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: