Contents - H. R. - 5 - Edwin Lefevre

The trouble was not in being a bank clerk, but in being a clerk in a bank that wanted him to be nothing but a bank clerk. That kind always enriches first the bank and later on a bit of soil.

Hendrik Rutgers had no desire to enrich either bank or soil.

He was blue-eyed, brown-haired, clear-skinned, rosy-cheeked, tall, well-built, and square-chinned. He always was in fine physical trim, which made people envy him so that they begrudged him advancement, but it also made them like him because they were so flattered when he reduced himself to their level by not bragging of his muscles. He had a quick-gaited mind and much fluency of speech. Also the peculiar sense of humor of a born leader that enabled him to laugh at what any witty devil said about others, even while it prevented him from seeing jokes aimed at his sacred self. He not only was congenitally stubborn—from his Dutch ancestors—but he had his Gascon grandmother's ability to believe whatever he wished to believe, and his Scandinavian great-grandfather's power to fill himself with Berserker rage in a twinkling. This made him begin all arguments by clenching his fists. Having in his veins so many kinds of un-American blood, he was one of the few real Americans in his own country, and he always said so.

It was this blood that now began to boil for no reason, though the reason was really the spring.

He had acquired the American habit of reading the newspapers instead of thinking, and his mind therefore always worked in head-lines. This time it worked like this: more money and more fun!

Being an American, he instantly looked about for the best rung of the ladder of success.

He had always liked the cashier. A man climbs at first by his friends. Later by his enemies. That is why friends are superfluous later.

Hendrik, so self-confident that he did not even have to frown, approached the kindly superior.

"Mr. Coster," he said, pleasantly, "I've been on the job over two years. I've done my work satisfactorily. I need more money." You could see from his manner that it was much nicer to state facts than to argue.

The cashier was looking out of the big plate-glass window at the wonderful blue sky—New York! April! He swung on his swivel-chair and, facing Hendrik Rutgers, stared at a white birch by a trout stream three hundred miles north of the bank.

"Huh?" he grunted, absently. Then the words he had not heard indented the proper spot on his brain and he became a kindly bank cashier once more.

"My boy," he said, sympathetically, "I know how it is. Everybody gets the fit about this time of year. What kind of a fly would you use for— I mean, you go back to your cage and confine your attention to the K-L ledger."

A two hours walk in the Westchester hills would have made these two men brothers. Instead, Hendrik allowed himself to fill up with that anger which is apt to become indignation, and thus lead to freedom. Anger is wrath over injury; indignation is wrath over injustice: hence the freedom.

"I am worth more to the bank than I'm getting. If the bank wants me to stay—"

"Hendrik, I'll do you a favor. Go out and take a walk. Come back in ten minutes—cured!

"Thanks, Mr. Coster. But suppose I still want a raise when I come back?

"Then I'll accept your resignation."

"But I don't want to resign. I want to be worth still more to the bank so that the bank will be only too glad to pay me more. I don't want to live and die a clerk. That would be stupid for me, and also for the bank."

"Take the walk, Hen. Then come back and see me."

"What good will that do me?"

"As far as I can see, it will enable you to be fired by no less than the Big Chief himself. Tell Morson you are going to do something for me. Walk around and look at the people—thousands of them; they are working! Don't forget that, Hen; working; making regular wages! Good luck, my boy. I've never done this before, but you caught me fishing. I had just hooked a three-pounder," he finished, apologetically.

Hendrik was suffocating as he returned to his cage. He did not think; he felt—felt that everything was wrong with a civilization that kept both wild beasts and bank clerks in cages. He put on his hat, told the head bookkeeper he was going on an errand for Mr. Coster, and left the bank.

The sky was pure blue and the clouds pure white. There was in the air that which even when strained through the bank's window-screens had made Hendrik so restless. To breathe it, outdoors, made the step more elastic, the heartbeats more vigorous, the thoughts more vivid, the resolve stronger. The chimneys were waving white plumes in the bright air—waving toward heaven! He wished to hear the song of freedom of streams escaping from the mountains, of the snow-elves liberated by the sun; to hear birds with the spring in their throats admitting it, and the impatient breeze telling the awakening trees to hurry up with the sap. Instead, he heard the noises that civilized people make when they make money. Also, whenever he ceased to look upward, in the place of the free sunlight and the azure liberty of God's sky, he beheld the senseless scurrying of thousands of human ants bent on the same golden errand.

When a man looks down he always sees dollar-chasing insects—his brothers!

He clenched his fists and changed, by the magic of the season, into a fighting-man. He saw that the ant life of Wall Street was really a battle. Men here were not writing on ledgers, but fighting deserts, and swamps, and mountains, and heat, and cold, and hunger; fighting Nature; fighting her with gold for more gold. It followed that men were fighting men with gold for more gold! So, of course, men were killing men with gold for more gold!

So greatly has civilization advanced since the Jews crucified Him for interfering with business, that to-day man not only is able to use dollars to kill with, but boasts of it.

"Fools!" he thought, having in mind all other living men. After he definitely classified humanity he felt more kindly disposed toward the world.

After all, why should men fight Nature or fight men? Nature was only too willing to let men live who kept her laws; and men were only too willing to love their fellow-men if only dollars were not sandwiched in between human hearts. He saw, in great happy flashes, the comfort of living intelligently, brothers all, employers and employed, rid of the curse of money, the curse of making it, the curse of coining it out of the sweat and sorrow of humanity.

"Fools!" This time he spoke his thought aloud. A hurrying broker's clerk smiled superciliously, recognizing a stock-market loser talking of himself to himself, as they all do. But Hendrik really had in mind bank clerks who, instead of striking off their fetters, caressed them as though they were the flesh of sweethearts; or wept, as though tears could soften steel; or blasphemed, as though curses were cold-chisels! And every year the fetters were made thicker by the blacksmith Habit. To be a bank clerk, now and always; now and always nothing!

He now saw all about him hordes of sheep-hearted Things with pens behind their ears and black-cloth sleeve-protectors, who said, with the spitefulness of eunuchs or magazine editors:

"You also are of us!"

He would not be of them!

He might not be able to change conditions in the world of finance, not knowing exactly how to go about it, but he certainly could change the financial condition of Hendrik Rutgers. He would become a free man. He would do it by getting more money, if not from the bank, from somebody else. In all imperfectly Christianized democracies a man must capitalize his freedom or cease to be free.

He returned to the bank. He was worth thousands to it. This could be seen in his walk. And yet when the cashier saw Hendrik's face he instantly rose from his chair, held up a hand to check unnecessary speech, and said:

"Come on, Rutgers. You are a damned fool, but I have no time to convince you of it. You understand, of course, that you'll never work for us again!"

"I shall tell the president."

"Yes, yes. He'll fire you."

"Not if he is intelligent, he won't," said Rutgers, with assurance.

The cashier looked at him pityingly and retorted: "A long catalogue of your virtues and manifold efficiency will weigh with him as much as two cubic inches of hydrogen. But I warned you."

"I know you did," said Hendrik, pleasantly.

Whereupon Coster frowned and said: "You are in class B—eight hundred dollars a year. In due time you will be promoted to class C—one thousand dollars. You knew our system and what the prospects were when you came to us. Other men are ahead of you; they have been here longer than you. We want to be fair to all. If you were going to be dissatisfied you should not have kept somebody else out of a job."

Hendrik did not know how fair the bank was to clerks in class C. He knew they were not fair to one man in class B. Facts are facts. Arguments are sea-foam.

"You say I kept somebody out of a job?" he asked.

"Yes, you did!"

The cashier's tone was so accusing that Hendrik said:

"Don't call a policeman, Mr. Coster."

"And don't you get fresh, Rutgers. Now see here; you go back and let the rise come in the usual course. I'll give you a friendly tip: once you are in class C you will be more directly under my own eye!"

Instead of feeling grateful for the implied promise, Hendrik could think only that they classified men like cattle. All steers weighing one thousand pounds went into pen B, and so on. This saved time to the butchers, who, not having to stop in order to weigh and classify, were enabled to slit many more throats per day.

He did not know it, but he thought all this because he wished to go fishing. Therefore he said: "I've got to have more money!" His fists clenched and his face flushed. He thought of cattle, of the ox-making bank, of being driven from pen A into pen B, and, in the end, fertilizer. "I've got to!" he repeated, thickly.

"You won't get it, take it from me. To ask for it now simply means being instantly fired."

"Being fired" sounded so much like being freed that Hendrik retorted, pleasantly:

"Mr. Coster, you may yet live to take your orders from me, if I am fired. But if I stay here, you never will; that's sure."

The cashier flushed angrily, opened his mouth, magnanimously closed it, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, preceded Hendrik Rutgers into the private office of the president.

"Mr. Goodchild," said Coster, so deferentially that Hendrik looked at him in surprise for a full minute before the surprise changed into contempt.

Mr. Goodchild, the president, did not even answer. He frowned, deliberately walked to a window and stared out of it sourly. A little deal of his own had gone wrong, owing to the stupidity of a subordinate.

He had lost money!

He was a big man with jowls and little puffs under the eyes; also suspicions of purple in cheeks and nose and suspicions of everybody in his eyes. Presently he turned and spat upon the intruders. He did it with one mild little word:

"Well?"

He then confined his scowl to the cashier. The clerk was a species of the human dirt that unfortunately exists even in banks and has to be apologized for to customers at times, when said dirt, before arrogance, actually permits itself vocal chords.

They spoil the joy of doing business, damn 'em!

"This is the K-L ledger clerk," said Coster. "He wants a raise in salary. I told him 'No,' and he then insisted on seeing you." Years of brooding over the appalling possibility of having to look for another job had made the cashier a skilful shirker of responsibilities. He always spoke to the president as if he were giving testimony under oath.

"When one of these chaps, Mr. Coster," said the president in the accusing voice bank presidents use toward those borrowers whose collateral is inadequate, "asks for a raise and doesn't get it he begins to brood over his wrongs. People who think they are underpaid necessarily think they are overworked. And that is what makes socialists of them!"

He glared at the cashier, who acquiesced, awe-strickenly: "Yes, sir!"

"As a matter of fact," pursued the president, still accusingly, "we should reduce the bookkeeping force. Dawson tells me that at the Metropolitan National they average one clerk to two hundred and forty-two accounts. The best we've ever done is one to one hundred and eighty-eight. Reduce! Good morning."

"Mr. Goodchild," said Hendrik Rutgers, approaching the president, "won't you please listen to what I have to say?"

Mr. Goodchild was one of those business men who in their desire to conduct their affairs efficiently become mind-readers in order to save precious time. He knew what Rutgers was going to say, and therefore anticipated it by answering:

"I am very sorry for the sickness in your family. The best I can do is to let you remain with us for a little while, until whoever is sick is better." He nodded with great philanthropy and self-satisfaction.

But Hendrik said, very earnestly: "If I were content with my job I wouldn't be worth a whoop to the bank. What makes me valuable is that I want to be more. Every soldier of Napoleon carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack. That gave ambition to Napoleon's soldiers, who always won. Let your clerks understand that a vice-presidency can be won by any of us and you will see a rise in efficiency that will surprise you. Mr. Goodchild, it is a matter of common sense to—"

"Get out!" said the president.

Ordinarily he would have listened. But he had lost money; that made him think only of one thing—that he had lost money!

The general had suddenly discovered that his fortress was not impregnable! He did not wish to discuss feminism.

Of course, Hendrik did not know that the president's request for solitude was a confession of weakness and, therefore, in the nature of a subtle compliment. And therefore, instead of feeling flattered, Hendrik saw red. It is a common mistake. But anger always stimulated his faculties. All men who are intelligent in their wrath have in them the makings of great leaders of men. The rabble, in anger, merely becomes the angry rabble—and stays rabble.

Hendrik Rutgers aimed full at George G. Goodchild, Esq., a look of intense astonishment.

"Get out!" repeated the president.

Hendrik Rutgers turned like a flash to the cashier and said, sharply: "Didn't you hear? Get out!"

"You!" shouted Mr. George G. Goodchild.

"Who? Me?" Hendrik's incredulity was abysmal.

"Yes! You!" And the president, dangerously flushed, advanced threateningly toward the insolent beast.

"What?" exclaimed Hendrik Rutgers, skeptically. "Do you mean to tell me you really are the jackass your wife thinks you?"

Fearing to intrude upon private affairs, the cashier discreetly left the room. The president fell back a step. Had Mrs. Goodchild ever spoken to this creature? Then he realized it was merely a fashion of speaking, and he approached, one pudgy fist uplifted. The uplift was more for rhetorical effect than for practical purposes, which has been a habit with most uplifts since money-making became an exact science. But Hendrik smiled pleasantly, as his forebears always did in battle, and said:

"If I hit you once on the point of the jaw it'll be the death-chair for mine. I am young. Please control yourself."

"You infernal scoundrel!"

"What has Mrs. Goodchild ever done to me, that I should make her a widow?" You could see he was sincerely trying to be not only just, but judicial.

The president of the bank gathered himself together. Then, as one flings a dynamite bomb, he utterly destroyed this creature. "You are discharged!"

"Tut, tut! I discharged the bank ages ago; I'm only waiting for the bank to pack up. Now you listen to me."

"Leave this room, sir!" He said it in that exact tone of voice.

But Hendrik did not vanish into thin air. He commanded, "Take a good look at me!"

The president of the bank could not take orders from a clerk in class B. Discipline must be maintained at any cost. He therefore promptly turned away his head. But Hendrik drew near and said:

"Do you hear?"

There was in the lunatic's voice something that made Mr. George G. Goodchild instantly bethink himself of all the hold-up stories he had ever heard. He stared at Hendrik with the fascination of fear.

"What do you see?" asked Rutgers, tensely. "A human soul? No. You see K-L. You think machinery means progress, and therefore you don't want men, but machines, hey?"

The president did not see K-L, as at the beginning of the interview. Instead of the two enslaving letters he saw two huge, emancipating fists. This man was far too robust to be a safe clerk. He had square shoulders. Yes, he had!

The president was not the ass that Hendrik had called him. His limitations were the limitations of all irreligious people who regularly go to church. He thus attached too much importance to To-day, though perhaps his demand loans had something to do with it. His sense of humor was altogether phrasal, like that of most multimillionaires. But if he was too old a man to be consistently intelligent, he was also an experienced banker. He knew he had to listen or be licked. He decided to listen. He also decided, in order to save his face, to indulge in humorous speech.

"Young man," he asked, with a show of solicitude, "do you expect to become Governor of New York?"

But Hendrik was not in a smiling mood, because he was listening to a speech he was making to himself, and his own applause was distinctly enjoyable, besides preventing him from hearing what the other was saying. That is what makes all applause dangerous. He went on, with an effect of not having been interrupted.

"Machines never mutiny. They, therefore, are desirable in your System. At the same time, the end of all machines is the scrap-heap. Do you expect to end in junk?"

"I was not thinking of my finish," the president said, with much politeness.

"Yes, you are. Shall I prove it?"

"Not now, please," pleaded the president, with a look of exaggerated anxiety at the clock. It brought a flush of anger to Hendrik's cheeks, seeing which the president instantly felt that glow of happiness which comes from gratified revenge. Ah, to be witty! But his smile vanished. Hendrik, his fists clenched, was advancing. The president was no true humorist, not being of the stuff of which martyrs are made. He was ready to recant when,

"Good morning, daddy," came in a musical voice.

Hendrik drew in his breath sharply at the narrowness of his escape. She who approached the purple-faced tyrant was the most beautiful girl in all the round world.

It was spring. The girl had brought in the first blossoms of the season on her cheeks, and she had captured the sky and permanently imprisoned it in her eyes. She was more than beautiful; she was everything that Hendrik Rutgers had ever desired, and even more!

"Er—good morning, Mr.—ah—" began the president in a pleasant voice.

Hendrik waved his hand at him with the familiar amiability we use toward people whose political affiliations are the same as ours at election-time. Then he turned toward the girl, looked at her straight in the eyes for a full minute before he said, with impressive gravity:

"Miss Goodchild, your father and I have failed to agree in a somewhat important business matter. I do not think he has used very good judgment, but I leave this office full of forgiveness toward him because I have lived to see his daughter at close range, in the broad light of day."

The only woman before whom a man dares to show himself a physical coward is his wife, because no matter what he does she knows him.

Mr. Goodchild was frightened, but he said, blusteringly, "That will do, you—er—you!"

He pointed toward the door, theatrically. But Hendrik put his fingers to his lips and said "Hush, George!" and spoke to her again:

"Miss Goodchild, I am going to tell you the truth, which is a luxury mighty rare in a bank president's private office, believe me."

She stared at him with a curiosity that was not far from fascination. She saw a well-dressed, well-built, good-looking chap, with particularly bright, understanding eyes, who was on such familiar terms with her father that she wondered why he had never called.

"Let me say," he pursued, fervently, "without any hope of reward, speaking very conservatively, that you are, without question, the most beautiful girl in all the world! I have been nearly certain of it for some time, but now I know. You are not only perfectly wonderful, but wonderfully perfect—all of you! And now take a good look at me—"

"Yes; just before he is put away," interjected the president, trying to treat tragedy humorously before this female of the species. But for the fear of the newspapers, he would have rung for the private detective whose business was to keep out cranks, bomb-throwing anarchists, and those fellow-Christians who wished to pledge their word of honor as collateral on time-loans of less than five dollars. But she thought this friendly persiflage meant that the interesting young man was a social equal as well as a person of veracity and excellent taste. So she smiled non-committally. She was, alas, young!

"They will not put me away for thinking what I say," asserted Hendrik, with such conviction that she blushed. Having done this, she smiled at him directly, that there might be no wasted effort. Wasn't it spring, and wasn't he young and fearless? And more than all that, wasn't he a novelty, and she a New York woman?

"When you hear the name of Hendrik Rutgers, or see it in the newspapers, remember it belongs to the man who thought you were the only perfectly beautiful girl God ever made. And He has done pretty well at times, you must admit."

With some people, both blasphemy and breakfast foods begin with a small "b". The Only Perfect One thought he was a picturesque talker!

"Mr. Rutgers, I am sorry you must be going," said the president, with a pleasant smile, having made up his mind that this young man was not only crazy, but harmless—unless angered. "But you'll come back, won't you, when you are famous? We should like to have your account."

Hendrik ignored him. He looked at her and said:

"Do you prefer wealth to fame? Anybody can be rich. But famous? Which would you rather hear: There goes Miss $80,000-a-year Goodchild or That is that wonderful Goodchild girl everybody is talking about?"

