson, the notices in the New York papers
seemed grudging and provisional to the ardor of the editor. A merit in
the work was acknowledged, and certain defects in it for which March had
trembled were ignored; but the critics astonished him by selecting for
censure points which he was either proud of or had never noticed; which
being now brought to his notice he still could not feel were faults. He
owned to Fulkerson that if they had said so and so against it, he could
have agreed with them, but that to say thus and so was preposterous; and
that if the advertising had not been adjusted with such generous
recognition of the claims of the different papers, he should have known
the counting-room was at the bottom of it. As it was, he could only
attribute it to perversity or stupidity. It was certainly stupid to
condemn a magazine novelty like 'Every Other Week' for being novel; and
to augur that if it failed, it would fail through its departure from the
lines on which all the other prosperous magazines had been built, was in
the last degree perverse, and it looked malicious. The fact that it was
neither exactly a book nor a magazine ought to be for it and not against
it, since it would invade no other field; it would prosper on no ground
but its own.
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