“The Crimson Cord” made an immense success. You can guess how it boomed when I say that, although it was published at a dollar and a half, it was sold by every department store for fifty-four cents, away below cost, just like sugar, or Vandeventer's Baby Food, or Q & Z Corsets, or any other staple. We sold our first edition of five million copies inside of three months, and got out another edition of two million, and a specially illustrated holiday edition, and an “edition de luxe;” and “The Crimson Cord” is still selling in paper-covered cheap edition. With the royalties received from the after-math and the profit on the book itself, we made--well, Perkins has a country place at Lakewood, and I have my cottage at Newport. VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRINCESS OF PILLIWINK PERKINS slammed the five-o'clock edition of the Chicago “Evening Howl” into the waste-paper basket, and trod it down with the heel of his Go-lightly rubber-sole shoe. “Rot!” he cried. “Tommy rot! Fiddlesticks! Trash!” I looked up meekly. I had seldom seen Perkins angry, and I was abashed. He saw my expression of surprise; and, like the great man he is, he smiled sweetly to reassure me. “Diamonds again,” he explained. “Same old tale. Georgiana De Vere, leading lady, diamonds stolen. Six thousand four hundred and tenth time in the history of the American stage that diamonds have been stolen. If I couldn't--” “But you could, Perkins,” I cried, eagerly. “You would not have to use the worn-out methods of booming a star. In your hands theatrical advertising would become fresh, virile, interesting. A play advertised by the brilliant, original, great--” “Illustrious,” Perkins suggested. “Illustrious Perkins of Portland,” I said, bowing to acknowledge my thanks for the word I needed, “would conquer America. It would fill the largest theatres for season after season. It would--” Perkins arose and slapped his “Air-the-Hair” hat on his head, and hastily slid into his “ready-tailored” overcoat. Without waiting for me to finish my sentence he started for the door. “It would--” I repeated, and then, just as he was disappearing, I called, “Where are you going?” He paused in the hall just long enough to stick his head into the room. “Good idea!” he cried, “great idea! No time to be lost! Perkins the Great goes to get the play!” He banged the door, and I was left alone. That was the way Perkins did things. Not on the spur of the moment, for Perkins needed no spur. He was fall of spurs. He did things in the heat of genius. He might have used as his motto those words that he originated, and that have been copied so often since by weak imitators of the great man: “Don't wait until to-morrow; do it to-day. Tomorrow you may be dead.” He wrote that to advertise coffins, and--well, Li Hung Chang and Sara Bernhardt are only two of the people who took his advice, and lay in their coffins before they had to be in them.