There followed another gap of thirty feet, so that the valedictorian of
the doomed might be seen of all. Then came eighty-odd sandwich-bearers,
appositely legended. From time to time the valedictorian would stagger
as you have seen horses do on their last trip to the glue-factory.
Whereupon a couple of the non-descripts behind him would shuffle up and
endeavor to uphold him. And the others slouched on, deep-eyed, gaunt,
famine-stricken, rum-ravaged, disease-smitten--ex-bookkeepers, and
superannuated mechanics, and disgraced yeggmen, and former
merchants--and former men, too!
At Thirty-ninth Street a young woman dressed richly but in perfect taste
stood on the very corner. Her hair had glints of sunshine and her eyes
were like twin heavens, clean, and clear, and blue, and infinitely deep.
And the Madonna face saw the Death face, looked at the thing that had
been a man, and read his salutation. And in one of the pauses of the
"Funeral March" a thousand people heard her laugh, and heard her exclaim
with a contagious relish, spiced with undisguised admiration:
"_If that ain't the limit!_"
New York had spoken!
And the chauffeurs near her laughed in sympathy. And gray heads stuck
out of limousine windows, and millionaires and their female stood up in
their snail-moving touring-cars, and top-hatted coachmen turned
impassive heads on neck-hinges long since rusted with the arrogance of
menials. And upon their faces and along the ranks that lined both sides
of the great avenue a slow grin spread--uncertain, hesitating, dubious!
The great American sense of humor was trying to assert itself. Hendrik's
joke was not labeled "Joke" plainly enough. Otherwise the spectators
would have shown much earlier their ability to laugh at death, hunger,
disease, misery, drunkenness, honesty, despair--anything, so long as it
was the death, hunger, disease, misery, drunkenness, honesty, and
despair of others.
But at Tiffany's corner the traffic policeman stopped the leader of the
band; and he stopped the band; and the band stopped Rutgers; and Rutgers
stopped his army; and that stopped all traffic on the Avenue up to
Forty-second Street.
Hendrik Rutgers hurried forward and explained, calmly: "Here, officer. I
am the secretary of the National Street Advertising Men's Association.
We have a permit from the Mayor. Here it is."
"Oh, advertising! I see!" said the policeman, and smiled appreciatively.
He had feared they might be starving men.
"Yes," said H. Rutgers, quite loudly, "advertising the fact that a man
out of a job in New York, who is too proud to beg and too honest to
steal, has to become a sandwich-man and make from twenty-five to
forty-five cents for ten hours work--not in China or Mexico, but in New
York, to-day; men who are willing to work, but are old or sickly or have
no regular trade. You know how the Mayor feels about the rights of
citizens who are not rich and the duty of paid officials of this city.
He and I are opposed to too much law in the way of clubs. So kindly pass
the word down the line, officer."
The big traffic policeman, far more impressed by the delivery than by
the speech itself, touched his hand to his cap so very respectfully that
the grinning crowd at once became serious. Each woman turned on her
neighbor and frowned furiously the unuttered scolding for the other's
unseemly levity.
"What does it mean?" asked hundreds. All looked toward Hendrik Rutgers
for explanation, for official permission to laugh at a spectacle that
was not without humorous suggestions. But he kept them guessing. This is
called knowledge of stage effects; also psychological insight; also
cheap politics. Historians even refer to it as statesmanship.
Something that makes one hundred thousand New-Yorkers gasp and stare is
not necessarily news; an ingenius street-sign or a five-dollar-a-day
Steeple Jack could do it. But that not one of one hundred thousand
omniscient New-Yorkers knew whether to laugh, to curse, or to weep at
what they saw made that sight very decidedly "news." An interrogation
marker in one hundred thousand otherwise empty heads loomed gigantic
before the hair-trigger minds of the city editors. They sent their star
men to get answers to the multitudinous question; and, if possible, also
the facts.
Just south of Thirty-fourth Street the _Herald_, _Times_, _Sun_, and
_Evening Journal_ reporters overtook H. Rutgers. He made the procession
halt. That again made all Fifth Avenue halt. He waited until all the
reporters were near him, and then he spoke very slowly, for he guessed
that shorthand and literature do not necessarily coexist.
"The sandwich-men have formed a union. It includes sandwich-men from the
five boroughs. We are going to have an annual dinner at six o clock--we
are not fashionable folk, you know. There will be speeches. Did you ask
why we should have a union? I'll tell you why: because we didn't have
one; because employers have not thought of us as human beings, but as
human derelicts. A starving man who doesn't want to steal and is ashamed
to beg will sandwich for thirty cents a day ten hours; and he can't
always collect his wages. And who is going to fight for him? When you
think of the importance of all advertising, do you consider the peculiar
picturesqueness of advertising through sandwiches? In the Middle Ages
they had their heralds and their pursuivants--the sandwich-men of
feudalism; and later the town criers; and later still, _us_. Do you know
in what esteem sandwich-men are held in the south of France and in the
Orient? Did you know that sandwich-men take the place of bells on Good
Friday in Moldavia? Do you know why there are no commercial sandwich-men
in Russia or in Spain? Did you ever read what Confucius wrote about
'Those men who with letters on their garments dispel the ignorance of
buyers,' and a lot more? Did you? Did any clergyman ever tell you that
sandwich-men are, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alluded to twice in the
Old and five times in the New Testament? Don't you think that as
intelligent investigators of industrial conditions and of the submerged
tenth it would be worth your time to come to our annual dinner and hear
our version of it? And also see how starving men eat the first square
meal of the year?"
Of course it was pure inspiration and, as such, impressive.
"Yes, sir," respectfully replied the _Evening Journal_ man--a tall, dark
chap with gold-rimmed spectacles and a friendly smile. "What's the name
of the restaurant?"
"Caspar Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant," said H. Rutgers.
"Spell it!" chorused the reporters; and H. Rutgers did, slowly and
patiently. At once the _Evening Journalist_ rushed on to telephone the
caption of a story to his paper. That would enable the office to get out
an extra; after which would come another edition with the story itself.
He was the best head-line reporter in all New York.
Long before the National Street Advertising Men's Association reached
the Colossal Restaurant, Caspar Weinpusslacher converted himself into a
Teutonic hurricane and changed thirty short tables into three, long
ones. On his lips was a smile, and in his heart a hope that glowed like
an incandescent twenty-dollar gold piece, for Max Onthemaker had rushed
in breathlessly and gasped:
"He _is_ a smart feller, all right. What?" And he gave an _Evening
Journal_ to Caspar Weinpusslacher, wherein he read this: