Part 14

"A most remarkable young man," pursued the Bishop, congratulatorily. He had received three and one-half bushels of letters from utter strangers, commending his practical Christianity and his highly intelligent plan for feeding the hungry. Five vestry-men also had expressed their gratification that his name headed the list of the men who had made New York the greatest city of the hemisphere. It looked as though the hungry were to be fed.

The Bishop and Grace moved out of the doorway to allow the reporters to pass, and were themselves about to enter the house when a sound of cheering made them halt in their tracks.

A vast crowd was walking up the Avenue. In the van marched one of H. R.'s free sandwiches. He was dressed in crimson broadcloth (from Morton & Co. as per the next morning's accounts) and he wore a shining silk hat (Fox Brothers, as per same in the _Times_, _Herald_, and _Tribune_). The sandwich-board was a most gorgeous affair--a shield of burnished gold (by Cellini & Co., Florentine frame-makers) on which were the arms of the City of New York in heraldic colors. Beneath, in six-inch letters of glittering turquoise enamel, was:

In front of the Goodchild mansion the stalwart free sandwich stopped, faced Miss Goodchild, raised his glittering top-hat, and held it in the air, Beau Brummelesquely.

Andrew Barrett was immediately behind the herald of the free and intelligent people of the greatest city of the New World.

A hush fell on the multitude.

"Speech!" shrieked Andrew Barrett.

"Speech!" shrieked twelve hundred and thirty-eight intelligent New-Yorkers and seven bankers.

"There's Bishop Phillipson!" shrilled a correctly gowned elderly lady, pointing a jeweled lorgnette at the Bishop of New York. It meant the Church approved.

"Hooray for the Bishop! Bishop! Bishop!"

"_Vox populi, vox Dei_," murmured the Bishop to himself.

"Say something, my child," he gently urged Grace. "After all, we may dislike the way it is done, but if the hungry are fed we may be forgiven."

Grace Goodchild burned with desire to make a wonderful speech to prove that her greatness was her very own. They wanted her, not H. R., this time! It was _her_ triumph, not his.

Alas! She did not know what to say. She did not even know how to say it. She therefore shook her head angrily.

"Speech!" shouted the crowd, twice as vehemently as before. They always want to hear what you don't wish to say.

The cameras were clicking away madly. They sounded like the telegraph-room of a national convention.

Five-dozen healthy young persons began chanting, rhythmically:

"Speech! Speech! Speech!--speech!--speech!"

Grace thought they were saying:

"His Peach! His Peach! His Peach! Peach! Peach!"

She hotly resented the intimation of H. R.'s ownership, but the sincerity of the tribute paralyzed her. The sandwich-man had been amiably told by Andrew Barrett, "Hold the pose, you slob!" and did so. His immobility was most impressive. His shield dazzled Grace. She recalled, in a flash, Geraldine Farrar.

She bowed to the sandwich, then to right and left, kissed her hand to the crowd of voters and not-yet voters, and ran blushing into the house.

The storm of applause broke loose. The very house rocked drunkenly as the sound-waves dashed themselves against the facade.

The strenuous, nerve-racking life of New York compelled the crowd to linger for an hour. It was not until they began to break off bits of the bronze railing and chip souvenirs from the portico columns that the Goodchilds' butler sent a hurry call for the police.

The lieutenant's official version was cold and formal.

XXI

The Public Menu Commission had been having pitched battles. The Public Sentiment Corps had been bombarding the newspapers with letters asking for the official menu, but the commission refused to be hurried by popular clamor, and said so to the reporters. Their own sessions were held behind locked doors. Omelette soufflee au curacoa was definitely stricken off Signor Piccolini's tentative menu, on the theory that the filling was not permanent.

"Air is cheap," protested Piccolini, "and we have to consider the expense."

"But we want something that will stay by the hungry more than fifteen minutes."

"Then," said Piccolini, scathingly, "give them sliced rubber boots."

"If _you_ prepared the sauce, dear master," interjected H. R., who happened to be present, "I'd rather eat it than any other artist's filet Chateaubriand aux--"

Piccolini bowed to him profoundly. Then he shrugged his shoulders at the others.

"Nevertheless," he said, with conviction, "Omelette soufflee--"

"What can you expect from the other members?" whispered H. R. to him. "If we prolong the debate there won't be any hungry men alive to eat our dinner. Yield, dear master, for the sake of humanity." Then he said aloud, "Let's try beans."

The Commission therefore reported progress and adjourned for the day.

The newspapers, spurred thereto by the avalanche of letters and favorite recipes from charitable ladies in Brooklyn, who gave their names, addresses, and terms per week, devoted much space to the ideal hunger-appeaser.

For the first time in history New York began to take an intelligent interest in menus. Everybody talked about eating as if Hungarian orchestras and Brazilian dances did not exist.

Presently the newspapers announced on unimpeachable authority that serious dissensions existed among the members of the Public Menu Commission. It was hinted that resignations would be called for.

Applications for the vacant places and suggestions from really competent men poured into the editorial rooms. It made the commission, as usual, an editorial target. More space!

That impelled the Commission, speaking with difficulty by reason of the swollen lips of the chairman, to announce the menu. H. R. had it printed on academy board.

New York, on the tiptoe of expectation to learn what an ideal hunger-appeaser would consist of, and how it could be done for twenty-five cents and how the commission could decide without bloodshed, made haste to read the menu:

Soup a la Piccolini Entree a la Hotel Regina Roast a la Perry Vegetable a la Weinpusslacher Dessert a la Fitz-Marlton Bread a la Prof. Preston Milk a la Pasteur Coffee a la Manhattan Tea as Wanted

O. K. H. R., _Sec._

The exact recipe of each dish would be made public after the Hunger Feast. It would remain a secret until then!

More space! See? Could the newspapers help it? Didn't people have to have something to talk about? If they didn't, what could the editorial writers have to write about?

Knowing that talk must continue in order that interest in the Hunger Feast might not abate, H. R. himself went to the shops on Fifth Avenue. The shops elsewhere would follow the Avenue fashions.

He told each window-dresser the same thing.

"I come to you _first_ because you are an artist concerned with color effects and striking arrangements. You also are a psychologist, since you compel people to halt on the sidewalk and then mutely induce them to use the doors. You really are the man who declares the dividends on the firm's capital stock. Yes, you do, and I'll see that the big chief acknowledges it, too. Now I've come to you--_first_! Whatever you do will be copied. It makes you plagiarizable, and that is merely the recognition of greatness. You have the window. In order to dissociate the idea of money from your shop in the public's mind I'm going to give you a chance to prove that you are above mere money-making, which is something no Fifth Avenue shop ever did before. Remember in this connection the psychology of the crowd and of the money they wish to spend and at the same time keep in their pockets. You and your windows are New York--the New York that draws the crowd of natives and Americans. Give a whole window, not to _my_ charity, but to New York's--to yours! Put this menu on an easel, with a background of that wonderful velvet you had the other day--the one that killed your competitors. It was wonderful!"

Before the artist could draw his breath H. R. had warmly bid him good-by, leaving a menu in the astonished artist's hand.

They did. It was original, as they explained to the boss. And even department-store bosses know that originality means novelty, and novelty is what New York pays for.

Within six hours the first edition of menus was exhausted. In every shop window in New York the public could read the Public Menu Commission's masterpiece. Cost: $68.14 + H. R.

The undoubted possessors of perfect beauty gave more trouble than the menu, and therefore got more space in the newspapers. A regular detail of police guarded not only the Allied Arts Building day and night, but also the honor and features of the Public Beauty Commission. Grace Goodchild was compelled to make use of her neighbor's house, Mrs. Vantine's, in order to reach the street. She used the Seventy-sixth Street entrance. Mrs. Vantine congratulated Grace each time on her deserved triumph and asked her to look at Louise, her youngest.

H. R. had told Barrett to convey delicately to the press that the relatively young wife of one of the members of the commission had left for Reno. No name was mentioned. Therefore the portraits of all the male members were impartially published. A neat little interrogation-mark after each name did _not_ constitute libel.

The commissioners were thereafter compelled to be particularly nice to their own wives in public.

The theatrical profession howled individually, collectively, in person, in writing, by telephone, and through press agents. Nightly these favorites would ask, more or less nasally and slightly below pitch, whether they were not perfectly beautiful, and gave the audience the opportunity to judge of fifteen-sixteenths of their persons. And the unanimous reply was, "You are!"--from the claque. It became the topic of the day, and as such divided families and parted friends.

At the end of three days H. R. diabolically announced that only sixty-eight had been selected.

"Aren't there one hundred perfectly beautiful girls in Greater New York?" he feverishly asked the reporters. "Aren't there?"

The literary misogynists propounded the same query--in the head-lines, at that! On the very morning that saw that insulting question printed it was estimated by one of the newspapers that 318,029 answered, "Present." It was probably an exaggeration, as there doubtless was some repeating.

The Public Beauty Commission added fourteen to the list of utter pulchritudes. Names, addresses, and portraits duly printed.

Elderly persons signing William H. P. or James G. C. in feminine hand-writing asked the most conservative newspapers whether there was nothing else fit to print but the disgusting travesty on charity or the appalling vulgarity of immodest females.

The newspapers printed the letters. One of them, an afternoon sheet, stopped printing names and portraits of the successful. It stopped for one issue.

The circulation department interviewed the city department. The paper went back, under a new city editor, to the business of printing all the news that was fit to print.

The public demanded it.

On Sunday all the newspapers published the full list of one hundred perfectly beautiful girls who alone would sell tickets admitting the holder to the Mammoth Hunger Feast in the capacity of spectator. One to each customer; no more.

On Monday they printed a facsimile of H. R.'s ticket.

No. 1 was a coupon to be detached by the seller. It was in the nature of both wages and a vote to show which was the perfectest of the perfect. It would mean the only fair election ever held in America. Only one ticket to each customer. There would be no rich man buying tickets by the thousand, no stuffing of the ballot-boxes by the gallant commander of a militia regiment, no undue influence on the part of high political officials. No man could resist a perfectly beautiful girl who asked him to buy one ticket for a quarter of a dollar, twenty-five cents.

No bribing by kisses was necessary.

The rest of the ticket was retained by the buyer. It bought what the masses were beginning to speak of as the dandy belly-filler for a hungry person who was warranted not to have any money. No. 3 coupon was to be detached by the doorkeeper at Madison Square Garden and returned to the ticket-buyer. If the holder of said coupon exercised his or her brains he or she would receive ten thousand dollars in cash. Conditions governing the collection of said ten thousand dollars would be published on Saturday morning. It would _not_ be a lottery.

It now behooved charitable New-Yorkers to buy the tickets which would feed all hungry persons who positively had no money to buy food with, and at the same time receive ten thousand dollars in cash, brains being present--all for twenty-five cents.

The ten thousand would be paid in cash, with United States Treasury notes obtained from the National Bank of the Avenue. This insured their genuineness.

On Monday the perfectly beautiful started. It was, fittingly, a perfectly beautiful day. In automobiles (makers' names given, since it was for charity) decked with beautiful flowers (donating florists also honorably mentioned in the public prints, and paid advs. besides) the perfectly beautiful hundred went forth to appeal to the great heart of New York.

They were indeed beautiful. At least the men, being blind and possessing the suffrage, thought so. Why, they even clamored to be allowed to buy. And found ways and means of repeating. They never can vote honorably.

The newspapers reported that by 11 P.M. 38,647 tickets had been sold. Also they announced twenty-three engagements of perfectly beautiful ticket-sellers.

Grace Goodchild's name led the list. This time Mr. Goodchild did not deny it. The reporters refused to listen to him, damn 'em!

On Tuesday the receipts fell on. Only 7,363 were sold.

No engagements.

On Wednesday the sales rose. The _offers_ of marriage aggregated 18,889. Sixteen engagements of poor but perfectly beautiful girls to rich but devilishly wise old men!

A truly remarkable thing happened. Everybody ceased to be concerned with the sales of tickets or the object thereof. Crowds before the newspaper offices patiently watched for announcements of fresh betrothals. Every time one went on the bulletin-board the spectators cheered as if it were a home run instead of a prospective marriage.

