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.
[Illustration]
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!