She didn't know what to answer, the question being a direct one and she a woman. But this did not injure Hendrik in her eyes; for women actually love to be compelled to be silent in order to let a man speak—at certain times, about a certain subject. Her father, after the immemorial fashion of unintelligent parents, answered for her. He said, stupidly: "It never hurts to have a dollar or two, dear Mr. Rutgers."

"Dollar or two! Why, there are poor men whose names on your list of directors would attract more depositors to this bank than the name of the richest man in the world. Even for your bank, between St. Vincent de Paul and John D. Rockefeller, whom would you choose? Dollars! When you can dream!" Hendrik's eyes were gazing steadily into hers. She did not think he was at all lunatical. But George G. Goodchild had reached the limit of his endurance and even of prudence. He rose to his feet, his face deep purple.

However, Providence was in a kindly mood. At that very moment the door opened and a male stenographer appeared, note-book in hand. Civilization does its life-saving in entirely unexpected ways, even outside of hospitals.

"Au revoir, Miss Goodchild. Don't forget the name, will you?"

"I won't," she promised. There was a smile on her flower-lips and firm resolve in her beautiful eyes. It mounted to Hendrik's head and took away his senses, for he waved his hand at the purple president, said, with a solemnity that thrilled her, "Pray for your future son-in-law!" and walked out with the step of a conqueror. And the step visibly gained in majesty as he overheard the music of the spheres:

"Daddy, who is he?"

At the cashier's desk he stopped, held out his hand, and said with that valiant smile with which young men feel bound to announce their defeat, "I'm leaving, Mr. Coster."

"Good morning," said Coster, coldly, studiously ignoring the outstretched hand. Rutgers was now a discharged employee, a potential hobo, a possible socialist, an enemy of society, one of the dangerous Have-Nots. But Hendrik felt so much superior to this creature with a regular income that he said, pityingly: "Mr. Coster, your punishment for assassinating your own soul is that your children are bound to have the hearts of clerks. You are now definitely nothing but a bank cashier. That's what!"

"Get out!" shrieked the bank cashier, plagiarizing from a greater than he.

The tone of voice made the private policeman draw near. When he saw it was Hendrik to whom Mr. Coster was speaking, he instantly smelled liquor. What other theory for an employee's loud talking in a bank? He hoped Hendrik would not swear audibly. The bank would blame it on the policeman's lack of tact.

"Au revoir." And Hendrik smiled so very pleasantly that the policeman, whose brains were in his biceps, sighed with relief. At the same time the whisper ran among the caged clerks in the mysterious fashion of all bad news—the oldest of all wireless systems!

Hendrik Rutgers was fired!

Did life hold a darker tragedy than to be out of a job? A terrible world, this, to be hungry in.

As Hendrik walked into the cage to get his few belongings, pale faces bent absorbingly over their ledgers. To be fed, to grow comfortably old, to die in bed, always at so much per week. Ideal! No wonder, therefore, that his erstwhile companions feared to look at what once had been a clerk. And then, too, the danger of contagion! A terrible disease, freedom, in a money-making republic, but, fortunately, rare, and the victims provided with food, lodging, and strait-jackets at the expense of the state. Or without strait-jackets: bars.

Hendrik got his pay from the head of his department, who seemed of a sudden to recall that he had never been formally introduced to this Mr. H. Rutgers. This filled Hendrik at first with great anger, and then with a great joy that he was leaving the inclosure wherein men's thoughts withered and died, just like plants, for the same reason—lack of sunshine.

On his way to the street he paused by his best friend—a little old fellow with unobtrusive side-whiskers who turned the ledger's pages over with an amazing deftness, and wore the hunted look that comes from thirty years of fear of dismissal. To some extent the old clerk's constant boasting about the days when he was a reckless devil had encouraged Hendrick.

"Good-by, Billy," said Hendrik, holding out his hand. "I'm going."

Little old Billy was seen by witnesses talking in public with a discharged employee! He hastily said, "Too bad!" and made a pretense of adding a column of figures.

"Too bad nothing. See what it has done for you, to stay so long. I laid out old Goodchild, and the only reason why I stopped was I thought he'd get apoplexy. But say, the daughter— She is some peach, believe me. I called him papa-in-law to his face. You should have seen him!"

Billy shivered. It was even worse than any human being could have imagined.

"Good-by, Rutgers," he whispered out of a corner of his mouth, never taking his eyes from the ledger.

"You poor old— No, Billy! Thank you a thousand times for showing me Hendrik Rutgers at sixty. Thanks!" And he walked out of the bank overflowing with gratitude toward Fate that had hung him into the middle of the street. From there he could look at the free sun all day; and of nights, at the unfettered stars. It was better than looking at the greedy hieroglyphics wherewith a stupid few enslaved the stupider many.

He was free!

He stood for a moment on the steps of the main entrance. For two years he had looked from the world into the bank. But now he looked from the bank out—on the world. And that was why that self-same world suddenly changed its aspect. The very street looked different; the sidewalk wore an air of strangeness; the crowd was not at all the same.

He drew in a deep breath. The April air vitalized his blood.

This new world was a world to conquer. He must fight!

The nearest enemy was the latest. This is always true. Therefore Hendrik Rutgers, in thinking of fighting, thought of the bank and the people who made of banks temples to worship in.

All he needed now was an excuse. There was no doubt that he would get it. Some people call this process the autohypnosis of the great.

Two sandwich-men slouched by in opposite directions. One of them stopped and from the edge of the sidewalk stared at a man cleaning windows on the fourteenth story of a building across the way. The other wearily shuffled southward. Above his head swayed an enormous amputated foot.

Rutgers himself walked briskly to the south. To avoid a collision with a hurrying stenographer-girl—if it had been a male he would have used a short jab—he unavoidably jostled the chiropodist's advertisement into the gutter. The sandwich-man looked meekly into Rutgers's pugnacious face and started to cross the street.

Hendrik felt he should apologize, but before his sense of duty could crystallize into action the man was too far away. So Hendrik turned back. The other sandwich-man was still looking at the window-cleaner on the fourteenth story across the street. Happening to look down, he saw coming a man who looked angry. Therefore the sandwich-man meekly stepped into the gutter, out of the way.

It was the second time within one minute! Hendrik stopped and spoke peevishly to the meek one in the gutter:

"Why did you move out of my way?"

The sandwich-man looked at him uneasily; then, without answering, walked away sullenly.

"Here I am," thought Rutgers, "a man without a job; and there he is, a man with a job and afraid of me!"

Something was wrong—or right. Something always is, to the born fighter.

Who could be afraid of a man without a job but sandwich-men who always walked along the curb so they could be pushed off into the gutter among the other beasts? Nobody ever deliberately became a sandwich-man. When circumstances, the police, hopeless inefficiency, or shattered credit prevented a hobo from begging, stealing, murdering, or getting drunk, he became a sandwich-man in order to live until he could rise again. Whatever a sandwich-man changed himself into, it was always advancement. Once a sandwich-man, never again a sandwich-man. It was not boards they carried, but the printed certificates of hopelessness.

Men who could not keep steady jobs became either corpses or sandwich-men. The sandwich illustrated the tyranny of the regular income just as the need of a regular income illustrated the need of Christianity.

The sandwich thus had become the spirit of the times.

The spring-filled system of Hendrik Rutgers began to react for a second time to a feeling of anger, and this for a second time turned his thoughts to fighting. To fight was to conquer. There were two ways of conquering—by fighting with gold and by fighting with brains. Who won by gold perished by gold. That was why a numismatical bourgeoisie never fought. Hendrik had no gold. So he would fight with brains. He therefore would win. Also, he would fight for his fellow-men, which would make his fight noble. That is called "hedging," for defeat in a noble cause is something to be proud of in the newspapers. The reason why all hedging is intelligent is that victory is always Victory when you talk about it.

The sandwich-men were the scum of the earth.

Ah! It was a thrilling thought: To lead men who could no longer fight for themselves against the world that had marred their immortal souls; and then to compel that same world to place three square meals a day within their astonished bellies!

The man who could make the world do that could do anything. Since he could do anything, he could marry a girl who not only was very beautiful, but had a very rich and dislikable father. The early Christians accomplished so much because they not only loved God, but hated the devil.

Hendrik Rutgers found both the excuse and the motive power.

One minute after a man of brains perceives the need of a ladder in order to climb, the rain of ladders begins.

The chest-inflating egotism of the monopolistic tendency, rather than the few remaining vestiges of Christianity, keeps Protestants in America from becoming socialists. Hendrik filled his lungs full of self-oxygen and of the consciousness of power for good, and decided to draw up the constitution of his union. He would do it himself in order to produce a perfect document; perfect in everything. A square deal; no more, no less. That meant justice toward everybody, even toward the public.

This union, being absolutely fair, would be more than good, more than intelligent; it would pay.

Carried away by his desire to help the lowest of the low, he constituted himself into a natural law. He would grade his men, be the sole judge and arbiter of their qualifications, and even of their proper wages.

Hendrik walked back toward the last sandwich-man and soon overtook him. "Hey, there, you!" he said, tapping the rear board with his hand.

The sandwich-man did not turn about. Really, what human being could wish to speak to him?

Hendrik Rutgers walked for a few feet beside the modest artist who was proclaiming to a purblind world the merits of an optician's wares, and spoke again, politely:

"I want to see you, on business."

The man's lips quivered, then curved downward, immobilizing themselves into a fixed grimace of fear. "I—I 'ain't done no-nothin'," he whined, and edged away.

This was what society had done to an immortal soul!

"Hell!" said Hendrik Rutgers between clenched teeth. "I'm not a fly-cop. I've just got a plain business proposition to make to you."

"If you'll tell me where yer place is, I'll come aroun'—" began the man, so obviously lying that Rutgers's anger shifted from society and tyranny on to the thing between sandwich-boards—the thing that refused to be his brother.

"You damned fool!" he hissed, fraternally. "You come with me—now."

The inverted crescent of the man's lips trembled, and presently there issued from it, "Well, I 'ain't done—"

Charity, which is not always astute, made H. Rutgers say with a kindly cleverness to his poor brother, "I'll tell you how you are going to make more money than you ever earned before."

The prospect of making more money than he ever earned before brought no name of joy into the blear and furtive eyes. Instead, he sidled, crabwise, into the middle of the street.

"No, you don't!" said Rutgers so menacingly that the sandwich-man shivered. It was clear that, to feed this starving man, force would be necessary. This never discourages the true philanthropist. Rutgers, however, feeling that Christian forbearance should be used before resorting to the ultimate diplomacy, said, with an earnest amiability: "Say, Bo, d'you want to fill your belly so that if you ate any more you'd bust?"

At the hint of a promise of a sufficiency of food the man opened his mouth, stared at Rutgers, and did not speak. He couldn't because he did not close his mouth.

"All the grub you can possibly eat, three times a day. Grub, Bo! All you want, any time you want it. Hey? What?"

The sandwich-man's open mouth opened wider. In his eyes there was no fear, no hunger, no incredulity, nothing only an abyss deep as the human soul, that returned no answer whatever.

"Do you want," pursued the now optimistic Hendrik Rutgers, "to drink all you can hold? The kind that don't hurt you if you drink a gallon! Booze, and grub, and a bed, and money in your pocket, and nobody to go through your duds while you sleep. Hey?"

The sandwich-man spasmodically opened and closed his mouth in the unhuman fashion of a ventriloquist's puppet. Rutgers heard the click, but never a word. It filled him with pity. The desire to help such brothers as this grew intense. Next to feeding them there was nothing like talking to them about food and drink in a kindly way.

"What do you say, Bo?" he queried, gently, almost tenderly.

The man's teeth chattered a minute before he said, huskily, "Wh-what m-must I do?"

"Let's go to the Battery," said Rutgers, "and I'll tell you all about it."

The mission of history is to prove that Fate sends the right man for the right place at the right time. While Hendrik Rutgers talked, the sandwich-man listened with his stomach; and when Hendrik Rutgers promised, the sandwich-man believed with his soul. Rutgers told Fleming that all sandwich-men must join the union; that as soon as he and the other present sandwichers were enrolled on its books no more members would be admitted, except as a superabundance of jobs justified additional admissions; and at that it would require a nine-tenths vote to elect, thus preventing a surplus of labor and likewise a slump in wages. The union would compel advertisers in the future to pay twenty cents an hour and would guarantee both steady work and these wages to its members; there would be neither an initiation fee nor strike-fund assessments; the dues of one cent a day were collectible only when the member worked and received union wages for his day's work. Any member could lay off any time he felt like it, unmulcted and unfired. There was only one thing that all sandwich-men had to do to be in good standing; obey the secretary and treasurer of the union—Mr. H. Rutgers—in all union matters.

The sandwich business, once unionized, would become a lucrative profession and therefore highly moral, and therefore its members would automatically cease to be pariahs, notwithstanding congenital fitness for same. Anybody who cannot only defy Nature, but make her subservient to the wishes of an infinitely higher intelligence, is fit to be a labor-leader. And he generally is.

Fleming agreed to round up those of his colleagues whose peregrinations extended south of Chambers Street. He would ask them to come to the Battery on the next day at noon.

So thrilled was Hendrik by his rescue-work among the wreckages that it never occurred to him to doubt his own success. This made him know exactly what to say to Fleming.

"Don't just ask them to come. Tell them that there will be free beers and free grub. Tell them anything you damn please, but bring them! Do you hear me?" He gripped the sandwich-man's arm so tightly that Fleming's lips began to quiver. "And if you don't bring a bunch, God help you!"

"Ye-yes, sir; I will. Sure!" whimpered Fleming, staring fascinatedly at those eyes which both promised and menaced.

And in Fleming's own eyes Hendrik saw the four "B's" which form the great equation of all democracies: Bread + Bludgeon = Born Boss!

Such men always know how to say everything. This is more important than thinking anything.

"Remember the beer!" Brother Hendrik spoke pleasantly, and Fleming nodded eagerly. "And get on the job," hissed Secretary Rutgers; and Fleming shivered and hurried away before the licking came.

Hendrik himself walked briskly up-town. When a man is pleased with himself he can always continue in that condition by the simple expedient of continuing to see whatever he wishes to see. Hendrik opened his eyes very wide and continued to see the ladder of success that great men use to climb to their changing heaven. Hendrik's heaven just then happened to be one in which a man of brains could make the money-makers pay him for allowing them to make money for him. After finding the ladder, all that was necessary was for Hendrik to think of George G. Goodchild's money. That made him see red; and whenever he saw red he could see no obstacles whatever; and because of his self-inflicted blindness he was intelligently ready to tackle anything, even the job of helping his fellow-men. To be an efficient philanthropist a man must have not only love, but murder, in his heart. That is one of the two hundred and eighty-six reasons why scientific charities make absolutely no inroads on the world's store of poverty.

Mr. Rutgers met the charter members of his union at the time and place indicated by Providence through the medium of Mr. Rutgers's lips.

There were fourteen sandwich-men.

Hendrik, not knowing what to say, gazed at the faces before him in impressive silence. So long as you keep a man guessing, he is at your mercy. Orators have already discovered this.

"Holy smoke! What in the name of Maginnis do you call this?" shrieked a messenger-boy. "Free freak show?"

A crowd gathered about them by magic. Opportunity held out its right hand and Hendrik Rutgers grasped it in both his own. If all New York could be made to talk about him, all New York could be made to pay him, as it always pays for the privilege of talking of the same thing at the same time. You cannot get anybody to talk about the Ten Commandments; therefore, there is nobody to listen; therefore nobody capitalizes them.

It is the first rung that really matters. All other rungs in the ladder of success are easier to find and to fit. Hendrik could now gather together his various impulses and thoughts and motives and arrange them in their proper sequence, as great men do, to make easier the work of the historian. It was a crusade that he had undertaken, for the liberation of the most abject of all modern slaves; he had changed the scum of the earth into respectable humanity.

That was history.

The facts, however, happened to be as follows: He threw up his job because he wished to go fishing, which of course made him angry because his fellow-clerks were slaves, and he therefore got himself discharged by the president, which made him hate the president so that the hatred showed in Hendrik's face and made two sandwich-men so afraid that he couldn't help organizing the sandwich-men's union because he could boss it, and that would make people talk about him, which would put money in his pocket; and once he was both rich and famous he would be the equal of the greatest and as such could pick and choose; and he would pick Grace Goodchild and choose her for his wife, which would make him rich.

In Europe the ability promptly to recognize the kindness of chance is called opportunism. Here we boast of it as the American spirit. That is why American bankers so often find pleasure in proudly informing you that it pays to be honest!

"Listen, you!" said Hendrik to the sandwich-men. These were the tools wherewith he would hammer the first rung into place.

They looked at him, incredulous in advance. This attitude on the part of the majority has caused republics at all times to be ruled by the minority. The vice of making money also arose from the fact that suspicious people are so easy to fool that even philosophers succumb to the temptation.

"Just now you are nothing but a bunch of dirty hoboes. Scum of the earth!" It would not do to have followers who had illusions about themselves. This is fundamental.

"Say, I didn't come here to listen to—"

"You—!" said Hendrik Rutgers, and did not smile. "You came here just exactly for that. See?" And he walked up to within six inches of the speaker, not knowing that his anger gave him the fighting face. "You came to listen to me just as long as I am talking—unless you are pining to spend your last three hours in the hospital. Do you get me? Which for yours?"

"Listen!" replied the sandwich-man. He had been poor so long that from force of habit he economized even in words.

"By cripes! here I am spending valuable time so as to make you bums into prosperous men—"

"Where do you come in, Bill?" asked a voice from the rear.

"I don't have to come in. I am in. You fellows have got to join the union. Then you'll get good wages, easy hours, decent—"

"Yeh; but—"

Hendrik turned to the man who had interrupted—a short chap advertising a chain of hat-stores and asked, "But what?"

"Nutt'n!" The hatter had once helped about a prize-fighter's training-quarters, hence the quick duck.

"Also, you'll have easy—"

"Easy!" The hatter had spoken prematurely again.

"What?" scowled Hendrik.

"Hours," hastily explained the man.

"We ask only for fair play," pursued the leader.

"Yeh; sure!" murmured Fleming, with the cold enthusiasm of all paid lieutenants of causes.

"And we must make up our minds to play fair with employers, so that employers will play fair with us."

"Like hell they will!" This was from a tall, thin, toothless chap. Reason: Tapeworm and booze. Name: Mulligan. Recreation: Chiropodist's favorite.

"I'll prove it to you," said Hendrik, very earnestly.

"Perhaps to but not by me," muttered Mulligan.

"Union wages will be twenty cents an hour."

"Never get it!" mumbled an old fellow with what they call waiter's foot—flattened arch. "Never!"

"Never," came in chorus from all the others, their voices ringing with conviction.

"I'll have the jobs to give out. I guess I know how much you'll get." The flame of hope lit fourteen pairs of blear eyes. Maybe this boob had the cash and desired to separate himself from it. All primitive people think the fool is touched of God. Hunger makes men primitive.

"I'll fix the wages!" declared Hendrik again. He saw himself feeding these men; therefore he felt he owned them absolutely. It isn't, of course, necessary actually to feed people, or even to promise to feed them, to own them. Nevertheless, his look of possession imposed on these victims of a democracy. They mutely acknowledged a boss.

Instantly perceiving this, a sense of kindly responsibility came upon Hendrik. These were his children. He said, paternally, "We'll now have a beer—on me!"

Fleming, to show his divine right to the place of vice-regent, led the way to a joint on Washington Street.

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!

In an hour he was back, knowing that the Mayor had gone. He sent in for Mr. McDevitt. The secretary appeared.

"Did he say he'd come?" asked H. Rutgers, impetuously.

"I am sorry to say the Mayor has a previous engagement that makes it absolutely impossible for him to be present at your dinner. I've got a letter of regret."

"They'll be awfully disappointed, too. I'll get the blame, of course. Of course!" Mr. Rutgers spoke with a sort of bitter gloom, spiced with vindictiveness.

"Here it is. I had him sign it. I wrote it. It's one of those letters," went on the secretary, inflated with the pride of authorship, "that can be read at any meeting. It contains a dissertation on the beneficent influence of advertising, strengthened by citations from Epictetus, Buddha, George Francis Train, and other great moral teachers of this administration."

"Thank you very much. I appreciate it. But, say, what's the matter with you coming in his place? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I have a hunch that when it comes to slinging after-dinner oratory you'd do a great deal better."

"Oh," said McDevitt, with a loyal shake of negation and a smile of assent. "No, I couldn't."

"I'm sure—"

"And then I'm going to Philadelphia on Saturday morning to stay over Sunday. I wish you'd asked me earlier."

"So do I," murmured H. Rutgers, with conviction and despair judiciously admixed.

The secretary had meant to quiz H. Rutgers about the association, but H. Rutgers's manner and words disarmed suspicion. It was not that H. Rutgers always bluffed, but that he always bluffed as he did, that makes his subsequent career one of the most interesting chapters of our political history.

"And here's the permit," said the secretary.

H. Rutgers, without looking at it, put it in his pocket as if it were all a matter of course. It strengthened the secretary's belief that non-suspiciousness was justified.

"Thanks, very much," said H. Rutgers. "I am, I still repeat, very sorry that neither you nor the Mayor can come." He paid to the Mayor's eloquent secretary the tribute of a military salute and left the room.

III

The union of the sandwich-men was an assured success. Victory had come to H. Rutgers by the intelligent use of brains. The possession of brains is one of the facts that can always be confirmed at the source.

Next he arranged for the band. He told the band-master what he wished the band to do. The band-master thereupon told him the price.

"Friend," said H. Rutgers, pleasantly, "I do not deal in dreams either as buyer or seller. That's the asking price. Now, how much will you take?" Not having any money, Hendrik added, impressively, "Cash!"

The band-master, being a native-born, repeated the price—unchanged. But he was no match for H. Rutgers, who took a card from his pocket, looked at what the band-master imagined was a list of addresses of other bands, and then said, "Let me see; from here to—" He pulled out his watch and muttered to himself, but audible by the band-master, "It will take me half an hour or more."

H. Rutgers closed his watch with a sharp and angry snap and then determinedly named a sum exactly two-thirds of what the band-master had fixed as the irreducible minimum. It was more than Hendrik could possibly pay.

The band-master shook his head, so H. Rutgers said, irascibly:

"For Heaven's sake, quit talking. I'm nearly crazy with the arrangements. Do you think you're the only band in New York or that I never hired one before? Here's the Mayor's permit." He showed it to the musical director, who was thereby enabled to see National Street Advertising Men's Association, and went on: "Now be at Grand Central Station, Lexington Avenue entrance, at 3.45 Saturday afternoon. The train gets in at 4. I'll be there before you are. We'll go from the depot to Weinpusslacher's for dinner."

"Of course, we get our dinners," said the band-master in the tone of voice of a man who has surrendered, but denies it to the reporters.

"Yes. You'll be there sure?"

"Yes. But, say, we ought to get—"

"Not a damned cent more," said H. Rutgers, pugnaciously, in order to forestall requests for part payment in advance.

"I wasn't going to ask you for more money, but for a few—"

"Then why waste my time? Don't fail me!"

Then Hendrik Rutgers put the finishing touches on the work of organization. He rented offices in the Allied Arts Building, sent a sign-painter to decorate the ground-glass doors, and ordered some official stationery in a rush. He promised the agent to return with the president and sign the lease.

Where everybody distrusts everybody else there is nothing like promising to sign documents!

He bought some office furniture on exactly the same plan.

On Friday night the unionized sandwich-men took their signs and boards to the trysting-place, Twenty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue, to have new advertisements of Hendrik's composition painted thereon. The boards did not belong to the members, but in a good cause all property is the cause's. Each of the original fourteen brought recruits. The street was almost blocked. The two sign-painters worked like nine beavers, and Hendrik and the young man in steel-rimmed spectacles helped. When the clamor became threatening Hendrik counted his men twice, aloud. There were eighty-four of them. They knew it was eighty-four, having heard him say it, as he intended they should. He then took them to the corner boozery.

He had only two dollars. There were eighty-four thirsty. Therefore, "Eighty beers!" he yelled, majestically.

"Eighty-four!" shouted eighty-four voices.

"That's twenty cents more," said Hendrik to himself in the plain hearing of the hitherto distrustful bartender. He had a small green roll in his left hand consisting of two dollars and two clippings. With his right he loudly planked down two large dimes on the counter and shoved them toward the bartender, who took them while Hendrik began to count his greenbacks.

The bartender saw the exact change and began to draw beer. He even yelled for assistance.

Hendrik knew better than to enforce discipline now, but he could not officially countenance disorder.

"Give the other fellows a chance," he said, paternally, to those near by. Then he saw the rear entrance. It inspired him.

He waited until there were about sixty glasses on the bar. Then he yelled in the direction of the front door: "Come in, boys! Everybody gets one!"

The tidal-wave carried him and twenty others to the end of the room. But while the twenty others fought to get back to the schooners, he intelligently went out by the back door.

The police reserves were called. They responded. Then six ambulances.

Those who survived sought Hendrik to complain, but he beat them to it by scolding them angrily. He all but licked them on the spot, so that they forgot their grievance in their haste to defend themselves. He then divided them into squads of five and took them to another saloon—one squad and a quarter of a dollar at a time. He only used one dollar and fifty cents cash that way.

He then promised all of them forty beers a day beginning on Monday. He told them to get recruits, who would not be admitted to the union, but could have the privilege of parading. They must be thirsty men and look it. They would receive two beers apiece.

On Saturday morning there was not a sandwich-man to be seen at work in Greater New York.

At noon the city editors of all the metropolitan dailies received neatly typewritten notices that the sandwich-men had formed a union and would "peacefully strive for higher wages, shorter hours, and reduced peregrinations. The sandwich-men had no desire to precipitate another internecine strife between Labor and Capital." They were "willing to submit their differences to a board of arbitration consisting of John D. Rockefeller, Charles F. Murphy, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Hendrik Rutgers."

These notices were one and all thrown into waste-paper baskets as cheap humor—to be dug up later and used.

IV

On Saturday afternoon at 3.35 the Harlem contingent, carrying their armor under one arm, their tickets given into the conductor's own hand by the lieutenant, Fleming, entrained at the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street station of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad.

Ten minutes later they arrived at the Grand Central Station. And as the first pair of sandwiches descended, the waiting band burst into a joyous welcome.

The exits were crowded. Martial music and parading men always draw crowds. So long as there is no charge, gaping audiences automatically supply themselves in New York.

And so, along Forty-second Street, following the musicians, himself followed by his starving sandwiches, Hendrik Rutgers walked into Fifth Avenue and into history at one and the same time.

The procession turned southward. The band played Chopin's "Funeral March." Hendrik Rutgers at the head of his pauperized cohorts, anger in his heart, light in his soul, defiance in his eyes, marched down Fifth Avenue with an effect as of a man in armor treading on prostrate millionaires as over so many railroad-ties. Men who had money in their pockets for a minute felt the wind squeezed out of them by his foot. And as they saw the led sandwiches they looked thoughtful.

The first of Rutgers's infantry was an old man. His long, gray beard was dirty and ragged, like his clothes and the rest of him. In his eyes you saw the unutterable weariness of a man who has lived fifty suffering years too long. Underneath his eyes were dark rings; from the sidewalk his sockets looked finger-deep. On his cheeks was the pallor of death.

H. Rutgers, fighting for fairness and justice, had justly picked out the old fellow to be his Exhibit "A." Society must see what it did to human beings! Therefore the old man slid one foot along the asphalt and let the other follow it, with a spent, mechanical movement, as an engine, after the power is turned off, keeps on going from the momentum of years. The legs seemed to move from force of habit—a corpse on foot, with a concealed galvanic battery somewhere.

And on the breastplate and backplate of this armored corpse, printed in funereal black, beautiful women and intellectual men on Fifth Avenue, where the unforgivable crime is to be poor and show it, read:

Yesterday I walked 19 miles.

They paid me 35 cents cash

And 2 meal tickets.

He had been well coached as to his gait and, thrilled by the success he was making, the old chap became an artist and limped worse.

Behind him was our friend Mulligan, pale, thin to emaciation. He looked famished. It came from the possession of a tapeworm, as before stated. To him Hendrik Rutgers had given this standard to bear:

They call us Sandwich-men because:

We don't know what a Square Meal is!

He was followed by the raggedest human being that Anthony Comstock ever allowed to exhibit himself in public. On his boards the Fifth Avenue crowd on this fair spring day saw this:

Do you thank God you are alive?

So do we!

And notice the DIFFERENCE!

The shabby-genteel man, ex-Republican, with steel-rimmed spectacles, who now looked for all the world like a bookkeeper out of a job, had this:

I am the Result.

The Cause was not Drink.

It was HUNGER.

A young fellow who looked so much as if he had just left a hospital that thousands of spectators imagined they smelled iodoform carried this:

All men must die.

Knowing this, WE HOPE!

An octogenarian, not over four and one-half feet tall, very frail-looking, was next. To him H. Rutgers had assigned this banner:

If Society won't feed us

We'll feed the Society of Worms—

POTTER'S FIELD

Under a big foot—property of a popular chiropodist on lower Broadway; terms twenty-five cents per, five for a dollar—was this:

We are the World's Unfortunates:

BORN TO BE KICKED!

Then followed a haggard-faced man who looked like an exaggerated picture of poverty. He carried:

There are poorer than we.

HELP THEM!

A man with the stride of a conqueror bore a banner:

AND STILL WE BELIEVE IN GOD!

The crowd looked puzzled. What the dickens did believing in God have to do with anything? To end the bother of thinking they looked at the next one.

Look at Fifth Avenue!

WHY?

See what we are!

WHY?

They obeyed. They saw Fifth Avenue. Why? They did not know why. And then they saw what the sandwich-men were. And they wondered why the sandwich-men asked why. Why not? Pshaw! The placard that followed was:

If you wish to see

One hundred starving men

Follow us.

YOU WILL REMEMBER IT!

Say, that was something that nobody had seen and therefore everybody could joke about. Every woman had the same remark and the same grin: "Haven't I seen my husband?"

Before the parade had gone half a square Fifth Avenue was blocked. Apart from the interference of the band and the sandwiches with vehicular traffic, there was the paralysis of the pedestrians. The Peacock Parade halted. Slim figures, half-naked, flat-bosomed, stalked swayingly to the curb and stared with eyes in which was the insolent sex challenge that New York males answer with furs and jewels. And as they looked the challenge of sex died in the eyes of the women: the marchers had no sex; anybody could see they had no money!

And the men, too, ceased to look stallion-eyed at the women and gazed on the parade of sandwich-men, who, in the middle of the street, with the machines and the horses, slouched on—almost rubbing valuable varnish on automobiles and carriages, careless beasts!

Presently the hurrying crowds slowed their gait and kept step to Chopin's dirge—slowly! slowly!—until all Fifth Avenue was a vast funeral procession; only the marchers could not have told you what it was that long since had died of gold on Fifth Avenue! Slowly! Slowly! And with the funereal gait other changes came—in the grimace of the over-red lips and the look of the over-bold eyes. But never the slightest change in the color of the cheeks, which was there to stay, in rain, shine, or snow.

"What is it? What is it?" whispered ten thousand people.

From the middle of the street it sounded like the whimper of ten thousand little foamy waves dying on a flat beach. It made the filthy bipeds who marched look at the thronged sidewalks.

They saw the usual Fifth Avenue crowd. They saw the full-fed, clock-hating faces of professional idlers; the drawn features of the busy money-maker with his perennial anxieties; the suddenly immobilized grimaces of millionaires intended to conceal the fear of God knew what; the contemptuous countenances of waiters from fashionable restaurants, who, like ordained priests, knew America at its worst, but, unlike priests, could not pity; healthy American boys with clean faces and the eyes of animals.

And the sexless marchers saw also healthy American girls with delicate features and dreadful, price-quoting eyes, and faces not clean and healthy, but dead-white and dead-crimson; they saw not women's faces, but marble tombstones on which the epitaphs were scarlet letters that told what the price was, so that the professional prostitutes no longer wasted time advertising with the same ink, but used downcast eyes as bait.

There was a gap of about thirty feet between the first detachment of Rutgers's marching advertisements and the next. The spectators, seeking explanations, saw a cadaverous-looking man, hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed, white-lipped, who stepped as though the avenue were full of puddles of nitroglycerine—uncertainly, fearfully! And this death-on-foot carried a white-cloth board black-bordered like a funeral-card. And thereon money-makers and money-spenders, clubmen and waiters, shop-girls and millionairesses—all Fifth Avenue!—saw this:

HAIL, NEW YORK!

WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE

SALUTE YOU!

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:

SANDWICH PARADE

Pathetic Protest against Industrial Slavery

Paupers Who Will Neither Steal Nor Beg Forced by Society to Starve

Sandwich Wages, Two Cents an Hour

Men About to Die Salute New York

The Sandwich-men's Union will hold their annual meeting at Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant.

They have been saving up for this, their one square meal this year.

They are paid from twenty to forty cents a day and walk from fifteen to thirty miles in the ten hours.

Did you know that twice in the Old and five times in the New Testament mention is made of the sandwich-men?

Do you know why Catholic Spain and anti-Semitic Russia alike permit no sandwich-men to ply their time-honored occupation within their confines?

There the article abruptly ended.

"Weinie," said Max, exultingly, "this makes you. Be very nice to Mr. Rutgers. You'll have to pay him thousands of dollars—"

"Then, you vas in league mit him?"

"No. But he's a genius!"

"I thought he was German," said C. Weinpusslacher, controversially.

"Get busy, Weinie. The crowd will be here in a minute. And don't ask Mr. Rutgers to pay for his dinner."

"Why not?" growled Weinie. He was on his way to a sure million. That made the growl natural.

"What is thirty dollars for their dinner to thirty thousand dollars worth of free advertising?"

"Thirty dollars," observed C. Weinpusslacher, thriftily, "is thirty dollars!"

"Bah!"

"I tell you, it is, mister." C. Weinpusslacher frowned pugnaciously.

But Onthemaker knew his man. So he said: "I'll get Meyer Rabinowitz to give us an option on the property to-night before he reads the newspapers. As Rutgers said, once your place is a success, you'll have to pay any price the landlord wants. Meyer's got you! I can hear your squeals of agony already!"

Max shook his head so gloomily that C. Weinpusslacher actually began to tremble with joy. The thought of making money did not move him. The thought of losing the money he had not made, did. Oh yes; born money-makers!

By the time H. Rutgers arrived at the Colossal Restaurant Caspar Weinpusslacher, Esq., and the Hon. Maximilian Onthemaker had constituted themselves into a highly enthusiastic reception committee, for the crowd that came with H. Rutgers filled the street so that all you heard was the squealing and cursing of persons that were pressed against iron newel-posts of the old-fashioned stoops or precipitated into basements and cellars. Sixty policemen, impartially cursing the Mayor, Epictetus, and H. Rutgers, and yearning for the days of Aleck Williams, when clubs were made to be used and not to be fined for, endeavored to keep the crowd moving.

"You'll find everything ready, Mr. Rutgers," said M. Onthemaker. "Here is one of my cards. The name, you will see," he almost shouted, "is spelled with a k not h—O-n-t-h-e-m-a-k-e-r. Everything is ready, Mr. Secretary." He looked at the reporters out of a corner of his eye.

"And it won't cost you nothing, not one cent," interjected C. Weinpusslacher, eagerly and distinctly. "Any feller wot's smart like you, Mr. Rutchers—"

"And the poor starving men," quickly interjected M. Onthemaker, not wishing for character-analyses yet, "who are the victims of a ruthless industrial system—"

"Yah, sandwiches!" put in C. Weinpusslacher.

M. Onthemaker grimaced horribly, and C. Weinpusslacher was silent for a minute. Presently he told Rutgers, "They get enough to eat here, anyways, I bet you."

He glared with a sort of malevolent triumph at M. Onthemaker, until he heard the boss say in stern accents:

"That, of course, Weinpusslacher, includes a couple of beers apiece."

"Of course! Of course!" put in M. Onthemaker, hastily. "The representatives of the press will sit at their own table, at which I am to have the honor of presiding, Max Onthemaker—O-n-t-h-e-m—"

"We got it down," the Evening Journal man assured him, amiably.

C. Weinpusslacher was so angry that anybody should help him to make money, when half the pleasure is in making it yourself out of your fellow-men, that he said, spitefully, "There will be free beer!"

Hendrik Rutgers took an innkeeper's notion and made of it the most remarkable platform in the history of party government. He said, sternly, "Everything free for free men!"

A grunting murmur ran down the line of derelicts—the inarticulate tribute of great thirst to great leadership. In a hundred pairs of eyes a human hope kindled its fire for the first time in two hundred years!

Great indeed was Hendrik Rutgers!

His faithful sandwiches would go through fire for him! A man who can get free beer for Sahara throats could put out the fire—with more beer.

The boards were hung around the great hall in plain sight of the reporters, who copied the legends, that all America might read. While they were writing, Caspar was hiring thirty extra waiters and turning people away. Hendrik went from man to man, sternly warning that no one must begin to eat until he gave the order. A violation of his order would entail the loss of the dinner and most of the scalp. He also said they must not linger over their victuals, and told them that two extra beers apiece would be awarded to the ten men who finished first.

He had made up his mind that the cold and callous world should be told how starving men eat.

What do people who get enough to eat know about starving men?

Nothing!

They impede the world's progress by being content. Human pigs!

In a surprisingly short time one hundred complete dinners were in front of one hundred starving men. Six bartenders were busy filling schooners—in plain sight of the starving men. But the boss's awful frown held them in check. Each man began to tremble in advance—fearing he might not be one of the ten to win the extra schooners.

The reporters looked at the hundred faces and began to write like mad.

Hendrik rose. There was an awed silence. The reporters stopped writing. One hundred inferior maxillaries began to castanet away like mad. The boss held up a hand. Then he said in measured tones:

"May God be good to us sandwich-men again this year! Eat!"

When he said eat, men ate. Don't forget the moral effect of commanding and being obeyed!

They flung themselves on the food like wild beasts, and made animal noises in their throats. They disdained forks, knives, and spoons. They used claws and jaws on meat, coffee, bread, potatoes, soup, or pie whichever was nearest.

No man wanted to be the last to finish.

"My God!" exclaimed the Evening Post man. "This is absolutely horrible!"

"Pippin!" said the creative artist from the Sun.

All of them would treat it as a Belasco production. That is, they would impart to it all the dignity and importance of a political convention.

At 8 p.m. Hendrik Rutgers, man of destiny, rose to speak. He never even glanced at the reporters. He said, very earnestly, to his tattered cohorts:

"Comrades! Ours is beyond question the only labor union in the United States, and, for all I know, in the entire world, that is not monopolistic in its tendencies. We are individualists because advertising is not a science nor a trade, but an art, and we are artists. When the advertisers' greed saw the artists' hunger, the result was that!" He pointed to five score dehumanized faces before him.

"Great!" murmured the Sun man.

"Hereafter watch the sandwich-man, and in one corner of the sign look for the union label—a skeleton carrying a coffin, to remind us that no matter what a man is when he is born, he goes to his Maker between boards. In death all men are equal, and in his coffin a man is the Ultimate Sandwich!"

"That's literature!" muttered the serious young man from the Journal.

"We refuse to be thieves. Therefore we decline to do any sandwiching for patent medicines, banks, quack cures, fraudulent stores, immoral books, coal-dealers, fake doctors, suburban real estate, bum chiropodists, or disreputable people of any kind, class, or nature whatsoever. We start with professional ethics, which is where most professions end. We who have been the lowest of the low class that work for their daily bread are now the S. A. S. A.—the Society of American Sandwich Artists. All we ask is permission to live! Our headquarters will be in the Allied Arts Building on Fifth Avenue."

His speech had quotable phrases. A country that once cast the biggest vote in its history for the square deal, that makes minions of dollars out of asking you if you see that hump, and from promising to do the rest if you push the button, and boasts of the thorn that made a rose famous, is bound to be governed by phrases. The only exceptions are the Ten Commandments. They are quotable, but not memorable.

All the newspapers spread themselves on that story. In their clubs the managing editors heard their fellow-members talk about the parade, and this made each M. E. telephone to the city editor to play it up. It was too picturesque not to be good reading, and since good reading is always easy writing, both reporters and editorial writers enjoyed themselves. That made them artists instead of wage-earners.

Hendrik Rutgers possessed the same quality of political instinct that nearly made the luckiest man in the world President of the United States. By blindly following it, young Mr. Rutgers jumped into the very heart of a profound truth. And once he landed, the same sublimated sagacity impelled him to stamp with both feet hard. Then, unemotionally perceiving exactly what he had done, he proceeded very carefully to pick out his own philosophical steps, in order to be able later on to prove that he had been coldly logical. Impulsive humanity always distrusts impulsiveness in others. Leaders, therefore, always call them carefully considered plans.

In all irreligious countries, as Hendrik Rutgers, astutely arguing backward, told himself, the people who buy, sell, and vote are alive only to To-day and therefore dare not take heed of the Hereafter. This has exalted news to the dignity of a sacred commandment.

In such communities success is necessarily a matter of skilful publicity.

Who is the greatest of all press agents, working while you sleep and even when you blunder?

The People!

The front page of the newspaper is therefore the arena of to-day!

To live in that page, all you have to do is to become News.

Once you become News all the king-making reporters of all the nation-making newspapers become your press agents. The public does the rest and pays all salaries.

Thrilled by his discovery, Hendrik called Max Onthemaker to one side and, with the air of a man risking one hundred and two millions of cash, said to him: "I have decided to make you chief counsel of my society. Your services will entitle you to represent me."

Never had man been so lavishly overpaid for breathing since the dawn of historical time. Hendrik went on, still imperial in bounty:

"I have in mind some great things. Every one of them will be worth as much space as the newspapers will give to this dinner. Do you see your chance?"

"I can't live on newspaper articles," began Max, elated but dissembling.

"You can die without them. Chronic obscurity; acute starvation," said Hendrik Rutgers in his clinical voice. "I not only do not propose to pay you a cent, but I expect you to pay all necessary expenses out of your privy purse without a murmur—unless said murmur is intended to express your legal opinion and your gratitude. I shall give you an opportunity to represent my society"—you would have sworn he was saying my regiment—"in actions involving the most famous names in America."

"For instance?" asked M. Onthemaker, trying to speak skeptically, that his eagerness might not show too plainly.

Hendrik Rutgers named six of the mightiest.

"You're on, Mr. Rutgers," said Max, enthusiastically. "Now, I think—"

"Wait!" interrupted Hendrik, coldly. "Never forget that I am not your press agent. You are mine."

"There will be glory enough to go around," said Max Onthemaker in his police-court voice. "When do we begin?"

"To-morrow."

"Yes, sir. And now—"

"My now is your when! Your job is to find the legal way of helping the Cause."

"I will!" promised Onthemaker, heartfully. The Cause would be his Cause. He'd fix it so they couldn't leave out his name.

But Hendrik saw the gleam in the lawyer's eye.

That's the worst of all thoughts of self. They invariably are undisguisable.

"The Cause, Onthemaker," said Hendrik, sternly, "is the cause of the Society of American Sandwich Artists. We are not associated to make money for ourselves, but for our employers. This is revolutionary. Moreover, we are not working-men, but artists. Therefore our men not only love their work, but are law-abiding. This will make the employers helpless to retaliate. We shall never do anything without invoking the aid of the law, for I believe that the law will help the poor not less than the rich if properly—"

"Advertised," prompted Max. "I get you. In the forum of the people's liberties—the daily papers—is the place to try—"

Hendrik held up a hand. He had chosen the right lawyer. The interpretation of the law depends exclusively upon the tone of voice. All reporters are trained to be judges of elocution. They have to be, in republics.

"To-morrow—" Here Hendrik paused.

Max's face paled slightly as he waited. What was coming?

Hendrik finished: "I shall telephone to you!"

Max drew in his breath sharply.

Hendrik then nodded. It meant, "You have my permission to retire!"

"Thank you, Mr. Rutgers," said Max, respectfully, and withdrew from the presence on tiptoe.

Hendrik then beckoned to his sandwich lieutenant. "Fleming!" he said, sternly.

Fleming threw up an arm defensively from force of habit—the slave's immemorial salute. Then he grinned sheepishly. Then he said, eagerly, "Yes, boss!"

"I'm going to make you chief of the Meal Ticket Department, and I expect you to maintain discipline. But if I ever hear of any graft, such as accepting bonuses—" He closed his jaws and his fists. When you close both at the same time you inevitably win the debate. It is, however, difficult.

"Honest, b-boss," stammered Fleming, his eyes on Hendrik's right fist. "Honest, I—"

The boss's right unclenched itself. Fleming drew in a deep breath.

"Get the names and addresses of all the men here—in their own writing. Ask Onthemaker for a blank-book, and when the men have signed give the book back to him. They've got to sign!"

Fleming's face was pale but resigned. Signatures are lethal weapons in all industrial democracies. Ask the note-teller in any bank. But the boss had said, "Sign!"

Kismet!

"And you keep a book of your own so that when I want ten or twenty men of a certain type and appearance you will know where to find them. I hold you responsible!"

Poor Fleming almost collapsed. Responsibility in a republic really means accountability. Our entire system of law, as a great psychologist has pointed out, is based upon the same confusion of definitions.

Hendrik saw the fear of statutory punishment seep into his lieutenant's soul. He stopped it at exactly the right point.

"Fleming," he said, kindly, "I trust you!"

Fleming felt himself decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of Unearned Food. It made him into an active citizen.

"I'll get the men when you shout, boss!" he promised, proudly, realizing the meaning of the duty of a voter.

However, it would never do to have your creatures think they also have the power to create. Therefore Hendrik said, "If you don't—"

"I'll get 'em for you, b-boss. Honest, I will!" meekly promised Fleming, taking his place in the ranks. He was an ideal cabinet officer.

Hendrik Rutgers did not know men. He guessed them. He thus saved himself the fatigue of thinking.

Weinpusslacher swaggered by, counting his millions. He had begun to feel haughty. Hendrik stopped him by lifting his right forefinger and then smartly moving it Hendrikward.

"Weinie, I guess you're famous. You give the free meal tickets to Onthemaker. And don't try to cheat!"

"I never do such—" began Caspar, angrily.

"You never will to me," interrupted Hendrik, making Weinie's unuttered words his own. It took away from Weinie all sense of proprietorship in his own property.

This also is called genius. Such men should be tax-collectors instead of railroad bankers.

Hendrik glanced toward the reporters and saw that Mr. Onthemaker was talking to them and looking at him—looking at him both ingratiatingly and proudly. He therefore knew that Max was being quoted by the newspaper men, and the only subject on which they would quote him was Hendrik Rutgers. He also knew that the desire for reflected glory, in all newspaper-reading countries, is so strong that Max would be a great political historian. The best way to blow your own horn is to lend it to an obscure friend.

Hendrik Rutgers left the Colossal Restaurant certain that he was News, and that his job consisted of continuing to be News.

To become News and then to continue to be News a man must be plausible, persistent, and picturesque.

There was no altitude of success to which he might not climb, provided he lost six-sevenths of his name and mutilated his surname in like degree.

He must become two letters: H. R.

He thus would become an immortal during his own lifetime, which was immortality enough for any man who merely wished to acquire fame, wealth, and one wife in his own country.

So brightly lighted was his road that he knew exactly where to plant each foot—in the front page!

He must do it all. Therefore he must make others do the work. But this man who now was a million miles beyond all bank clerks knew exactly what he needed, which made it easy for him to know exactly whom he needed. This knowledge would establish the basis on which the workers must work.

He sought a newspaper-advertising agency; ordered the manager to insert in all the morning papers the same advertisement, in large type, with triple spacing, to show that money was no object.

This always impresses people who wish to make money.

The advertisement read:

WANTED—first-class advertising canvassers. i am anxious to pay 50 per cent. more than is customary to such men. this does not mean you, my hungry and hopeful friend! Apply between 9 and 10 a.m. to

H. R.
ALLIED ARTS BLDG.

P. S. The better the men the fewer I need. The fewer I use the greater the profit to the lucky ones. Keep away unless you are a Wonder.

It was the first time that an advertisement for "Help Wanted" had contained a postscriptum. H. R. did it because he knew that the unusualness of it would make professional people talk. Every experienced advertising man must realize that H. R. had not written an advertisement, but had dictated a brief letter to him. The signer was too busy and too much in earnest to compose a regular advertisement.

Genius neglects no opportunity, however slight. Consider the small but efficient yellow-fever microbe.

V

Monday morning, at 8.30 a.m., H. R. was in his office. At 8.35 he had engaged a stenographer by telephone and told the starter and the elevator-men who H. R. was. Later on the dozen men who answered the advertisement made it impossible for either starter or elevator-men ever to forget who H. R. was without the use of gratuities, profanity, or promises.

H. R.'s first task was to compose memoranda for the use and guidance of Max Onthemaker and Lieutenant Fleming. At 8.45 the first-class advertising canvassers began to appear in numbers. Really efficient men are never modest. Neither are really inefficient men. Efficiency is always a matter of personal judgment. Even efficiency experts will tell you that nobody is really efficient until efficiency experts have said so.

H. R. allowed the applicants to accumulate in the anteroom. The new stenographer had been told to write, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party" two thousand times and to time herself. The spectators thereby realized that this was a busy office.

He was confronting his first crisis—the selection of a man who must not only be highly competent, but must be made to realize that H. R. was a pioneer, a man to whom tradition, precedents, and custom were less than nothing. H. R. studied the situation and then went out to the anteroom and looked at the waiting dozen slowly.

There are a few men in the world who can look a crowd from head to foot and manage to make each man in it feel guilty. After H. R. had so looked at them, he asked, skeptically, "Are all of you first-class men?"

To their honor be it said, not one of them answered No. Men collectively may be cruel or blind, but seldom petty or egotistical. Observe mobs.

H. R. turned his back on the crowd and returned to his private office. He did it on purpose. Men usually follow those who act as if they do not care whether they have a following or not. It is wiser to be wrong and not hesitate than to vacillate and be right. Besides, much quicker.

At the threshold he half turned and, without looking at any one in particular, said: "I need only four first-class men. The others might as well go away."

Twelve men heard him. Twelve men followed him.

He sat down at his new desk, put the unpaid bill for same in a drawer, and confronted them.

"Eight of you can go," he observed, and waited.

Each man cast a glance of pity at his neighbor.

"Don't be so modest," H. R. told them, kindly.

"You said first-class men?" politely inquired a young man, smooth-shaven, blond, blue-eyed, and very clean-looking.

"Yes," answered H. R.

"That's what I understood," said the young man, extending his hand. "Barrett's my name."

H. R. ignored the outstretched hand and stared at the clean-looking young man.

On the faces of eleven Christian gentlemen came a fraternal look of self-conscious modesty. But young Mr. Barrett, unabashed, said, cheerily:

"Keep on looking. I know you want me. When you discover it, we'll do business."

"Go to the foot of the class," said H. R., impassively. You could tell nothing from his voice. It is a valuable gift.

The young man eyed H. R. shrewdly, then walked to a corner of the room, sat down, pulled a memorandum-book from his pocket, and began to count his contracts in advance.

"Your last name, please," said H. R., looking as if what he had asked for was the right name. The assumption of guilt has the effect of putting even the innocent on the defensive. The strategic inferiority of the defensive is always acknowledged by the defeated—even before the defeat.

He jotted down the replies, one after another. Within one and three-quarter minutes these men felt themselves deprived of their individual entities. They had been turned into a list of surnames, a fragment of the rabble.

The leader stood alone—he alone had a first name! Smith merely votes; John Smith has his own opinion. H. R. had acted instinctively. He never would have had the conscious wisdom of an editorial writer. There are many editorial writers in all republics. Hence, practical politics.

"Where did you see my advertisement?" asked H. R. "One at a time, please. Also, state why you looked in that particular newspaper?"

They told him, one at a time, in the hearing of the others, thereby intensifying their own feeling of having been lumped into an electorate. He made notes as they answered. Some had seen it in the Herald. Others blamed the World or the Times or the Sun, or the Tribune. Three gave two papers; one had seen three. They expressed their professional opinion of that particular advertising medium, feeling that said opinion was a qualification of fitness.

Young Mr. Barrett from his chair answered: "In all the papers. I also looked in the German, Yiddish, and Italian papers; in the Courier des Etats-Unis, and in the first morning edition of every afternoon paper. I did it to get a line on you."

H. R. did not look as if he had heard Barrett. He said to the others: "I thank you all for coming. I shall not need Wilson, Streeter, Manley, Hill, Roberts, Smith, Jenks, or MacDuffy."

One of the rejected came forward, scowling. He was naturally a robust-looking person. He said, "Say, this is—"

H. R. did not allow the full expression of individual opinion—a form of salutary discipline which explains why people are governed. He snarled in a tone of voice that made his shoulders look a yard wide: "Mr. Book Agent, I've picked the men I want. What I don't want is to hear any remarks. Talk them into a dictagraph and send the cylinders by parcels post to my secretary."

He had risen. But when he finished speaking, as though the unarmed proletariat were in full retreat, he sat down again. It was the way he did it.

Men always do what they are expected to do. The eight non-successfuls went out. It was only when they were outside, where the female was typewriting away, that they began to talk loudly.

H. R. had judged rightly. They were not first-class men. He turned to the others and asked:

"Can you sell advertising?"

Young Mr. Barrett came forward. The four answered, "Yes!"

"Then you can sell anything!"

He stood up suddenly, when they were not expecting such a thing. This is always subtly disconcerting. Business men and beautiful women invariably resent it.

He asked, sharply, "What is the one thing none of you can sell to me?"

He looked challengingly at the first. The man stared back at H. R. and, with the canvasser's professional look of congratulation, replied, "A gold brick!"

"Good answer! Not the answer. And you?" he asked the second man.

"Newspaper space—not to you."

"Still better answer. But not the answer."

He looked at the third man, who promptly said: "Opinions!"

"Excellent. But not the answer. And you, young man?"

The accusation of youth is never successfully repulsed. Young Mr. Barrett, ingeniously admitting his youth to remove the sting from his humor, replied triumphantly, "Smallpox!"

"The tendency of American youth is toward the clown. It keeps us in an attitude of perennial apology toward the perennial juvenility of our nation. What none of you can sell me is—"

He paused. They were looking at him with the intentness with which all men look at an armed lunatic—or at their master.

After the second minute of suspense they exclaimed in chorus:

"What?"

They couldn't help it!

"Cold feet!" said H. R. calmly.

They looked relieved. Then they looked anxious. The reason the ruled masses never win is because they inflict upon themselves their own doubts.

"How many times your own salary do you wish to earn for me?" asked H. R. in the tone of voice in which a philanthropist asks strangers for subscriptions to his pet charity. This always makes people feel that extravagance is a sin.

"I'd expect to earn for you—" began one of the victims.

"Not what you would expect, but what you would like," corrected H. R. He spoke so kindly that they at once knew it was a trap. A look of brotherhood always is, to all clever men of an editorial type of mind.

"Four or five times," answered No. 1.

"And you?"

"I don't want to work for you at all," answered No. 2, feeling that his answer was sure not to be right.

"Good morning," said H. R. in such a voice and with such a look that No. 2 instantly ceased to exist. When he walked out he didn't hear his own footsteps.

"And you?"

"It depends," answered No. 3 in the earnest voice of a man trying to be fair at all costs, "upon what the work will be."

"I sha'n't need you. Please don't ask me questions. Good day, sir."

"I have a right—"

"None whatever. It would be cruelty if I told you."

Mr. Barrett laughed. No. 3 said, angrily, "You can't come that on me and get away with it, you damned—"

"Go while the going is good, friend." H. R. spoke with the cold kindness of a man warning an objectionable inebriate. Then, when the loss of patience of a prize-fighter who, however, has not quite lost sight of the electric chair: "Get out! D'ye hear?"

The man left. H. R. stared out of the window. They could see it was to cool off. It gave the remaining pair a great respect for him and also a resolve not to stimulate the heat verbally. At length H. R. turned to No. 1 and said, "Wolverton is your name?"

"Yes," answered Wolverton. Then he added, "Sir."

"Do you always get what you want?"

"I get my share."

"Barrett, do you get what you want?"

"Always!" promptly answered Barrett. "But I've got to be sure I want it."

"The more money you two wish to make the better you please me. It will give you something to brag of. In working for me you will receive your share of prosperity and the pleasure of becoming somebody."

He looked as if the three of them stood in the plain sight of two and one-half millions of spectators. He went on, even more impressively, "You will now go on Fifth Avenue and graciously permit the swellest shops to employ our union sandwich-men to advertise their wares."

Wolverton rose to his feet. His color also rose.

"You didn't want me to waste your time, did you?"

"No, but you have. Good day. Now, Barrett, listen to me. I never repeat."

Mr. Wolverton opened his mouth, perceived that H. R. was not looking at him, closed his mouth and went out. He was a well-dressed man with a determined chin. If it had not been for that chin he would have been a bookkeeper. Determination minus imagination equals stubbornness.

Mr. Wolverton therefore walked out unbleeding.

"Barrett, do you see the possibilities?"

"Do I? Didn't I see the parade? Say, I can only think when I talk. Trust me! Speaking of terms—" He looked at H. R., nodded amiably, and said, "After you, kind friend."

"You will ask our clients five dollars per day per man, they to pay for the boards, which must be artistic and approved by me. The union label will be on them. Forty per cent. goes to the artist, forty per cent. to you, and ten per cent. to the society. Don't try Valiquet's. Tackle everybody else first. I'll be here all the afternoon. Barrett, I expect you to do your damnedest!"

He rose, shook hands with young Mr. Andrew Barrett, escorted him to the door, and returned to his desk.

He sat there, thinking. He intended Barrett should fail in order that when H. R. made him succeed, later, Barrett should know to whom the credit should go, though the commissions would fall into Barrett's pocket. That would make the young man really useful.

The telephone people had not yet installed the apparatus in his office, so he went downstairs and called up Mr. Maximilian Onthemaker.

"Onthemaker?... This is H. R. speaking.... Of course I saw the papers.... Yes, all of them. Come up to my office. At once!... I can't help it; I need you—this means the front page again. If you don't want the job.... I thought you would! Remember, I'm waiting. Do you hear me? Waiting!"

The greatest stroke of political genius on the part of Louis XIV. was his rebuke: "I almost have been made to wait!"

What, wait?—H. R.?

If it had not been that taxicabs cost actual money, M. Onthemaker would have taken one. But he knew he soon would have one of his own—if the newspapers did their share.

Before Max could decide whether he ought to say good morning to H. R. in a sulky tone of voice at being called from an important conference, or smile pleasantly, H. R. said:

"Onthemaker, I am going to advertise a shop without permission and without pay."

"Another restaurant, like—"

"Like nothing. Don't interrupt again, not even to approve. I am going to have Valiquet's, the jewelers, brought to the notice of Fifth Avenue through the medium of our sandwich-men. I anticipate objections. The statute clearly says we must not use a person's name for purposes of trade without his consent. But I'm not going to use the name of a person, but of a corporation, for its own trade and profit. There is no law that can prevent me from putting money into a corporation's treasury—"

"A commission of lunacy—"

"Be quiet. They can't stop me legally, if you are our counsel." Max bowed, opened his mouth, and promptly closed it when he saw H. R.'s face. "They might try to get out an injunction, but you must beat them to it. They will probably try to get the police to stop us by alleging breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, or some violation of a city ordinance. I want you to prepare in advance restraining orders or applications for injunctions or whatever is needed to prevent interference with us. You are the counsel of the Society of American Sandwich Artists. Prepare papers also in the names of individual members. The poor sandwich artist, working for a mere pittance, without money to pay his able but charitable and indignant counsel, will fight the richest jewelry-shop in the world. The pearl showcase alone would feed one hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred and fifty-one men one week. Do you get that?"

"Do I?" Max Onthemaker, able and indignant, was rushing to embrace H. R., on whose face he saw ten thousand front-page head-lines, when H. R. said, coldly:

"Sit down. This is only the beginning."

Max sat down. He felt very much more like kneeling in adoration before this god of success.

"Yes, sir," he murmured, prayerfully, and looked with his very soul.

"Be ready with the papers for the papers."

Perceiving a puzzled look on the lawyer's face, H. R. explained: "Draw the legal papers up so they will be news. And remember that I am the society. You are merely a lawyer lucky enough to be its lawyer. If you don't know what the reporters like to print, bring the injunctions and typewritten argument to me this afternoon. Go away now. I'm going to Valiquet's."

"Not to—"

"Not to anything you may think."

Max Onthemaker walked away, and even as he walked he began to fear that the newspapers would not let him have more than twenty-eight columns. It behooved him to be brief. What with the immemorial wrongs of the poor, and the inalienable rights of American citizens, and the abuse of wealth, and the arrogance of unconvicted millionaires, and the supine subservience of the police and the politicians to Big Business, how could he use less than three pages? How?

But he must do it. He asked himself what steps he would take to prevent the sandwich-men, or anybody, from advertising him, and he could find no objection. But he had imagination. He indignantly put himself in the place of Valiquet's and hired M. Onthemaker, Esq., to stop the beasts. And then he proceeded to make the able counsel of the S. A. S. A. punch the great jewelers' case full of holes—such holes as would let out the law in the way the reporters would like. This would make said holes the kind that no judge, thinking of re-election and the recall, would dare to plug up. When your client is poor and doesn't use dynamite, sympathy is the best law with juries. And when it came to picking out jurors, Max had inherited a vision for dollars which enabled him to tell the contents of a juror's inside pocket to the penny, and therefore the exact hatred of riches of each of the twelve peers.

VI

H. R. sent word to Fleming, via Caspar Weinpusslacher, that he desired to meet about fifty members of the society at the Colossal Restaurant that evening at seven sharp. He then went to Valiquet's. The firm's name was not visible on the façade; only a beautiful bronze clock. Everybody was expected to know that this was Valiquet's, and everybody did, particularly those who could not afford to buy jewels. It had engendered throughout the entire country that familiar form of American snobbery which consists not only of having the best that money can buy, but of telling everybody that the watch or the necklace or the solitaire or the stick-pin came from Valiquet's.

He entered the most beautiful store in the world as though his feet had carried him thither automatically, from force of habit. He looked approvingly, as for the millionth time, at the wide teak boards of the floor and the ornate but beautiful solid-silver ceiling and the cool variegated purple-gray marble columns. He paused by the pearl-counter and stared at the one-hundred-thousand-dollar strings with what you might call an amiable tolerance; it wasn't their fault, poor things!

He moved on, reluctantly, six feet farther and examined, with a little more insistence, the emeralds, the fashionable gems of the season.

"Very fair! Very fair, indeed!" he seemed to be saying encouragingly to the dazzling green things.

The well-trained clerks looked at him, took a respectfully eager step toward him as if to place themselves unreservedly at his orders, and then abruptly immobilized themselves in their tracks—their tribute to expert knowledge!

He did not look up, but, as if he were aware that the world was looking on, ready to obey, he rested his finger-tip on the showcase immediately above an eighteen-carat cabochon emerald surrounded by very white diamonds set in platinum. By instinct he had picked out the best.

A clerk opened the case, took out the emerald, and respectfully laid it before the connoisseur. H. R. fumbled in his waistcoat pockets, then in his coat, allowed himself to look annoyed at having forgotten his pocket magnifying-glass, picked up the jewel, looked at it closely for flaws, then at arm's-length for general effect.

He laid it on the velvet mat, raised his eyes and met the clerk's.

The clerk smiled uncertainly. H. R. unsmilingly raised his eyebrows—very slightly.

"Sixty-eight thousand five hundred, Mr.—eh—"

H. R. hesitated. Then he shook his head resolutely. Having mastered the temptation, he nodded to the clerk, and said, kindly, "Thank you."

"Not at all, sir," gratefully said the clerk.

H. R. walked on, a marked man, high in the estimation of the clerks because he had not bought a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar emerald.

Don't you wonder how they do it? What is it? Intuition? Genius?

A floor-walker who had taken in H. R.'s introduction of himself to Valiquet's bowed deferentially to H. R. and blamed his memory for not remembering the name. He was certain he knew the gentleman well.

H. R. nodded and asked: "I wish to have a bronze statuette designed and cast for me. Which department, please?"

"Up-stairs, Mr.—er— Second floor, sir. Mr. Gwathmey is in charge, and—"

"Oh, Gwathmey!" H. R. was obviously much relieved.

"Yes, sir. He's still with us, sir. Elevator on the left."

"Thank you," said H. R., and the man smiled gratefully.

You don't have to buy to be treated politely in New York. The mere suspicion of the power of purchase is enough. It is thus that the principle "Politeness pays" has been established among stock-brokers and jewelers.

H. R. was directed to the head of the department, to whom he said, with a sort of boyish eagerness, "Mr. Gwathmey, I'm very much interested in the Movement, as you probably know, and I wish my little society to have a very artistic emblem."

He looked expectantly at Mr. Gwathmey, who thereupon bowed at the implied compliment, but, not knowing what to say, said nothing.

"You read in the papers about the parade my poor fellows had Saturday?"

"Not the—er—sandwich-men's parade?"

"Yes!" H. R. smiled so gratefully and congratulatory that Mr. Gwathmey felt himself enrolled among the honorary vice-presidents. "That's it. The society emblem is a skeleton and the sandwich-boards are a coffin—"

"Yes, I read that," and Mr. Gwathmey smiled at the delightful humor of the conceit.

H. R. instantly frowned at the levity—all very rich men frown at all smiles aimed at their pet hobbies.

Mr. Gwathmey, knowing the ways of millionaires, hastened to explain, gravely, "There is a great deal to that idea!"

"Nobody helped me!" H. R. spoke eagerly, as all youthful aristocrats speak when they speak of their own ideas. "The Ultimate Sandwich! What you and I shall be at least once. I am glad you agree with me. Now, I wish statuettes made in bronze in three sizes, two, four, and six inches high, so they can be used by my friends as desk ornaments. And can you put on a nice patine?"

"Oh yes! And—er—Mr.—ah—" Gwathmey looked ashamed of himself.

But H. R. smiled pleasantly and said: "It is easy to see you are not a Rutgers College man. I'm Mr. Rutgers. My father—" He stopped—naturally.

"I'm sorry to say I'm Harvard, Mr. Rutgers," said Mr. Gwathmey, contritely. "But don't you think it would be a little gruesome for a desk ornament?"

"Not at all. The Egyptians used to bring in a skeleton at their feasts so that the timid guests should cease to fear dyspepsia. And the Memento Mori of later centuries had its raison d'être. I have a Byzantine ivory carving of a skull that is a gem. Holbein's 'Dance of Death' is not inartistic. It is up to you people to keep my skull from being repulsive. I wish to get something that will drive home the fact to us careless Americans that the richest is no better than the poorest. For we are not!" H. R. said this decisively. When the aristocrat tells you that you and he are not a bit better than the proletariat, what you understand him to say is that you also are an aristocrat. A democratic aristocracy is invincible.

"No," agreed Mr. Gwathmey, proudly, "we are not!"

"Let me have a sketch as soon as possible. It is to raise funds for our superannuated sandwiches."

Mr. Gwathmey saw no humor in either the intention or the phrase. As an alert business man who studied the psychology of customers, he knew that society leaders had advocated the cause of the shirtwaist workers and of certain educational movies—especially society leaders who had reached the age when their looks and their pearls no longer entitled them to the pictorial supplements. How else could they stay in the newspapers except by indignation over the wrongs of social inferiors? By espousing the cause of the lower classes, the latter also remained lower.

Mr. Gwathmey smiled tolerantly and nodded. Then he looked dreamy and murmured: "I see! I see exactly what you want: a skeleton carrying a coffin as sandwich-boards. The Ultimate Sandwich."

He saw it in the air, two feet from the tip of his nose; he was a creative artist. Then he became a salesman.

"We can submit designs to you, Mr. Rutgers—"

"To-day?"

"Oh, gracious, no! We couldn't—"

"To-morrow, then. You have grasped the idea completely. No, Mr. Gwathmey; no!" And H. R. held up a hand—the hand of Fate. "To-morrow, at the latest! Must have it! I hate waiting. That's why I came to Valiquet's instead of Shoreham's. And now," he went on before Mr. Gwathmey could protest, "I wish also a series of designs for sandwich-boards—heraldic shields, scutcheons and bucklers, spade-shapes, rectangular boards of the right proportion, circles, and a keystone for use by the Pennsylvania Railroad. I propose to raise the sandwich to the highest form of art. I shall experiment with various materials—wood, metal, and composition, with raised as well as with sunken letters, in divers colors, vert antique and beautiful soft grays, and iridescent-glass mosaic. Can't you imagine a sandwich being made artistic, if I get competent experts to design them?" H. R. looked anxiously at the competent expert.

"Indeed I can," replied Mr. Gwathmey, with conviction. "Indeed I can, Mr. Rutgers. It is an excellent idea!"

"Thank you. Do you know, I thought so, too!"

Mr. Gwathmey, being a kindly man, was so pleased at having suggested, evolved, and improved a great idea that he filled with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm always made him take out his pencil and reach for a pad. He did so now.

"For instance—" he said, and he began to design.

"Exactly! Exactly!" said H. R., with such eager admiration that Mr. Gwathmey was inspired by love of the young man. "I'd give everything I own, Mr. Gwathmey, to have your gift!"

Mr. Gwathmey modestly felt his talents overcapitalized. Everything this eccentric but clever scion of the Knickerbockers owned? Mr. Gwathmey almost saw the old Rutgers farm! It must have had at least one hundred and fifty acres bounded by Broadway, Wall, Fulton, and the East River. A very nice young man, with agricultural ancestors in New Amsterdam.

"Won't you give me these, Mr. Gwathmey?" pleaded H. R.

"We never send out such rough—"

"These are not the firm's, but Gwathmey's. Just sign your name and let me keep these as souvenirs. Please!" And H. R. smiled with boyish eagerness.

Mr. Gwathmey signed his initials, and reluctantly gave the drawings to H. R., shaking his modest head deprecatingly.

H. R. reverently put the precious sheets in his pocket and said: "Thank you very much. Now you get your best sculptor to model my Ultimate Sandwich by to-morrow, won't you?" Then he proceeded to contradict in advance—a purely feminine habit, sometimes used with great effect by masculine leaders—"Oh yes, he can. I'm sure you can make him do it if you wish to be nice!"

What reply could Mr. Gwathmey possibly make? He made it. "I'll do my best, Mr. Rutgers; but—"

"Then it's done," said H. R., with such conviction that Mr. Gwathmey filled his own lungs with oxygen. "And the designs for the various kinds of sandwich-boards, in color, with the different materials indicated. Send them to me, Allied Arts Building, won't you?"

H. R. forgot to say anything about costs. Only the nobility forget such things, for the nobility know that Valiquet's work is perfect. Mr. Gwathmey therefore forgot to be cautious. He said, "Very well, Mr. Rutgers."

"Thank you so much!" That little phrase of gratitude in that same tone of voice has often made plebeians feel like dying to prove their gratitude. Then H. R. hesitated, looked at Mr. Gwathmey, and, recklessly vaulting over all caste-barriers, said, "I wish to shake hands with the man who designed my sandwiches!"

Mr. Gwathmey actually blushed as he shook hands warmly. The moment H. R. left, Mr. Gwathmey rushed to his office to take steps to please young Mr. Rutgers.

Rutgers College—culture; Hendrik—Knickerbocker; no question about price—inherited wealth; newspaper front page—somebody!

A nice boy, bless him!

Mr. Gwathmey at that moment was the only man who really knew H. R. Like a book!

Thus are historic characters analyzed by intimate friends. Invaluable testimony! Interesting side-lights!

H. R. went back to his office and began to copy Mr. Gwathmey's designs. He had barely finished when Andrew Barrett entered. He looked humorous. Young men always do when they are angry at having failed but do not wish to call it failure, and therefore must not look angry. Defeat is never a joke. Therefore a joke can never be an acknowledgment of defeat. Very easy! Origin: U. S. A. Reason: national juvenility.

Before Barrett could speak H. R. asked, "Nobody would be first?"

"No; nor second."

"They will. Did you properly play up the wisdom and glory of being first?"

"Of course."

"Go back and tell them that Valiquet's will advertise with our sandwiches as soon as they have prepared artistic boards. The other men have lost the chance to be first. They are asses. Tell them so and book them for second place. Dwell strongly on the fact that the commercial standing of each shop will be determined by the richness of the sandwich-boards. Tell them confidentially that Valiquet's will do some wonderful stunts with real bronze and iridescent-glass mosaics valued at ten thousand dollars. The firm are taking big chances with breakage in a crowded avenue, but that's why they are on top of the heap. The department stores might try real lace edging and gold-thread hand-embroidery on Genoese velvet."

Valiquet's advertising campaigns were models of ultra-conservatism and costly refinement. And now, sandwiches!

"Have you—" began young Mr. Barrett in awed tones.

"I have. Get busy! Tell them to watch. On next Monday begins the greatest revolution in advertising this country ever experienced. We are making history! Pledge them to advertise through us, if we deliver the goods. It will be the only swell way. Get that?"

"Betcherlife!" And Mr. Andrew Barrett rushed off.

VII

H. R. went out to have his boards made. He distributed orders among wood-carvers and plaster-casting ateliers, and devised a method by which boards could be made on the principle of stereotypers' matrices, only the letters were raised. He pledged the makers to deliver the boards within twenty-four hours, and as he did not haggle over the price by the simple expedient of not asking for it, they promised. When a man is permitted to fix his own profit he will do anything except go to church.

At seven sharp, accompanied by Andrew Barrett, H. R. went to Caspar Weinpusslacher's. He could not get a seat. People stood in dozens, waiting for the early dinner to finish. And most of the waiting customers were fashionably dressed. The Colossal Restaurant had become a fad.

Caspar greeted H. R. with respect. He did not yet feel strong enough to display ingratitude.

"I'll fix a special table, Mr. Rutchers," he said.

H. R. nodded assent and then sought Fleming. At the longest table sat twenty-seven unionized artists.

"Are you getting the full thirty-cent dinner?" he asked, paternally.

"Yes, sir," Fleming hastily assured him.

H. R. looked at his men. They looked away uneasily. Was this to be their last free meal?

H. R. turned to Andrew Barrett and said in a voice that did not reach the members and therefore increased their uneasiness:

"Barrett, in unionizing these men, thereby making them free sandwiches, I had in mind several things; one of them was the absolute control of the New York papers."

"How?" asked Barrett in utter non-comprehension.

"By organizing my men into a Public Sentiment Corps. Their duty will be to write letters to the newspapers. I figure that one bona-fide letter to each thirteen thousand one hundred and eighty-six circulation creates an irresistible demand. The Evening Post, of course, needs about one to five hundred readers. I think eleven letters will be enough there. Our men already have names, and hereafter they will have permanent addresses."

"And then?"

"I furnish the paper, the stamps, and the literature. The men copy the letters. The newspapers will do the rest. Did you bring the pads and pencils I told you?"

"Yes."

"Pass 'em around, one to each man."

Barrett did so. The men edged away in ill-concealed terror.

"Take up the pencils!" commanded H. R.

The members acted as if the pencils were rattlesnakes.

"Did you hear me?" asked H. R., calmly.

They trembled. But they were not slaves. No man can be compelled to write in a free country.

By feeding these men H. R. had given them the courage to refuse to obey him! Was the food an error, as charitable philosophers have declared?

The pencils remained untouched before the men. Fleming was the only one who obeyed. But he was by now almost a capitalist—he was a distributor of meal-tickets.

"Mutiny!" muttered Andrew Barrett, and looked anxiously at his chief. How would H. R. meet this crisis? The absolute control of the New York papers hung in the balance.

But H. R. merely asked, pleasantly, "Ready?"

Not a man stirred. They had forgotten that he could fight!

"I will dictate and each of you must write down what I say. I want to know how well you can write."

Two of the men began to shake their heads with growing independence. Others followed, for moral courage is contagious, even in industrial democracies.

H. R. smiled confidently. That made them waver. Confidence is the most demoralizing of all social factors. "Now write what I say and sign your name after you finish."

All of them shook their heads and frowned pugnaciously.

H. R. dictated, "Please pay us five dollars a day!"

They grabbed the pencils with one lightning-like movement, and wrote, very plainly. They signed their names even more plainly.

"Give them to Fleming. On Monday we begin work. I shall consider the writing carefully."

In this wise was organized the Public Sentiment Corps of the S. A. S. A. Literature, it had once more been demonstrated, is merely a matter of demand and supply.

VIII

After dining in the company of Barrett and Caspar Weinpusslacher, H. R. went to the agency that had handled his newspaper advertising, opened a charge account, and told them to send to all the morning papers the following advertisement:

WANTED.—An actor who can look like a gentleman in good health before a critical audience of 250,000. Apply in person, without press notices.

H. R.
Allied Arts Bldg.

It was rather late in the evening when he sent for Max Onthemaker, but this only served to strengthen the learned counsel's high opinion of H. R. When H. R. told him what he proposed to do Max jumped in the air for joy. Then he sat down limply. It suddenly occurred to him that H. R. was far too intelligent. This is fatal to the right kind of newspaper publicity. But H. R. soothed him and dispelled Max's doubts by showing him exactly how to become an efficient and altogether legal agent provocateur. The legal mind always concerns itself over the particular paragraph. It comes from numbering the statutes. Max worked till dawn on his papers and arguments.

On the next morning H. R. selected, out of several dozen applicants, four actors who looked really distinguished. The others walked away cursing the trust. They are never original, as a class, by reason of their habit of also reading the press notices of their colleagues.

H. R. told the lucky four that he would give them the hardest part of their lives.

They looked at him pityingly.

He then guaranteed to get their pictures in all the papers.

They looked blasé.

He began to speak to them about fame and about money, and then about money and fame—the power to go into any restaurant and cause an instant cessation of all mastication, or walk into any manager's office and be entreated to sign, at any price, only sign—sign at once!

They accepted on the spot, and asked when the engagement began. In their eagerness to be artists they forgot to ask the salary.

H. R. then told them that they must introduce the art of sandwiching to New York. They must command the union sandwiches.

Never!

He explained to them very patiently, for he was dealing with temperaments, that to make sandwiching an art required the highest form of histrionic ability. Anybody could look like a gentleman on the stage or in any of the Fifth Avenue drawing-rooms to which they were obviously accustomed. But, unmistakably to look like a gentleman between sandwich-boards would require a combination of Richard Mansfield and ancient lineage. He asked them kindly to ponder on the lamented Edward VII. How would the Kaiser act? That is the way he wanted his artists to act—like royalty. It was the highest art ever discovered. They would be the cynosure of all eyes on Fifth Avenue, where most eyes belong to wealthy women who always look for, as well as at, handsome men of discretion and bona-fide divorce decrees. The artists themselves would represent Valiquet's, the world's greatest jewelers, and the newspapers would be told of the enormous salaries paid. Some of the boards would be of real gold, to be valued at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the most conservative of the newspapers. The men also would be paid in cash, two dollars a day.

"The idea is not to sandwich in the ordinary commercial way, but to give our press agents the swellest opportunity of the century. Managers have used real diamonds on the stage. Money buys them. I am using real gentlemen. Money cannot make them. Valiquet's never does anything inexpensive, and this is merely the first and most dazzling chapter in the history of the New Art of Advertising. The newspapers will duly chronicle the fact that each artist received one thousand dollars a week—which the artists have turned over to charity, like gentlemen. To be the Theodore Roosevelts of street advertisements is more than a privilege, more than an honor, more than art—it is cash! There have been sandwich-men. There shall be sandwich-artists! Gentlemen, you will make history. If you feel you don't measure up to the job, you can get the hell out of here!"

They not only signed, but begged to begin on that day, even though it was Friday. But H. R. was adamant.

"Monday!" he said, "and no more remarks. Report at nine a.m., dressed like gentlemen."

Andrew Barrett reported enthusiastically that nearly every shop on the Avenue was ready to sign contracts if Valiquet's began. There had been some skepticism, and expectations were keyed up to the snapping-pitch.

Mr. Gwathmey sent a dozen designs for boards and the model of the Ultimate Sandwich. It was really a beautiful piece of work. H. R.'s luck was with him. The young Frenchman who did it came into his own years later.

H. R. accepted them on official stationery of the society, ordered one hundred of each size, and also asked that the designs of the sandwich-boards be engraved in color. He told Barrett to get Valiquet's written acceptance of his order.

On Sunday all the newspapers were impressively notified that there would be some novel and revolutionary advertising on the Avenue. To insure attention, the newspapers were simultaneously informed also that the Fifth Avenue Merchants' Guild had decided to advertise more extensively in the daily press. New York would give an object-lesson in optimism and confidence to the rest of the country. This would allay all fears as to the fundamental soundness of the general business situation. Wall Street might be in the dumps, but the legitimate merchants, up to the full-page size, were more truly representative of the metropolis.

Fleming had been told to detail himself, Mulligan, and the four most typical sandwiches in the society to act as the advance-guard. He and the five were at the office early Monday morning, so were the four histrionic artists, so was Max Onthemaker with nineteen injunctions, writs, and legal documents neatly typewritten, three process-servers, and thirty copies of a statement for the newspapers.

Each sandwich-man received his board and a copy of his own speech. It was a plea for equal rights and the cessation of hostilities against a poor man simply because he had no money, a prayer for the enforcement of the Constitution, and three quotations from that obsolete Book that taught sandwich-men how to turn the other cheek. Also a post-Scriptural assertion that each man went to church to pray and not to ask for unearned bread or jump on Standard Oil.

Max himself made them memorize the speech. They were letter perfect before he stopped.

"This will kill 'em dead," he said, enthusiastically. "Why, Mr. Rutgers, even the newspapers will think they are Christians and—"

"Make them early Christians," wisely advised H. R. "Thats what the world needs to-day!"

"You are right, as usual. Hey, you fellows, add, If we must die, we die forgiving our fellow-men in the knowledge that after death we shall come into our own."

"Hey, I ain't going to be killed just to—" began Mulligan, edging toward the door.

"In the newspapers, ass! In the front page, imbecile!" shrieked Max.

Mulligan shook his head doggedly.

"Mulligan!" said H. R., and clenched his right fist.

"Ye-es, boss."

"I'll be there to see that you get the forty beers and I'll guarantee that you'll have a chance to assuage your thirst after business hours."

"All right, boss," said Mulligan. "And I'll guarantee the thirst."

"Say, can you beat it?" admiringly asked Max of Andrew Barrett. "Where does he get it?" And he tapped his own cranium sadly.

"And, Mulligan, if you should be locked up," added H. R., "the first thing you do when you get to jail is to declare a hunger strike. This will stamp you as Crusaders! And Crusaders never frighten Business."

"Great heavens!" whispered Max.

"Do we get the—" began Mulligan, anxiously.

"Nothing need be said about drinking. You'll get your forty."

"They can do their damnedest," said Mulligan, looking like a hero-martyr.

"Refer all reporters to your counsel," finally advised Max. "Forget everything else, but not that, not that!"

IX

The four great actors, distinguished-looking, positively Beau Brummelesque, in shining top-hats of the latest fashion, went out of the Allied Arts Building to make history. They walked ahead abreast, their eyes fixed straight ahead. Pedestrians instinctively parted to let them by. Then they asked questions.

Andrew Barrett's agents answered the questions.

"They are the advance-guard. You ought to see what's coming!"

The faint sense of waiting for something worth waiting for, that so far only the annual police parade has been able to arouse in New York was discernible on the faces of the spectators. They began to cluster on the edges of the sidewalks. The chauffeurs began to look anxious. Honestly, they did!

Andrew Barrett had shown to the other shop-keepers the Valiquet designs and told them to watch for the great jewelers' astounding coup. He booked twenty-two orders for the next week.

At two o'clock the artists sallied forth once more. The throngs opened for them to pass. Those spectators who had put off lunching to see the epoch-making stunt were rewarded. They saw four perfectly attired gentlemen in top-hats, carrying dazzling escutcheons worthy of the premier jewel-shop in the world.

The six, walking professionally, carried the most beautiful boards ever seen, with these legends:

They were followed by the six picked sandwiches, in their working-clothes, but with wonderful boards.

The sandwich was the thing!

The sandwich-men were merely artists.

The spectators recalled that ultimately all men and all women must become sandwiches.

It made New-Yorkers realize that Death was still on the job. This gave them something to talk about that night at dinner, before dancing.

Also three hundred and fifty thousand people saw the O. K. of "H. R."

It is easy to remember two letters.

It was an extraordinary sensation. The big shops emptied themselves. In McQuery's and Oldman's and Mann & Baker's the rush to the Avenue doors was so great that floor-walkers who tried to stem the tide were crushed, manlike, by the women and borne, half-clad, upon the sidewalk. The proprietors looked at the crowds, heard the same remark, "What is it?" by the tens of thousands, saw the sandwiches, saw the looks on the tens of thousands of faces, and said, "Damn!"

They had not heard the knock of opportunity, and Valiquet's had. No wonder the jewel firm's regular two-hundred-per-cent. quarterly dividends were regular. It wasn't the big profit in gems; it was the cars!

The proprietors blamed their advertising managers.

The triumphal march of the sandwiches was more than a success, more than a sensation. It was an event. The four top-hatted histrions then and there forswore the stage. No artist had ever won such triumphs since Nero. They had started as Beau Brummels. They had become Kaisers—only infinitely more Cæsarean. And the union sandwiches following in Indian file, oblivious, like true artists, of the admiration of the rabble, thought of the end of the day, of the forty beers and the free food—of unearned wealth!—and actually swaggered so that their parasite-infested hirsuteness and their beast-faces took on an aspect of aristocratic eccentricity, of zeal for a noble cause. Their rags, in juxtaposition to the dazzling gorgeousness of their sandwich-boards, thus became ecclesiastical vestments—pilgrims wearing tatters in fulfillment of Lenten vows of renunciation.

It was, of course, the masterly combination. Valiquet's was the last word in swellness, the label of utterly inutilitarian wealth.

The sandwich business was therefore the postscript.

"Only Valiquet's would think of doing such a thing!" said all Fifth Avenue, as usual giving credit to commercial genius instead of to the creative artist.

The other mercantile geniuses, seeing that their shoppers had declared a legal holiday, frantically telephoned to Mr. Andrew Barrett to send out their sandwiches at once. They would pay ten dollars per man; yes, twenty dollars. Only do it now! They did not wish to be put in the position of following. This is fatal on Fifth Avenue.

Valiquet's was skimming the cream! Never mind submitting the legends! Get a hustle on! Never mind striking catch-phrases. That would come later. Get the sandwiches on the Avenue! The bare name and the sandwiches!

The crowd, who had not had time to forget about the sandwich-men's parade of a few days before, cleverly saw that this was the second chapter. They therefore knew all about it and could and would say so to their less-clever fellow-beings. Completeness of knowledge is one of the nicest feelings in the world.

Barrett excitedly reported the avalanche of orders to H. R. and was promptly and calmly despatched to the board-makers to order fifty boards each of the six Valiquet designs, three hundred in all. H. R. then dictated a statement for publication, as to the real meaning of sandwiching on Fifth Avenue. It was not merely advertising—it was philanthropy. Much more went to feeding starving artists at the Colossal Restaurant than to the militant brethren in the shape of wages. It was also the best way of advertising Fifth Avenue's wares.

Mr. Wilberforce Josslyn, president of Valiquet's corporation, was told of the sandwich desecration of the holy name. His private secretary alone had the courage to impart the news.

Mr. Wilberforce Josslyn, feeling that he had to be to his help what his firm was to the world, turned around in his Circassian-walnut swivel-chair, said, "Stop 'em!" and revolved again.

The secretary carried the order to the first vice-president, Mr. Angus MacAckus; the first vice-president took it upon himself not only to stop 'em, but to punish 'em. He hastily descended to the main floor. What he saw through the Fifth Avenue doors appalled him, and worse. Even within the sacred precincts of the shop the reckless jewel-buying public and the conservative charge-accounts alike were talking about it, actually congratulating the gentlemanly salesmen and the courtly department-managers and the obliging watch-repairers.

Two men, whom he recognized as reporters by their intellectual faces, approached him, but he ran away from them toward the door.

Mrs. Vandergilt, undisputed Tsarina of society, was in one of the compartments of the plate-glass and solid-silver stile, and he waited in order to welcome her. They did not make a hundred thousand a year out of her, for she was not from Detroit, but they had been official jewelers to the family for sixty years, as they were of all the Vans who were Van Somebody. The annual storage of the Vandergilt crown jewels was a regular yearly story, like the police parade and the first snow-storm.

"MacAckus," said Mrs. Vandergilt in her sharp, imperious voice, "why did you do it? Not to advertise?"

"Certainly not," answered Mr. MacAckus, forgetting himself and speaking with heat.

"I thought not. Well, I am glad you are helping. I shall send my check to them. Poor men!" Then she had one of those moments of kindliness that made people worship her: "It was a very clever thing to do, MacAckus. I am glad you had not only the brains, but the courage."

The reporters heard her. It was their business to get the news. Mr. MacAckus realized that Mrs. Vandergilt's approval had changed the complexion of the affair. At the same time, Valiquet's never talked for publication, and the remarks of their clients were sacred. He turned to the reporters and said in the peremptory tone that makes reporters so obedient:

"Not a word of this! Do you understand?"

"We understand perfectly," said the American. "We certainly do!" and wrote what Mrs. Vandergilt had said and what she was wearing. It would be a text for one of Arthur Migraine's editorial sermons, proving that millionaires, instead of being blown into atoms, should be freely permitted to give money for starving men to convert into food. In fact, nature wisely provided that millionaires should have money to give away. The more the poor received the less the millionaire would take to the useless grave.

Mr. MacAckus, greatly perturbed by this deviation from the norm, rushed to the president's office to tell him Mrs. Vandergilt's opinion. Before he could speak, Mr. Wilberforce Josslyn said:

"Did you stop 'em?"

"No, sir. Let me explain. Mrs. Vandergilt just came in and—"

"I sent word to have 'em stopped!" said Mr. Josslyn, frowning.

"Let me explain, Mr. Josslyn—"

Disobedience cannot be explained away. Discipline must be enforced. It is better to blunder under orders than to prevent disorganization from interfering with dividends. The obvious advantage that a corporation president has over his subordinates is that he does not have to be hampered by petty details.

"Stop 'em!" he said, coldly.

"Mrs. Vandergilt said—"

"And Mr. Josslyn said stop 'em!" He turned his back on MacAckus, who thereupon rushed downstairs, frowning angrily. He'd stop 'em.

He walked out into the Avenue. It was blocked. He tried to elbow his way through the intelligent femininity and was nearly run in by a traffic policeman. The women refused to budge—the sandwiches were coming.

And would you believe it? As the shining top-hats drew near, the crowd actually divided itself, Red-Sea-wise, to let H. R.'s chosen people pass safely.

Mr. MacAckus did not faint, because he was too angry. He stepped in front of the four obvious gentlemen and held up a hand. He could not speak.

But the four, who had been elevated to imperial dignity by New York, moved on so majestically that Mr. MacAckus began to retreat before them, waving his hand frantically. He stepped backward, keeping time to their steps, his hand moving up and down in his wrath. It looked for all the world like a band-master indicating to his artists just how to play it.

Backward he stepped; onward they marched; until speech returned to him:

"Stop! Stop! STOP!"

They did not hear him.

He called to a policeman, "Stop 'em!"

H. R. had won!

The officer ran up. He was a policeman. He therefore said, "What's the matter?"

"These men have no right to use our name. We did not authorize them. We wish them stopped from using our firm's name for—er—advertising purposes. It's against the law. I'll make a complaint against them. Stop 'em!"

Max Onthemaker came forward, his face pale with determination. Four reporters trailed along.

