Part 3

Hendrik saw, with carefully concealed delight, the sensation caused even in the Syrian-infested streets of the quarter by the sight of a handful of sandwich-men in full regalia. He heard the exclamations that fell from polyglot lips. It was a foretaste of success, the preface of a famous man's biography!

The union drank fifteen beers, slowly--and quickly wiped the day's free lunch from the face of the earth. The huskiest of the three bartenders began to work with one hand, the other being glued to a bung-starter. He felt it had to come.

"I'm boss!" said Hendrik to his children as a preliminary to discussing the by-laws.

"I'm willin'!"

"Same here!"

"Let 'er go, cap!"

"Suits _me_!"

They were all eager to please him--too eager. It made him ask, disgustedly:

"Don't you fellows care who is boss?"

"Naw! Don't we have to have one, anyhow?"

"Yes. But to have one crammed down your throats--"

"The beer helps the swallowing, boss," said the hatter with conviction--and a fresh hope!

"There doesn't seem to be a man among the whole lot of you," said Hendrik.

A young fellow of about twenty-eight, very pale, wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, spoke back, "If you'd starved for three weeks and two days, and on top of it been kicked and cheated and held up, there wouldn't be a hell of a lot of fight in you, my wise gazabo."

"That's exactly what would make me fight," retorted Hendrik, angrily. "Each of you has a vote; each of you, therefore, has as much to say as to how this country should be run as any millionaire. Don't you know what to do with your vote?"

"You're lucky to get a quarter and two nights' lodging nowadays," said the old man with waiter's foot. "The time we elected Gilroy I made fifteen bones and was soused for a mont'. Shorty McFadden made thirty-five dollars--"

"Any of you Republicans?"

"No!" came in a great and indignant chorus.

"I used to be!" defiantly asserted the young man with the spectacles and the pale face and the beaten look.

"And now?"

"Just a lame duck, I guess."

"Too much rumatism," suggested a husky voice, and all the others laughed. The depths of degradation are reached when you can laugh at your own degradation.

"Are any of you socialists?" asked Hendrik.

They looked at him doubtfully. They wished to please him and would have answered accordingly if they had known what he wished to get from them. What they wished to get from him, in the way of speech, was another invitation to tank up. But when in doubt, all men deny. It is good police-court practice. Three veterans, therefore, tentatively said:

"No!"

Hendrik was disappointed, but did not show it. He asked, "Are any of you Christians?"

The crowd fell back.

"Is there one man among you who believes in God?"

They stared at one another in the consternation of utter hopelessness. Mulligan was the first to break the painful silence. He said, with a sad triumph:

"I knew it. Stung again! They'll do anything to get you to listen. We fell for it like boobs."

"What is that?" said Hendrik, sharply.

"I was sayin'," replied Mulligan, grateful that he was one schooner ahead, anyhow, "that I can listen to a good brother like you by the hour when I ain't thirsty. The dryness in my throat affects my hearin'. If you blow again I'll believe in miracles. How could I help it?"

Fourteen pairs of eyes turned hopefully toward the wonder-worker. But he said in the habitual tone of all born leaders:

"You--bums, get around! I'm going to lick hell out of Mulligan. And after that, to show I'm boss, I'll blow again. But first the licking."

Hendrik gave his hat to Fleming to hold and began to turn up his sleeves. But Mulligan hastily said, "I'm converted, boss!" and actually looked pious. How he did it, nobody could tell, for he was not a Methodist by birth or education.

"Mulligan, the union wages will be forty schooners a day." Hendrik said, sternly. Again it was genius--that is, to talk so that men will understand you.

"Kill the scabs!" shrieked Mulligan, and there was murder in his eyes.

Hendrik Rutgers put his right foot firmly on the second rung of the ladder. He did it by spending seventy-five cents for the second time. Fifteen beers.

"Everybody," he said, threateningly, "wait until the schooners are on the bar!" thereby disappointing those who had hoped to ring in an extra glass during the excitement. But all that Hendrik desired was to inculcate salutary notions of discipline and obedience under circumstances that try men's souls. He yelled:

"Damn you, step back! All of you! _Back!_"

They fell back.

The quivering line, now two feet from the beer, did not look at the glasses full of cheer, but at the eyes full of lickings. They gazed at him, open-mouthed; they gazed and kept on gazing, two feet from the bar--the length of the arm from the beer!

Not obey? After that? There is no doubt of it; they are born!

"To the union! All together! _Drink!_" They did not observe that this man was regulating even their thirst. The reason they did not notice it was that they were so busy assuaging it.

They drank. Then they looked at Hendrik. He was a law of nature. He shook his head. They understood his "No." It was like death. To save their faces they began to clamor for free lunch.

"Get to hell out of here!" said the proprietor.

"Do you want your joint smashed?" asked Rutgers. He approached the man and looked at him from across a gulf of six inches that made escape impossible. Whatever the proprietor saw in Rutgers's eyes made him turn away.

"Come across with the free lunch," Hendrik bade the proprietor. To his men he said, "Boys, get ready!"

These men-that-were--miserable worms, scum of the earth, walking cuspidors--began to take off their armor. The bartenders were husky, but hadn't the boss commanded, _Get ready!_ and didn't all men know he meant, _Get ready_ TO EAT? Moreover, each sandwich felt he might dodge the bung-starters, but not the boss's right flipper!

The union was making ready to fight with the desperation of men whose retreat is cut on by a foe who never heard of The Hague Convention.

"Hey, no rough-house!" yelled the proprietor.

"Free lunch!" retorted Hendrik. Then he added, "_Quick!_"

The sandwich-men's nostrils began to dilate with the contagion of the battle spirit. One after another, these beasts of the gutter took off the boards and leaned them against the wall, out of the way, and eyed the boss expectantly, waiting for the word--_men once more!_ Hendrik, with the eye of a strategist and the look of a prize-fighter, planned the attack. Like a very wise man who lived to be the most popular of all our Presidents, he did his thinking aloud.

On occasions like this Hendrik's mind also worked in battle-cries and best expressed itself in action.

"Free lunch," said Hendrik, "is free. It is everybody's. It is therefore _ours_!"

"Give us our grub!" hoarsely cried the union.

"Three to each bartender," said Hendrik. "When I yell 'Now!' jump in, from both ends of the bar at once--six of you here; you six over there. Fleming, you smash the mirrors back of the bar with those empty schooners. Mulligan, you cop some bottles of booze, and wait outside--do you hear? _Wait outside!_--for us. I'll attend to the cash-register myself. Now, you," he said peremptorily to the proprietor, "do we get the free lunch? _Say no; won't you, please?_"

Hendrik radiated battle. The derelicts took on human traits as their eyes lit up with visions of pillage. Fleming grasped a heavy schooner in each hand. Mulligan had his eye on three bottles of whisky and, for the first time in years, was using his mind--planning the get-away.

The proprietor saw all this and also perceived that he could not afford a victory. It was much cheaper to give them seven cents worth of spoiled rations. Therefore he decided in favor of humanity.

"Do what I told you, Jake," he said, with the smile of a man who has inveigled friends into accepting over-expensive Christmas presents. "Let 'em have the rest of the lunch--_all they want_." He smiled again, much pleased with his kindly astuteness. He was a constructive statesman and would be famous for longevity.

But the sandwich-men swaggered about, realizing that under the leadership of the boss they had won; they had obtained something to which they had no right; by threats of force they had secured food; the boss had made men of them. They therefore crowned Hendrik king. The instinctive and immemorial craving of all men for a father manifests itself--in republics that have forgotten God--in the election of the great promisers and the great confiscators to the supreme power. History records that no dynasty was ever founded except by a man who fought both for and with his followers. The men that merely fought for their fellows have uniformly died by the most noble and inspiring death of all--starvation. Names and posthumous addresses not known.

When not a scrap remained on any of the platters, Hendrik called his men to him and told them:

"Meet me at the sign-painter's, corner Twenty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue next Friday night after seven. We'll be open till midnight. Be sure and bring your boards with you."

"We gotter give 'em up before we can get paid," remonstrated Mulligan. "If we don't we don't eat."

"That's right!" assented a half-dozen.

"_Bring them!_" said Hendrik. The time to check a mutiny is before it begins.

"A' right!" came in a chorus of fourteen heroic voices.

"Beginning next Monday, you'll get twenty cents an hour. I guarantee that to you out of my own pocket. You must each of you bring all the other sandwiches you run across. If necessary, drag them. We must have about one hundred to start, if you want forty beers a day."

"We do! We do!"

"Then bring the others, because we've got to begin with enough men in the union to knock the stuffing out of those who try to scab on us. Get that?"

"Sure thing!" they shouted, with the surprised enthusiasm of men who suddenly understand.

They were deep in misery and accustomed to a poverty so abject that they no longer were capable of even envying the rich. They, therefore, could hate only those who were poorer than themselves--the men who dared to have thirsts that could be assuaged with less than forty beers per day. Not obey the boss, when they already felt an endless stream trickling down their unionized gullets? And not kill the scab whose own non-union thirst would prolong theirs?

No! A man owes some things to his fellows, but he owes everything to himself. That is why, for teaching brotherhood, there is nothing like one book: the city Directory, from a fourth-floor window.

When the boss left them he was certain that they would not fail him. Just let them dare try to stay away, after he had so kindly destined them to be the rungs of the ladder on which he expected to climb to his lady's window--and her father's pocket! As he walked away, his confidence in himself showed in his stride so clearly that those who saw him shared that confidence. It is not what they were when they were not leaders, but what they can be when they become leaders, that makes them remarkable men.

II

The next morning Hendrik went to his tailor. As he walked into the shop he had the air of a man in whom two new suits a day would not be extravagance. The tailor, unconscious of cause and effect, called him "Mister," against the habit of years. Hendrik nodded coldly and said:

"As secretary and treasurer of the National Street Advertising Men's Association, I've got to have a new frock-coat. Measure me for one."

Hendrik had the air of a man who sees an unpleasant duty ahead, but does not mean to shirk it. This attitude always commands respect from tailors, clergymen, and users of false weights and measures.

"Left the bank?" asked the tailor, uncertainly.

"I should say I had," answered Hendrik, emphatically.

"What is the new job, anyhow?" asked the tailor, professionally. His customers usually told him their business, their history, and their hopes. By listening he had been able to invest in real estate.

"As I was about to say when you _interrupted_ me"--Hendrik spoke rebukingly.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Rutgers," said the tailor, and blushed. He knew now he should have said "position" instead of "job." The civilization of to-day--including sanitary plumbing--is possible because price-tags were invented. This is not an epigram.

"--the clothes must be finished by Thursday. If you can't do it, I'll go somewhere else."

"Oh, we can do it, all right, Mr. Rutgers."

"Good morning," and Hendrik strode haughtily from the shop.

To the tailor Hendrik had always been a clerk at a bank. But now it was plain to see that Mr. Rutgers thought well of himself, as a man with money always does in all Christian countries. Hendrik's credit at once jumped into the A1 class. Some people and all tailors judge men by their backs.

Being sure of the guests, Hendrik Rutgers went forth in search of their dinner. To feed fivescore starving fellow-men was a noble deed; to feed them at the expense of some one else was even higher. So, dressed in his frock-coat, wearing his high hat as though it was a crown, he sought Caspar Weinpusslacher. The owner of the "Colossal Restaurant," just off the Bowery, gave a square meal for a quarter of a dollar, twenty-five cents; for thirty cents he gave the same meal with a paper napkin and the privilege of repeating the potato or the pie. His kitchen organization was perfect. His cooks and scullions had served in the German army in similar capacities, and he ruled them like one born and brought up in the General Staff. His waiters also were recruited from the greatest training-school for waiters in the world. He operated on a system approved by an efficiency expert. By giving low wages to people who were glad to get them, paying cash for his supplies and judiciously selecting the latter just on the eve of their spoiling, he was able to give an astonishingly good meal for the money. His profits, however, depended upon his selling his entire output. This did not always happen. Some days Herr Weinpusslacher almost lost three dollars.

No system is perfect. Otherwise hotel men would wish to live for ever.

Hendrik stalked into the Colossal dining-room and snarled at one of the waiters:

"Where's your boss?"

The waiter knew it couldn't be the Kaiser, or a millionaire. It must therefore be a walking delegate. He deferentially pointed to a short, fat man by the bar.

"Tell him to come here," said Rutgers, and sat down at a table. It isn't so much in knowing whom to order about, but in acquiring the habit of ordering everybody about, that wins.