The betrothed reported to H. R. that they found the display of the solitaires interfered with the sales of tickets. He advised them to remove it. They refused.

"Well," he said, coldly, "the one who sells the most tickets will be declared the most beautiful of the hundred. Of course you don't care what men think of your looks so long as one man thinks you are the most beautiful. He must, since he is your fiance. By all means show the solitaire. I respect your modesty. Besides, it keeps you from receiving offers that you cannot, with honor, entertain."

They therefore removed their engagement-rings during business hours.

In Thursday's papers were printed the facsimile of a certified check for ten thousand dollars signed by H. R. It was a sample prize. All checks would be exchanged for cash before the Hunger Feast began.

_Save your coupons!_

This was already the commercial slogan of a great nation.

On Friday H. R., knowing that even perfectly beautiful girls cannot hold the attentive interest of New York unless infractions of the Seventh Commandment are provided in relays, gave out a statement for the newspapers. The newspapers not only printed it, but featured it.

Heretofore [said H. R.] when charitable folks have given money to organized charity they have never been able to feel certain that the money went to the right people. Organized charity has been compelled to be careful. While the merits of the case were under investigation it has frequently happened that the case has died of starvation. Now, genuine destitution needs not life-insurance examination, but common sense and ordinary Christianity on the jump. We have undertaken to feed the hungry who have no money to buy food with. If anybody out of the thousands who will be fed by us is proven to be an undeserving object of our charity I will give one hundred thousand dollars par value in gilt-edged securities to any organized charity approved by Mr. George G. Goodchild, president of the Ketcham National Bank, who, being my prospective father-in-law against his wishes, will be glad to have me lose the money.

Modern methods of efficiency have been applied to charity for the first time. Hence this meal, scientifically studied, artistically concocted, digestible, delicious, and filling. There will be no graft, no throwing away of the public's nobly given money, no dietetic fads, no scientific sawdust, no waste, no salaries, no fraudulent hungers, no inhumanity, no maudlin sentiment, nothing but common sense now first applied to charity by New York. The Mammoth Hunger Feast, marking an era in the life of the great metropolis, will begin at 8.30 P.M. in order to give time for all ticket-holders to dine at home. Well-fed New-Yorkers will therefore be able to see with their own eyes how starving people eat--people who have no money to buy food with. Before each ticket-holder takes the seat to which he is entitled he, or more probably she, will receive ten thousand dollars in cash, by simply using brains. Let us see if New-Yorkers are as clever as they are charitable. Also, I shall marry Grace Goodchild in June.

[Signed] H. R.

A great many people announce an epoch-making idea and expect the world to remember it ever thereafter. H. R. knew that, living in a republic, he must iterate, reiterate, repeat, and sign every time.

On Saturday morning the ninety-nine other perfectly beautiful girls were engaged. Grace Goodchild, when asked point-blank if she were engaged to H. R., now answered, "Do you see any engagement-ring?" Then she held up her slim and beautiful hands. No ring.

All told, 186,898 tickets had been sold. It was plain that repeating had been indulged in. The fair sellers could not be blamed.

"If susceptible men have bought more than one ticket," H. R. said to the reporters, "they need not think they will get more than ten thousand dollars. But the fact remains that we have more than enough money."

This entitled H. R. to the respect of the most conservative dailies. And, moreover, he paid full rates for a half-page in which he printed this advertisement:

HUNGRY PEOPLE WHO CAN'T BUY FOOD BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO MONEY WILL RECEIVE A FINE DINNER FREE BY GOING TO MADISON SQUARE GARDEN TO-NIGHT BEFORE 8.30. FOURTH AVENUE ENTRANCE.

NO MATTER HOW YOU CAME TO BE HUNGRY AND PENNILESS; NO MATTER WHAT YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN OR WHAT YOUR RELIGION NOW IS; NO MATTER WHAT YOUR HABITS ARE OR WHAT YOUR POLITICAL OPINIONS MAY BE, WITHOUT REGARD TO YOUR JAIL RECORD, DISEASE, STATE OF MIND, OR FAVORITE NEWSPAPER, IF YOU ARE HUNGRY AND HAVE NO MONEY, COME AND EAT!

