"In a year!" said Perner. "We'll have them in _six months_! Less! Why," he continued excitedly, "even starting with but a single unit and doubling, you get a million with twenty multiplications, and starting, as we will, with half a million or more names to begin with, and getting twenty new names for each on the next round, and so continuing, we'd have--allowing that only one fourth of them subscribe--we'd have fifty million subscribers--if there were that many in the universe--in three rounds! Six months! Why, in less than a month people will be scratching the world with garden-rakes to find anybody that isn't already a subscriber, and even in China and the interior of Africa the 'Whole Family' will have become the great civilizer and diffuser of the English tongue." Livingstone's face flushed and paled by turns, and his eyes sparkled. "By gad, yes!" he said. "By gad!" It was the last word. In the contemplation of this stupendous proposition no one could utter another syllable. The Martinis came on just then, and went down with a hot sizzle. Barrifield was first to recover his voice. He was slow and deliberate again, though still gasping a little, perhaps from the cocktail. "Of course you know, fellows," he said, with an air of profound reflection, "that this plan is going to take a little more money. It involves sending out a large number of sample copies, and there'll be some little clerk hire and postage to pay before the money comes in. It won't be much extra, of course,--a few hundred dollars, perhaps,--but we must be prompt paying our help. And then, we want to have a bank-account. Frisby's scheme didn't call for any outlay, you see, until the money began to come, and Frisby started without a dollar. He didn't--" "Yes, I know," interrupted Perner; "but Frisby's scheme was new then, and might not work so well now. We've got another and a better one than Frisby or anybody else ever had before. Even if it does take a little more money at the start, any one of us can earn more in a week than it takes to pay all the clerks we'll need." "Why, yes," said Livingstone; "and we'll do most of the paper ourselves, so we'll save that." "We've got a great combination, boys," said Barrifield--"great!" In the brief lull that followed this statement, which so fully expressed the feeling of all present, Perner took occasion to go somewhat into detail. "In the first place," he said, "we're going to be flooded with names. We'll have our paper all made up and start the presses running at the rate of a hundred thousand a day the week before our advertising appears--not sooner than that, because we want money to be coming in as soon as possible after the papers are printed." Perner paused to appreciate the admiring glances of the others. His ten years' business experience was crystallizing itself into a beautiful system.