Caspar Weinpusslacher received the message, walked toward the table and signaled to a Herculean waiter, who unobtrusively drew near--and in the rear--of H. Rutgers.

Hendrik pointed commandingly to a chair across the table. C. Weinpusslacher obeyed. The Herculean waiter, to account for his proximity, flicked non-existent crumbs on the napeless surface of the table.

"Recklar tinner?" he queried, in his best Delmonico.

"_Geht-weg!_" snarled Mr. Rutgers. The waiter, a nostalgic look in his big blue eyes, went away. _Ach_, to be treated like a dog! Ach, the Fatherland! And the officers! _Ach!_

"Weinpusslacher," said Rutgers, irascibly, "who is your lawyer and what's his address?"

C. Weinpusslacher's little pig-eyes gleamed apprehensively.

"For why you wish to know?" he said.

"Don't ask _me_ questions. Isn't he your friend?"

"Sure."

"Is he smart?"

"Smart?" C. Weinpusslacher laughed now, fatly. "He's too smart for _you_, all right. He's Max Ondemacher, 397 Bowery. I guess if you--"

"All right. I'm going to bring him to lunch here."

"He wouldn't lunch here. He's got money," said C. Weinpusslacher, proudly.

"He will come." Rutgers looked, in a frozen way, at Caspar Weinpusslacher, and continued, icily: "I am the secretary and treasurer of the _National_ Street Advertising Men's Association. If I told you I wanted _you_ to give _me_ money you'd believe me. But if I told you _I_ wanted to give _you_ money, you wouldn't. So I am going to let your own lawyer tell you to do as I say. I'll make you rich--for nothing!"

And Hendrik Rutgers walked calmly out of the Colossal Restaurant, leaving in the eyes of C. Weinpusslacher astonishment, in the mind respect, and in the heart vague hope.

This is the now historic document which Hendrik Rutgers dictated in Max Onthemaker's office:

Hendrik Rutgers, secretary and treasurer of the National Street Advertising Men's Association, agrees to make Caspar Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant famous by means of articles in the leading newspapers in New York City. For these services Hendrik Rutgers shall receive from said Caspar Weinpusslacher, proprietor of said Colossal Restaurant, one-tenth (1/10) of the advertising value of such newspaper notices--said value to be left to a jury composed of the advertising managers of the _Ladies Home Journal_, the Jewish _Daily Forward_, and the New York _Evening Post_, and of Max Onthemaker and Hendrik Rutgers. It is further stipulated that such compensation is to be paid to Hendrik Rutgers, not in cash, but in tickets for meals in said Colossal Restaurant, at thirty cents per meal, said meal-tickets to be used by said Hendrik Rutgers to secure still more desirable publicity by feeding law-abiding, respectable poor people.

_Panem et circenses!_ He had made sure of the first! The public could always be depended upon to furnish the second by being perfectly natural.

M. Onthemaker accompanied H. Rutgers to the Colossal. He had some difficulty in persuading C. Weinpusslacher to sign. But as soon as it was done Hendrik said:

"First gun: The National Street Advertising Men will hold their annual dinner here next Saturday, about one hundred of us, thirty cents each; regular dinner. _That_ is legitimate news and will be printed as such. It will advertise the Colossal and the Colossal thirty-cent dinner. You won't be out a cent. We pay cash for our dinner. I'll supply a few decorations; all you'll have to do is to hang them from that corner to this. You might also arrange to have a little extra illumination in front of the place. Have a couple of men in evening clothes and high hats on the corner, pointing to the Colossal, and saying: '_Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant! Three doors down. Just follow the crowd!_' Arrange for all these things so that when you see that I am delivering the goods you won't be paralyzed. Another thing: There will be reporters from every daily paper in the city here Saturday night. Provide a table for them and pay especial attention to both dinner and drinks. _They_ will make you famous and rich, because you will tell them that they are getting the regular thirty-cent dinner. It will be up to you to be intelligently generous now so that you may with impunity be intelligently stingy later, when you are rich. I advise you to have Max here, because you seem to be of the distrustful nature of most damned fools and therefore must make your money in spite of yourself. Next Saturday at six P.M.! You'll make at least two hundred thousand dollars in the next five years. Now I am going to eat. Come on, Onthemaker."