TO THE PUBLIC: COME AND SEE THEM EAT YOUR TICKETS!

UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN SANDWICH ARTISTS.

H. R., _Sec._

SPONSORS: THE MEN WHO HAVE MADE NEW YORK WHAT IT IS!

Then followed three hundred and seventeen famous names.

"What I have to say," H. R. modestly told the reporters, "I have stated in my advertisement. However, if you wish to ask any questions, or if you think the public is interested in any particular point--"

"It is! We do!" exclaimed the reporters. "Tell us about the ten thousand dollars!"

"It is very simple and very easy," said H. R., with the deadly earnestness of a man who knows he will not be believed when he speaks the truth in New York. "As each person passes the ticket-taker he will go, coupon in hand, into the superintendent's office. There he will be asked one question. It is not a catch question. No puns permitted. No double meaning. No particularly deep or recondite significance. It is a plain question, vital to the welfare of all New-Yorkers, affecting the destiny of the American nation. The answer is perfectly obvious. The Mayor has been invited to be present, and he will see to it that no fraud is perpetrated on the thousands of people who have bought tickets in good faith--"

"I thought the object of the tickets was to feed hungry--" began a serious-eyed reporter.

"It is; but charity carries a reward in cash. It is the modern way. You might add that there will be no reserved seats, no privileged classes. Where all men are alike charitable, all men are equal before God and man!"

Napoleon revolutionized the art of war by moving quickly and overwhelming the foe with artillery. H. R. made charity a success by appealing not alone to the charitable instinct of New-Yorkers, but to every other instinct he could think of. Therefore everybody who was not hungry logically decided to go to the Mammoth Hunger Feast. The newspapers printed long and reassuring accounts of the police arrangements.

H. R., being a republican at heart, had reserved the Imperial Box for Grace Goodchild and her friends, and ninety-nine Royal boxes for the other ticket-sellers and their fiances. His free sandwich men occupied the front row of arena seats and had been coached by the leader of the Grand Opera claque. At a given signal they were to cheer Grace Goodchild. When the bugle announced H. R.'s entrance they were to go crazy.

Ten beers _after_ the show.

XXII

At half after seven that night H. R., accompanied by eighteen contemporary historians and six magazine psychological portraitists, went to the entrance of the hungry. It was in the rear of the Garden and was dark and narrow.

Symbolism!

It was the same entrance that a few weeks previously had admitted the circus's beasts; only the beasts were not hungry.

Fourth Avenue seethed with humanity. A blind man afflicted with stone deafness could have told that hungry people were there provided his nose worked.

The street-cars had stopped running at 6.30 P.M., after the twenty-seventh accident.

The crowd was orderly and silent, as really hungry people are. And they had good manners, as the physically weak always have. And they were not impatient, for the prospect of eating always makes the starving hopeful.

A merciful darkness covered the hideousness of ten thousand faces. The reporters began to fidget like nervous women at a military play just before the execution.

H. R., seizing the exact psychological moment, said to the reporters:

"Let us press the button!"

It is the modern way--the press and the pressure.

He pressed the button. It turned on the lights of an electric sign hung above the entrance. The starving men read in blazing letters:

IF YOU ARE HUNGRY AND

HAVE NO MONEY WALK IN!

By their light the reporters were able to see the faces of the crowd plainly.

"My God!" said the young man from the _Times_.

The dazzling invitation was so worded as to prevent unseemly haste and unnecessary crowding. It said, "_Walk_ in."

"It is easy to assume, gentlemen," said H. R., calmly, to the reporters, "that all these people are hungry."

"Yes, let 'em all in!" entreated those reporters who were not jotting down impressions.

H. R. shook his head sternly.

"We have our duty to the public to perform. We must determine whether they have no money."

"Your duty is to feed them _all_," said the _Sun_ man.

"You can't afford to make a single mistake. Did you see that white-haired woman--"

"Come with me, gentlemen," cut in H. R., leading the way within.