"Touch these gentlemen at your peril!" he said to the policeman. "Here is a sworn copy of the statute referred to by that person." He shoved a typewritten document under the officer's nose. There were two seals on it; one was in anarchistic red and the other in Wall Street gold.

"Observe," pursued Mr. Onthemaker, impressively and very distinctly, that the reporters might not misquote, "that the statute says the name of a living person must not be used. But Valiquet's is a corporation. Do you get that, officer? A corporation!"

The officer read the newspapers. He knew what corporations were. They bought votes for the Republicans; and, besides, they only paid the men higher up. He therefore informed Mr. MacAckus:

"I can't do not'n."

"And even if you could, officer," said Mr. Onthemaker to the reporters, "the magistrate would let them go with a reprimand for you. We are ready for him." Then he said to MacAckus: "Get out of the way, or I'll have you arrested for blocking traffic, causing a crowd to collect, for assuming that you own the sidewalk, and for interfering with honest working-men who are trying to earn a peaceful living. Also for oppressing the poor. We have not asked you for money. We do not wish your charity." He paused, and, shaking a finger at Mr. MacAckus, said, loudly, "We spurn your tainted money!"

H. R. had not made a mistake in picking out this man to represent the society. Indeed, one reporter, in a stage whisper, actually hissed:

"Bribery!"

The officer looked at Mr. MacAckus and said, "Please move on, sir."

"That's polite enough," said one of the reporters, making a note of it. But Mr. MacAckus said:

"Why, you infernal—"

"Move on!" said the cop.

"I am Mr. MacAckus, of Valiquet's—"

"Tell him who you are, officer," said the diabolic Onthemaker, guessing the cop's nationality.

"I am Mr. McGinnis, of the thirty-first precinct."

People began to clap their hands—people who never went into Valiquet's. Mr. McGinnis thereupon laid a hand proudly on Mr. MacAckus's arm.

Mr. MacAckus lost his head; that is, he shook off the white-gloved hand of the law.

The law blew its whistle, as the law always does in civilized communities.

Instantly, as though the whistle had been the cue, the stirring sound of galloping steeds smote the asphalt of Fifth Avenue.

"Let him go, Officer McGinnis," said Max Onthemaker, magnanimously. "We do not care to appear against him."

"Ain't he fine-looking?" a woman asked her companion, looking at the law. She even pointed at him.

Mr. McGinnis therefore haughtily said, "Resisting an officer—"

H. R. on horseback, in correct riding attire, following seven mounted traffic-squad men, appeared on the scene.

"There he is!" said Mr. Onthemaker to the reporters, dutifully yielding the center of the stage to its rightful possessor. After all, there was only one H. R., and both H. R. and Max Onthemaker knew it.

"That's the commissioner," said a clerk to the atmosphere.

"It's young Vandergilt!" asserted the fickle one who had thought McGinnis was fine-looking.

Before the traffic squad could dismount, H. R. jumped down from his horse, threw the reins to one of the mounted officers, said, "Look after him!" so decisively that no remonstrance was possible, approached the group, and said, "I'm Mr. Rutgers!"

Fifth Avenue was impassable now.

"Who is it?" asked ten thousand who had been asking, "What is it?"

Those who had heard proudly repeated the name to those who had not. Within forty seconds, as far as Thirty-fourth Street, intelligent New-Yorkers were saying, "It's Mr. Rutgers!"

Officer McGinnis touched his white-gloved hand to his cap.

"That's Hendrik Rutgers!" explained Max Onthemaker to the reporters.

H. R. looked Mr. MacAckus in the eye and said, with patrician frigidity: "If you think you have any ground for a civil action, go ahead. My office is in the Allied Arts Building. I'll accept service in person or through my counsel here."

A murmur went up: these were law-abiding men. They therefore must be not only right, but mighty sure of it. All the lieutenant dared say, when he saw the representative of business and the representative of the leisure class was: "Gentlemen, I'm afraid you're blocking traffic. Perhaps, if you went inside—"

"Follow me!" said H. R. to his men, and he led them into Thirty-seventh Street. He halted fifty feet from the corner.

Mr. MacAckus had followed and unlimbered his heavy artillery.

"This infernal outrage—"

H. R. lost all patience. He said to the mounted lieutenant, "Take us to the magistrate!" To Max Onthemaker he whispered, "Got the papers with you?"

"And the reporters, too," answered the able counsel with much pride, as though the reporters were his own private property loaned to the cause for the occasion without charge.

Seeing that the police made no move, H. R. said, determinedly: "I insist upon going before the magistrate. You can report it at the station later and save us time."

This made the police officer hesitate. It always does. It works on the principle of treating your opponent as if he were a taxicabby who has overcharged.

"I guess that's the best way," said the lieutenant.

"Thank you, Inspector. Will you kindly tell one of your men to bring my mount along? Thank you!" said H. R.

Politeness pays. By saying "thank you" in advance of the service no gentleman can refuse.

At the Magistrate's Court the session was short and sweet.

Mr. Onthemaker looked eloquent. The clerk who had typewritten the restraining orders whispered, "It's No. 5!" and his chief picked it out of the seventeen without hesitation. Everybody was impressed by the obvious efficiency. Efficiency must never be hidden.

The argument prepared by Mr. Onthemaker was one of the best his Honor had ever heard. He needed it for his own fall campaign. It certainly read well. He even read it in print—in advance.

"Let me see your argument," said the magistrate, and when Mr. Onthemaker gave him the speech he put it in his inside pocket. He did not know what to say until he saw the reporters taking notes. Then he knew.

"Discharged!" he said. It was the most popular decision in New York.

Max Onthemaker looked at his watch. Morris Lazarus by this time had doubtless applied for an order restraining Valiquet's from interfering with the lawful business of Jean Gerard, Walter Townsend, J. J. Fleming, William Mulligan, William F. Farquhar, Marmaduke de Beanville, Wilton Lazear, Percival Willoughby, and Francis Drake.

"We have secured an injunction against Valiquet's. Here it is," said Mr. Onthemaker. "You are the vice-president of your corporation. You might as well learn your own business from me." Then, with a fierce frown that there might be no back talk, he explained, with utter finality, "This is a certified copy!"

He approached Mr. MacAckus and took advantage of the contiguity to whisper: "If you don't wish to make your concern the laughing-stock of America get busy and keep the newspapers from printing that you were fool enough to oppose us in our perfectly legal position. Bear in mind that if you fight us you make us."

"No compromise!" said H. R., sternly.

"No, sir," answered Onthemaker, meekly. Then he hissed at MacAckus, "Do as I tell you, you boob!"

Mr. MacAckus clearly realized that this was a conspiracy. That always makes business men fear that they may lose money. The fear of that always sharpens their wits. It comes from a lifetime's training.

It was all Mr. Josslyn's fault. This made Mr. MacAckus almost despair. But he said, very kindly, to the reporters, "Gentlemen, will you all be good enough to call at our office before you print anything?"

The reporters, very kindly also, told him they would.

The free sandwiches returned to Fifth Avenue.

It was an ovation!

Art again had triumphed!

Proudly, up and down, from Thirty-fourth to Forty-second and back on the other side, they marched unhindered.

The reporters did justice to the story. Like all really big stories, it was legitimate news. They had indeed suspected advertising until H. R. refused to speak about himself.

"All you please about my poor sandwiches, but not one word about me. I have merely tried to rehabilitate the pariahs of the great mercantile world by reviving the lost art of perambulating publicity. If I have succeeded in making sandwiches free in New York, my work is done. Please do not mention my name!" Then he leaned over confidentially and said, very earnestly: "My family is conservative, and they hate to see the old name in print. Don't use it, boys. Please! That's why I never sign more than my initials!"

Ah, it was not alone modesty, but high social position and inherited wealth that were responsible for "H. R." instead of the full name? And the reporters? News is what is novel; also what is rare. H. R. was therefore doubly news. The minds of the reporters did not work like H. R.'s, but they arrived at the same point at the same time. This is genius—on the part of the other man.

Keeping your mouth shut after it happens is a still higher form of genius.

The newspapers gave him from two to six columns. Since the reporters could not get anything about H. R. from H. R., they got everything from Max Onthemaker, from the sandwich-men, from Andrew Barrett, and also from their inner consciousness and psychological insight.

Nine newspapers; nine different heroes; one name—and initials at that!

X

Andrew Barrett was made office-manager as well as business-getter. He was ordered to pay for the two additional clerks and the bookkeeper out of his own commissions or resign. He paid. This was real business because even then young Mr. Barrett was overpaid for his work. But his real acumen was in recognizing a great man.

Since the pay-roll was a matter of Mr. Andrew Barrett's personally selected statistics, H. R. was certainly a wonder.

On Tuesday morning H. R., feeling that his own greatness had already become merely a matter of greater greatness, turned, manlike, to thoughts of love: he would share his greatness!

He would make Grace Goodchild marry him. He was sure he would succeed. He saw very clearly, indeed, how Mr. Goodchild, being a conservative banker, could be compelled to say yes.

In addition he would make Grace love him.

The strongest love is that love which is stronger than hatred or fear. Therefore the love that begins by hating or fearing is best. To overcome the inertia of non-loving is not so difficult as to stop the backward motion and turn it into forward.

He sat down and wrote a note:

Dear Grace, I am sending you herewith a few clippings. Remember what I told you. Don't let father prejudice you. Hope to see you soon. Busy as the dickens.

Yours,
H. R.

P.S.—I love you because you are You! Certainly I am crazy. But, dear, I know it!

With the note he sent her eighty-three inches of clippings and fourteen pictures. If that wasn't fame, what was? He also sent flowers.

That afternoon before the thé dansant hour he called at the Goodchild residence.

"Miss Goodchild!" he said to the man, instead of asking for her. He pulled out his watch, looked at it, and before the man could say he would see if she were at home to H. R., added, "Yes!"

He was punctual, as the man could see. The man therefore held out a silver card-tray.

"Say it's Mr. Rutgers," H. R. told him. "And straighten out that rug. You've walked over it a dozen times!"

It was plain to see that it was H. R. who really owned this house. He must, since he wasn't afraid of the servants. And the worst of it was that the footman could not resent it: the gentleman was so obviously accustomed to regarding servants as domestic furniture. He dehumanized footmen, deprived them of souls, left them merely arms and legs to obey, machine-like. They call such "well-ordered households." Certainly not. It isn't a matter of the orders, but of the soul-excision.

Grace Goodchild walked in—behind her mother. The footman stood by the door, evidently by request.

Everything in civilized communities is by request.

"How do you do?" said H. R., pleasantly. "Is this mother?" He bowed to Mrs. Goodchild—the bow of a social equal—his eyes full of a highly intelligent appreciation of physical charm. Then he asked Grace, "Did you read them?"

Mrs. Goodchild had intended to be stern, but the young man's undisguised admiration softened her wrath to pleasant sarcasm.

"I wished to see for myself," she said, not very hostilely, "if you were insane. I see you are—"

"I am," agreed H. R., amicably, "and have been since I saw her. And the worst of it is, I am very proud of it."

"Will you oblige me by leaving this house quietly?"

"Certainly," H. R. assured her. "I didn't come to stay—this time. I'm glad to have seen you. Has Grace told you I'm to be your son-in-law?"

He looked at her proudly, yet meekly. It was wonderful how well he managed to express the conflict. Then he apologized contritely. "I was too busy to call before. My grandmother has never met you, has she?" He looked at her anxiously, eager to clear Mrs. Goodchild's name before the court of his family.

At one fell swoop H. R. had deleted the name of Goodchild from the society columns.

Mrs. Goodchild said, huskily, "Frederick, ring for a policeman."

"I'll break his damned neck if he does," said H. R., with patrician calmness. "Don't you ever again dare to listen while I am here, Frederick. You may go."

H. R. looked so much as if he meant what he said that Grace was pleasantly thrilled by his masterfulness. But not for worlds would she show it facially. When a woman can't lie to the man who loves her she lies to herself by looking as she does not feel.

"Do you wish me to go? For the sake of peace?" he asked Grace, anxiously.

There was nothing he would not do, no torture too great to endure, for her sake—not even the exquisite agony of absence. That there might be no misunderstanding, he added, softly, "Do you?"

"Don't you talk to my daughter!" said Mrs. Goodchild, furious at being excluded from the supreme command. Hearing no assent, she was compelled by the law of nature to repeat herself: "Don't you talk to my daughter!"

H. R. looked at her in grieved perplexity. "Do you mean that you are deliberately going to be a comic-weekly mother-in-law and make me the laughing-stock of my set?"

Feeling the inadequacy of mere words to express the thought she had not tried to express, Mrs. Goodchild called on her right hand for aid; she pointed. Being concerned with gesture rather than intent on direction, she, alas! pointed to a window.

He shook his head at her and then at the window, and told her: "To jump out of that one would be as bad as having me arrested. Do you want the infernal reporters to make you ridiculous? Do you realize that I am the most-talked-about man in all New York? Don't you know what newspaper ridicule is? Don't you? Say no!"

To make sure of her own grasp of the situation Mrs. Goodchild, who was dying to shriek at the top of her voice, compressed her lips. H. R. instantly perceived the state of affairs and double-turned the key by fiendishly placing his right forefinger to his own lips. This would give to his mother-in-law the two excellent habits of obedience and silence.

He turned to the girl and said: "Grace, don't hide behind your mother. Let me look my fill. It's got to last me a whole week!"

Grace saw in his face and knew from his voice that he was neither acting nor raving. His words were as the gospel, the oldest of all gospels, which, unlike all others, is particularly persuasive in the springtime. He was a fine-looking chap, and the newspapers were full of him, and he was in love with her. He interested her. But of course he was impossible. But also she was New York, and, to prove it, she must be epigrammatic. All her life she had listened to high-class vaudeville. She said, icily, yet with a subtle consciousness of her own humor, "If you wish to worship, why don't you try a church?"

"Which?" he retorted so promptly and meaningly that she almost felt the wedding-ring on her finger. He pursued: "And when? I have the license all ready. See?"

He pulled out of his pocket a long envelope containing a communication from Valiquet's lawyer. "Here it is!" and he held it toward her.

Being young and healthy, she laughed approvingly.

"Has it come to this, in my own house?" exclaimed Mrs. Goodchild in dismay. Being rich and living in New York, she did not know her daughter's affairs.

"Why not?" asked H. R., with rebuking coldness. "In whose house should our marriage be discussed?" Then he spoke to Grace with a fervor that impressed both women: "I love you as men used to love when they were willing to murder for the sake of their love. Look at me!"

He spoke so commandingly that Grace looked, wonder and doubt in her eyes.

In some women incertitude expresses itself in silence. Her mother was of a different larynx. She wailed: "What shall I do? What shall I do?" And sank back in her arm-chair. After one second's hesitation Mrs. Goodchild decided to clasp her own hands with a gesture of helplessness such as Pilate would have used had he been Mrs. Pontius. She did so, turning the big emerald en cabochon, so that she could plaintively gaze at it. Eight thousand dollars. Then she turned the gem accusingly in the direction of this man who might, for all she knew, be penniless. He was good-looking. Hendrik was Dutch. So was Rutgers. Could he belong?

"I beg your pardon, moth—Mrs. Goodchild," said H. R. so very courteously and contritely that he looked old-fashioned. "You must forgive me. But she is beautiful! She will grow, God willing, to look more like you every day. By making me regard the future with pleasurable anticipation, you yourself give me one more reason why I must marry Grace."

Grace looked at her mother and smiled—at the effect. Mrs. Goodchild confessed to forty-six.

"I am making Grace Goodchild famous," H. R. pursued, briskly, and paused that they might listen attentively to what was to follow.

Mother and daughter looked at him with irrepressible curiosity. Their own lives had so few red-blooded thrills for them that they enjoyed theatricals as being "real life." This man was an Experience!

He shook his head and explained, mournfully: "It is very strange, this thing of not belonging to yourself but to the world. It is a sacrifice Grace must make!"

His voice rang with a subtle regret. But suddenly he raised his head proudly and looked straight at her.

"It is a sacrifice worth making—for the sake of the downtrodden whom you will uplift with your beauty. Au revoir, Grace. I am needed!"

He approached her. She tried to draw back. He halted before her, took her hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it.

"I am the dirt under your feet," he murmured, and left the room.

His was the gait of the Invincibles. He had cast a bewitching spell of unreality over the entire drawing-room that made Grace feel like both actress and audience.

She heard him in the hall calling, "Frederick!" And, after a brief pause, "My hat and cane!"

There was another pause. Then she heard Frederick say, infinitely more respectfully than Frederick had ever spoken to Mr. Goodchild, "Thank you very much, sir."

Mrs. Goodchild paid Frederick by the month for working. H. R. had given Frederick twenty dollars for being an utterly useless menial. Hence Frederick's logical gratitude and respect.

XI

H. R. walked to his office, thinking of the engagement-ring. He therefore rang for Maximilian Onthemaker, Esquire.

"Come up at once!"

"Damnation, I will," said Max. "I'm busy as the dickens, but an order from you is—"

"Another front page—with pictures!"

"I'm half-way up, already!" said Max. Before the telephone receiver could descend on the holder, H. R. heard a voice impatiently shriek, "Down!" to an elevator-man two and one-half miles away.

When Mr. Onthemaker, his face alight with eagerness to serve the cause of the poor sandwich-men free gratis, for nothing, could speak, H. R. told him, calmly:

"Max, I am going to marry the only daughter of George G. Goodchild, president of the Ketcham National Bank. Get photographs of her. Try La Touche and the other fashionable photographers. They will require an order from Miss Goodchild."

"Written?" asked Mr. Onthemaker, anxiously.

"I don't know."

"I'll call up my office, and Miss Hirschbaum will give the order."

"Can she talk like—"

"Oh, she goes to the swell Gentile theaters," Max reassured him.

"Don't say I'm engaged, and tell 'em not to bother the parents." He meant the reporters.

Max thought of nothing else. "Leave it to me. Say, Hendrik—"

"Mr. Rutgers!" The voice and the look made Max tremble and grow pale.

"I was only joking," he apologized, weakly. He never repeated the offense. "I'll attend to it, Mr. Hendrik— I mean Mr. Rutgers."

"When Barrett comes in I'll send him down to you. Good day."

When Andrew Barrett returned he said, impetuously, "I'm afraid I'll have to have some help, H. R."

"I was going to tell you, my boy, that from to-morrow on you will have to go on salary."

Barrett's smiles vanished. He shook his head.

