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The name of the hall and the night of exhibition were written in blank spaces on the posters and handbills with red chalk, in a fine commercial hand, by Tiffles himself; and, for a small consideration, the postmaster had agreed to stick up the posters on every corner; also on the post office and the three town pumps; and to distribute the handbills in every house.
He had expressly enjoined upon Tiffles and Overtop, in the communications which they had with her relative to the "Cosmopolitan Window Fastener," not to mention his name. He shrank from appearing to force himself on her notice. The discovery of her real parentage had modified Marcus's sensitiveness somewhat.
Marcus Wilkeson, speaking for self and friends, said he had no doubt of that. Mr. Tiffles's ideas always possessed the merit of novelty. "That means that they have no other merit!" returned Tiffles, laughing, "Very true of most of them, I confess all my failures. But here is an idea which even you, skeptic as you are, will grant to be not only novel, but great.
More work for the amiable Tiffles, but none for the melancholy Wilkeson. Two more clergymen with families, the County Judge, the local railroad agent, all the members of the Board of Freeholders, and several other people, who, according to the landlord of the United States Hotel, were highly influential in moulding public opinion, and were in the habit of receiving free tickets.
It is a moral entertainment, and will do them good." After a pause of about three minutes, giving the boys time to seat themselves, and the screams, mutterings, and laughter of the rest of the audience to die away, Tiffles said: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will introduce you to sunrise, in the Bight of Benin."
He wondered where Tiffles raised the money to pay the artist, but did not like to ask him. "Now I have caught you, you must come and see how we get along. The work is going on at my room in the Bartholomew Buildings, only a few steps from here." Good joke, that!"
"So then you are satisfied that this machine is of no value to Miss Minford except for old brass?" "Oh! I don't say that. Mr. Minford, aside from this absurd crotchet, may have possessed real mechanical genius. Let me see if some part of it may not be good for something besides perpetual motion." Wesley Tiffles peered down among the brazen and steel complexities again.
Let it be confessed at once. The lost scissors were all the time quietly resting at the bottom of Miss Wilkeson's workbag, and she knew it. The prevalent frailty of human nature must be her excuse. She had-obtained not only an introduction to Wesley Tiffles, but a pair of scissors which must be returned to him, and were therefore a bond of friendship.
If his panorama was to be a hopeless failure at the very outset, Tiffles wanted to be within striking distance of New York. He was sanguine of success; but, like a prudent general, he looked after his lines of retreat. To this small town in New Jersey, with which the fate of the great enterprise was to be indissolubly linked, Tiffles had sent a large stock of posters and handbills.
Tiffles replied to the effect that he would give them a dollar's worth apiece; but, in his heart, he foresaw, with that remarkable prescience which is occasionally vouchsafed to mortals, that the panorama of Africa was doomed to be a bad failure; and he bitterly regretted that he had not tried some one of a dozen other immense speculations which he had thought of.
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