Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1916 — CAP and BELLS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CAP and BELLS

SCHEME FOR MAKING MONEY Irving Bacheller, Head of Newspaper Syndicate, Would Buy Up All Great Auk Eggs in Existence. When Irving Bacheller was running a newspaper syndicate and publishing a juvenile magazine in New York he always sat in a large porch rocking chair before a fat desk so heaped with letters that every few minutes a little epistolary avalanche would shoot down from it to the floor. One day Orson Lowell, the artist, who was a partner in the magazine, found him in a more than usually meditating mood, and said to him. “What’s the matter, Irving; got an idea?” “Y-e-s,” answered Bacheller, very slowly, “a big one. One that will make us all rich. You know the great auk is extinct, and that there are’only four of its eggs in existence. They are worth thousands of dollars apiece, and a great auk itself would be priceless. My notion is to get these eggs and hatch ’em.” “But how will you hatch them?” asked Lowell. “Oh,” answered Bacheller, visibly annoyed. “I haven’t given that point any thought yet. But it’s a mere detail —a mere detail. The plan is bound to succeed. And it will make us all rich.” —Woman’s Home Companion.