H. Rutgers sat down, summoned the Herculean waiter, and ordered two thirty-cent dinners.

C. Weinpusslacher, a dazed look in his eyes, approached Max and whispered, "Hey, dot's a smart feller. What?"

"Well," answered M. Onthemaker, lawyer-like, "you haven't anything to lose."

"You said I should sign the paper," Caspar reminded him, accusingly.

"You're all right so long as you don't give him a cent unless I say so."

"I won't; not even if you say so."

With thirty cents of food and thirty millions of confidence under his waistcoat, Hendrik Rutgers walked from the Colossal Restaurant down the Bowery and Center Street to the City Hall. At the door of the Mayor's room he fixed the doorkeeper with his stern eye and requested his Honor to be informed that the secretary of the National Street Advertising Men's Association would like to see his Honor about the annual dinner of the association, of which his Honor had been duly informed.

One of the Mayor's secretaries came out, a tall young man who, as a reporter on a sensational newspaper, had acquired a habit of dodging curses and kicks. Now, as Mayor's secretary, he didn't quite know how to dodge soft soap and glad hands.

"Good afternoon," said Hendrik, with what might be called a business-like amiability. "Will the Mayor accept?"

"The Mayor," said the secretary with an amazing mixture of condescension and uneasiness, as of a man calling on a poor friend in whose parlor there is shabby furniture but in whose cellar there is a ton of dynamite--"the Mayor knows nothing about your asso--of the _dinner_ of your association." The secretary looked pleased at having caught himself in time.

"Why, I wrote," began H. Rutgers, with annoyance, "over a week--" He silenced himself while he opened his frock-coat, tilted back his high hat from a corrugated brow, and felt in his pocket. It is the delivery, not the speech, that distinguishes the great artist. Otherwise writers would be considered intelligent people.

"Hell!" exclaimed Hendrik, looking at the secretary so fixedly and angrily that the ex-reporter flinched. "It's in the other coat. I mean the copy of the letter I sent the Mayor exactly a week ago to-day. I wondered why he hadn't answered."

"He never got it," the secretary hastened to say.

Hendrik laughed. "You must excuse my language; but you know what it is to arrange all the details of an annual meeting and banquet--menu, decorations, music, _and_ speeches. Well, here is the situation: the annual dinner of the National Street Advertising Men's Association will be held at Weinpusslacher's. Reception at six; dinner at eight; speeches begin about ten.

"What day?" asked the secretary.

"My head is in a whirl, and I don't-- Let me see-- Oh yes. Next Saturday, April twenty-ninth. I'll send you tickets. Do you think the Mayor will come?"

"I don't know. Saturdays he goes to his farm in Hartsdale."

"Yes, I know; but couldn't _you_ induce him to come? By George! there is nothing our association wouldn't do for you in return."

"I'll see," promised the secretary, with a far-away look in his eyes as if he were devising ways and means. Oh, he earned his salary, even if he was a Celt.

"Thank you. And-- Oh yes, by the way, some of our members will arrive at the Grand Central Station Saturday afternoon. Any objections to our marching with a band of music down the avenue to the Colossal? We'll wear our association badges; they are hummers." He felt in his coat-tails. "I wish I had some with me. Is it necessary to have a permit to parade?"

"Yes; but there will be no trouble about that."

"Oh, thanks. Will you fix that for us? I've got to go to Wall Street after one of the bankers on the list of speakers, and I'll be back in about an hour. Could I have the Mayor's acceptance and the permit to parade then? You see, it's only a couple of days and I hate to trust the mail. Thank you. It's very kind of you, and we appreciate it."

The secretary pulled out a letter and a pencil from his pocket as if to make a note on the back of the envelope, and so Hendrik Rutgers dictated:

"_The National Street Advertising Men's Association._ Altogether about one hundred and fifty members and one band of music. So long, and thank you very much, Mr.--er--"

"McDevitt.

"Mr. McDevitt. I'll return in about an hour from now, if I may. Thank you." And he bowed himself out.

Hendrik Rutgers had spoken as a man speaks who has a train to catch that he mustn't miss. That will command respect where an appeal in the name of the Deity will insure a swift kick. Republics!