H. R. went on, in a kindly voice: "You've done very well and I'm much pleased with your work. But you mustn't be a hog."

Barrett had made bushels of money by taking advantage of the opportunity to do so. The victorious idea was another's, the machinery was the society's, the work was done by the sandwiches. But Mr. Andrew Barrett was the salesman, the transmuter into cash. He was entitled to all he desired to make so long as he didn't raise prices. Injustice stared him in the face with smiles! Reducing his gain and smiling! H. R. would as lief get another man! Barrett forgot that he could get no business until H. R.'s astounding Valiquet's coup made the agent's job one of merely writing down names. He forgot it, but he did not forget his own successor. All he could say, in a boyishly obstinate way, was, "Well, I think—"

"You mustn't think, and especially you must not think I'm an ass. You know very well that this is only the beginning of a very remarkable revolution in the advertising business. I need your services in installing the machinery and organizing the office, details that I leave to you because you have brains. Your salary will be a hundred a week and five per cent. on all new business. After I pass on to a still higher field I will make you a present of this business for you to have and to hold till death do you part. The Barrett Advertising Agency will be all yours. It will do a bigger business every year. And if you don't like it, you may leave this minute. You are young yet. Is it settled?"

Andrew Barrett nodded.

H. R. said, seriously: "It's about time sandwiching spread. How many on the Avenue to-day?"

"Nineteen firms; one hundred and eleven men. I think—"

H. R. knew what Barrett was about to say. He therefore said it for Barrett. "Now that you have Fifth Avenue, move west and east to Sixth and Madison and Fourth and try Broadway and Twenty-third and Thirty-fourth and Forty-second—"

"I was just going to propose it to you," said Barrett, aggrievedly.

"I know you have brains. That's why you are here. I trust you implicitly. This is a man's job. There will be big money in it for you. For me—" He ceased speaking, and stared meditatively out of the window.

Andrew Barrett wondered with all his soul what the chief was reading in big print in the future.

Andrew Barrett waited. Presently H. R. frowned. Then he smiled slightly.

Barrett stared fascinatedly. Ah, the lure of mystery! If more men appreciated it, polygamy would be inevitable—and liberal divorce laws.

H. R. looked up.

"Oh, are you here?" he smiled paternally, forgivingly.

Barrett beamed.

"My boy, I wish you'd run over to Max Onthemaker's or get him on the telephone. The newspapers are going to publish it."

"Yes, sir, I will. Er—what are they—what are you going to spring on an enraptured metropolis?

"My impending marriage to Grace Goodchild, only daughter of Goodchild, president of the Ketcham National Bank. See that it is well handled. And, Barrett?"

"Yes, sir?"

"The old people don't relish the idea. She is the most beautiful girl in New York."

"I've seen her! Pippinissima!" exclaimed Andrew Barrett, heartfully.

"Ten millions," said Hendrik Rutgers, calmly.

"My God!" whispered young Mr. Barrett, New-Yorker.

He meant what he said.

Ten millions!

Mr. Onthemaker, Andrew Barrett, and their faithful phalanx of star space men who always signed their stuff called in a body on La Touche, the photographer of the moment.

He refused to give them Miss Goodchild's photograph. He wished his name used, of course, but he was too sensible to disregard professional ethics.

"Mr. Rutgers said we could get it," said Andrew Barrett, sternly.

"I must have her permission. Hang it, boys, I am just as anxious as you—as I can be to do what I can for you. But I don't dare. These swell people are queer!" the photographer explained, aggrievedly.

"I'll call her up myself," said Max Onthemaker, resolutely. "What's the Goodchild number?"

He went to the telephone and gave the number of his own office in low tones. Presently he said, loudly enough to be heard by all, "Is this 777 Fifth Avenue?"

He alone heard the answer. He would not lie. He was a lawyer. It was unnecessary.

"Can I speak with Miss Goodchild? No; Miss Goodchild."

After a judiciously measured pause he spoke again: "Good afternoon. This is Mr. Onthemaker speaking. Quite well, thank you. I hope you are the same!... That's good!... Yes, miss, I saw him this morning. The papers wish to publish your photograph.... I'm sorry, but they say they simply must!... I am at La Touche's studio.... They doubtless do not do you justice, but they are the best ever taken of you—... No, I don't think they can wait for new ones.... One moment, please—"

He held his hand in front of the transmitter so she couldn't hear him say to La Touche:

"She wants some new ones."

"To-morrow at two," said La Touche.

"Give us the old ones now," chorused the reporters. "We'll publish the new ones for the wedding."

"I am sorry"—Max again spoke into the telephone—"but they say they want some now. They'll use the others later.... Which one?... The one Mr. Rutgers likes?... Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much."

Foreseeing unintelligent incredulity, Mr. Onthemaker did not hang up the receiver. It was just as well, for the cautious La Touche said, "I want to talk to her."

"Certainly," said Max, and hastily rose.

"Miss Goodchild," said the photographer, respectfully, "will it be all right if I let the reporters have—"

"Give him the one Mr. Rutgers likes," came in a sweet voice, without the slightest trace of Yiddish or catarrh. They would be wonderful linguists, if they didn't always begin by, "Say, listen."

"Which one is that?"

"The one he likes. And please send the bill to me, not to papa," with the accent properly on the last syllable.

"There will be no charge, Miss Goodchild. Thank you. I only wished to make sure you approved."

La Touche rose and, turning to the friendly reporters, asked, wrathfully, "How in blazes do I know which is the one Mr. Rutgers liked?"

"Let us pick it out," said one reporter. He wore his hair long.

"Any one will do," said another, considerately.

"I think I know which it is," said Barrett, taking pity on the photographer. To Mr. Onthemaker he whispered, "Max, you're a second H. R."

"I try to be," modestly said Sam.

And so the newspapers published the official preference of the lucky man. They published it because she was going to marry H. R.

That same morning Mr. Goodchild called up the city editors. He was so stupid that he was angry. He threatened criminal action and also denied the engagement. Rutgers was only a discharged clerk who had worked in his bank. He had been annoying his daughter, but he, Mr. Goodchild, would take steps to put an end to further persecution. Rutgers would not be allowed to call. He had, Mr. Goodchild admitted, called—uninvited. Had a man no privacy in New York? What was the matter with the police? What was he paying taxes for—to be annoyed by insane adventurers and damned reporters? He didn't want any impertinence. If they didn't print the denial of the engagement and the facts he would put the matter in his lawyer's hands.

The afternoon papers that day and the morning papers on the next printed another portrait of Miss Grace Goodchild because she was not engaged to H. R.

It was so exactly what a Wall Street millionaire father would do that everybody in New York instantly recognized a romance in high life!

Grace Goodchild never had known before how many people knew her and how many more wished to know her. The reporters camped on her front door-steps and the camera specialists could not be shooed away by Mr. Goodchild when he was going out on his way to the bank.

He assaulted a photographer. The papers therefore printed a picture of the infuriated money power in the act of using a club on a defenseless citizen. They did it very cleverly: by manipulating the plates they made Mr. Goodchild look four times the size of the poor photographer.

Max Onthemaker brought suit for fifty thousand dollars damages to the feelings, cranium, and camera of Jeremiah Legare, the Tribune's society snapper.

From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Grace held a continuous levee. Mrs. Goodchild was in handsomely gowned hysterics. Mr. Goodchild got drunk at his club.

Yes, he did. The house committee ignored it. When they saw the afternoon papers they condoned it. And yet all that the newspapers said was that Grace Goodchild and Hendrik Rutgers were not married.

And they blame the papers for inaccuracy.

H. R. knew that he must make his love for Grace plausible, and his determination to marry her persistent and picturesque.

His concern was with the public. He therefore called up Grace on the telephone. At the other end they wished to know who was speaking. He replied, "Tell Frederick to come to the telephone at once!"

Frederick responded.

"Are you there?" asked H. R., after the fashion of Frederick's compatriots. "Frederick, go instantly to Miss Grace and tell her to come to the telephone on a matter of life and death. It's Mr. Rutgers. Don't mention my name."

This wasn't one of Frederick's few duties when he deigned to accept employment in the Goodchild household. But H. R. expected to be obeyed. Therefore he was obeyed.

"Yes, sir; very good, sir," said Frederick, proud to act as Mercury. He rushed off.

"Telephone, Miss Grace. He said it was a matter of life and death."

"Who is it? Another reporter?"

"Oh no, ma'am. He's waiting, my lady."

Once in a while Frederick proved that he was worth his weight in gold by forgetting that he was in America. When he did, he always called Grace my lady.

She therefore went to the telephone. Of course H. R. was born lucky. But, as a matter of fact, by deliberately establishing Frederick on a plane of perennial inferiority he had made such a stroke of luck inevitable.

Since it was a matter of life and death, Grace instantly asked, "Who is it?"

"Listen, Grace. The entire country is going wild about you. Your portrait is being admired from Maine to California. But bear up with what's coming. We've got to bring father around to our way of thinking, and—"

"Who is it? Who is it?"

"Great Scott! Can't you recognize the voice? It's Hendrik."

Her exasperated nerves made her say, angrily, "I think you are—"

"Don't think I'm conceited, but I know it."

"I feel like telling you—"

"I'll say it for you. Close your ears till I'm done." After a pause: "I've insulted myself. I love you all the more for it! Grace, you must be brave! If you survive this next week—"

"My God!" she said, invoking divine aid for the first time since they moved to Fifth Avenue, thinking of what the newspapers could say.

"He's with us, sweetheart," Hendrik assured her. "Are you an Episcopalian?"

"Yes!" she replied before she could think of not answering.

"Good! I love you. Wait!"

His voice as he entreated her to wait rang with such anguish that she irrepressibly asked, "What?"

"I love you!"

He left the telephone and gathered together sixty-eight clippings, which he put in an envelope. He went to a fashionable florist, opened an account, and ordered some exquisite flowers. They were going to ask for financial references, but the flowers he ordered were so expensive that they felt ashamed of their own distrust. He stopped at Valiquet's, where they hated him so much that they respected him, bought a wonderful gold vanity-box, inside of which he sent a card. On the card he wrote:

More than ever!

H. R.

He sent clippings, flowers, and vanity-box to Miss Goodchild, 777 Fifth Avenue, by messenger. Charge account.

He sent for Fleming and told him he wished the Public Sentiment Corps to tackle their first job. H. R. had prepared a dozen letters of protest which the artists must copy before receiving their day's wages—one copy for each paper. The letters expressed the writers' admiration, contempt, approval, abhorrence, indignation, and commendation of the journalistic treatment of the Goodchild-Rutgers affair. Real names and real addresses were given. It beat Pro Bono Publico, Old Subscriber, and Decent Citizen all to pieces. H. R. supplied various kinds of stationery—some with crests, others very humble. The chirography was different. That alone was art.

The newspapers realized that H. R. had become news. The public wanted to read about him. The papers were the servants of the public. Circulation was invented for that very purpose.

Not content with the services of the Public Sentiment Corps, H. R. commanded Andrew Barrett to tip off the friendly reporters—Andrew by this time was calling them by their first name—to watch the Goodchild residence on Fifth Avenue and also the Ketcham National Bank on Nassau Street.

Thinking that this meant elopement up-town and shooting down-town, the reporters despatched the sob artists to Fifth Avenue and the veteran death-watch to the bank.

They were rewarded.

Parading up and down the Goodchild block on the Avenue were six sandwich-men. They carried the swellest sandwiches in Christendom. This was the first use of the famous iridescent glass mosaic sandwich in history. It was exquisitely beautiful. But the legends were even more beautiful:

This last he stationed in front of the Goodchild house.

Across the street, leaning against the Central Park wall, was Morris Lazarus, Mr. Onthemaker's able associate counsel. His pockets were bulging with numbered legal documents in anticipation of hostilities from Christians, policemen, and other aliens. He had told the reporters that he was one of Mr. Rutgers's counsel and did not propose to allow the sandwich-men to be interfered with by anybody. He also distributed his card, that the name might not be misspelled. He had not yet changed Morris into Maurice.

The sandwiches paraded up and down the Avenue sidewalk, never once going off the block. As two of the artists passed each other they saluted—the sandwich union's sign a rigid forefinger drawn quickly across the throat with a decapitating sweep: lambs expecting execution in the world's vast abattoir. The answering sign was a quick mouthward motion of the rigid thumb to represent the assuaging of thirst at the close of day. Thus did H. R. reward industry.

Before the sandwich-men had made the beat a dozen times all upper Fifth Avenue heard about it. A stream of limousines, preciously freighted, halted before the Goodchild mansion and poured out into the sidewalk friends and acquaintances of the Goodchilds. On the dowagers' faces you could see the smug self-congratulations that their daughters, thank goodness, did not have to be wooed thus vulgarly to get into the newspapers. And on the daughters the watching reporters saw smiles and envious gleams of bright eyes. Why couldn't they be thus desperately wooed in public? To let the world know you were desired, to have a man brave all the world in order to let the world know it! It was heroism! And even more: it was great fun!

The dowagers went in to express both surprise and condolence to Mrs. Goodchild. The girls rushed to Grace's boudoir to ask questions.

Mrs. Goodchild tried to brazen it out. Then she tried to treat it humorously. But the dowagers called both bluffs. Then she foolishly told them, "The poor young man is quite insane."

They chorused, "He must be!" with conviction—the conviction that she was lying like a suburban boomer. Of course she paid him for the work.

Grace was in an unphilosophical frame of mind. H. R. had made her the laughing-stock of New York. It would have been ridiculous if it were not so serious to her social plans. She hated him! Being absolutely helpless to help herself, her hatred embraced the world—the world that would laugh at her! All the world! Particularly the women. Especially those of her own age. They would laugh! This is the unforgivable sin in women because their sense of humor is minus. And when they laugh—

Just then the avalanche of those she hated the most swooped down upon her. Her eyes were red from acute aqueous mortification. They saw it. They said in chorus, sorrowfully, "You poor thing!"

Who said the rich had no hearts? The girls had given to her poverty without her asking for it. It always makes people charitable when they create poverty unasked.

"I wouldn't stand it!" cried one.

"Nor I!" chorused fourteen of Grace's best friends.

Outside, the Avenue, for the first time in its dazzling history, was blocked by automobiles. You would have sworn it was the shopping district in the Christmas week. The reason was that the occupants of the autos had told the chauffeurs to stop until they could read the sandwiches.

The reporters were ringing the front-door bell and the rapid-fire tintinnabulation was driving Frederick frantic. Mrs. Goodchild had told him not to send for the police. The reporters, feeling treated like rank outsiders, were in no pleasant frame of mind.

Up-stairs Grace, hiding her wrath, overwhelmed by the accursed sympathy of her best friends, said, helplessly, "What can I do?" She didn't like to tell them she wished to bury them with her own hands.

From fifteen youthful throats burst forth the same golden word—"Elope!"

She gasped and stared blankly.

"It's the greatest thing I ever heard. I don't know him, but if he is half-way presentable you can teach him table manners in a week. I'd make my father give him a job in the bank!" asserted Marion Beekman.

"Me, too!" declared Ethel Vandergilt.

"He's just splendid," volunteered a brunette, enthusiastically.

"And did you see the papers!" shrieked Verona Mortimer. "I say, did you see the papers? And the pictures! Girls, she's a regular devil, and we never knew it! Where did you hide your brains all these years, Gracie, dear?"

"I never would have thought it possible," said the cold, philosophical Katherine Van Schaick. "I call it mighty well engineered. Did you tell him to do it, Grace? If so you are a genius!"

"What does he look like?"

"Is he of the old New Jersey Rutgers?"

"If he's good-looking and has money, what's wrong with him? Booze?" asked a practical one.

"He isn't married, is he?" asked a doll-face with Reno in her heavenly eyes.

At this a hush fell on the group. It was the big moment.

"How exciting!" murmured one.

"Is he married, Grace?"

Fifteen pairs of eyes pasted themselves on Gracie's. She barely caught herself on the verge of confessing ignorance. She was dazed by the new aspect of her own love-affair.

These girls envied her!

"No!" she said, recklessly.

"It's her father," prompted a slim young Sherlock Holmes.

"No; Mrs. Goodchild!" corrected a greater genius.

"Maybe it's Grace herself," suggested the envious Milly Walton.

"How can I stop it?" asked Grace, angrily.

"What?" shrieked all.

"Why, girls," said Miss Van Schaick, "she isn't responsible for it, after all!"

Before the disappointment could spoil their pleasure one of them said, impatiently, "Oh, let's look at 'em!"

They rushed to the window.

"Let's go downstairs. We can see 'em better!" And Grace's friends thereupon rushed away. One of them was considerate enough to say, "Come on, Grace!" and Grace followed, not quite grasping the change in the situation. Her fears were not so keen; her doubts keener.

They nearly overturned their respective mammas in their rush to get to the windows.

"Grace," said Miss Van Schaick, who had never before called her anything but "Miss—er—Goodchild," "send out and tell them to stop and face this way. I don't think I read all the sandwiches."

"Yes! Yes!"

"Oh, do!"

"Please, Grace, tell 'em!" It sounded like election, when women shall vote. Much more melodious than to-day.

The dowagers were made speechless. They had acquired that habit before their daughters.

Grace capitulated to the incense.

"Frederick, go out and tell them to stop and face this way," commanded Grace, with a benignant smile.

"My de—" began Mrs. Goodchild, mildly.

"I have lived," said Miss Van Schaick in her high-bred, level voice that people admiringly called insulting, "to see a New York society man do something really original. I must ask Beekman Rutgers why his branch of the family did not inherit brains with the real estate."

Mrs. Goodchild gasped—and began to look resigned. From there to pride the jump would be slight. But hers was not a mind that readjusted itself very quickly.

"Oh, look!" and the girls began to read the legends aloud.

The dowagers rose, prompted by the same horrid fear. Chauffeurs were bad enough. But sandwich-men!

The world moves rapidly these days. One week ago these mothers did not know sandwich-men even existed. A new peril springs up every day.

They decided, being wise, not to scold their daughters.

The girls shook hands with Grace with such warmth that she felt as if each had left a hateful wedding-gift in her palm. Mrs. Goodchild went up-stairs weeping or very close to it. She could not see whither it all would lead, and she was the kind that must plan everything in advance to be comfortable. By always using a memorandum calendar she cleverly managed to have something to look forward to in this life.

Grace remained. She was thinking. When she thought she always tapped on the floor with her right foot, rhythmically. She realized that H. R.'s courtship of her had changed in aspect. She knew that girls in her set thought everything was a lark. But they themselves did not visit those who had larked beyond a certain point. An ecstatic "What fun!" soon changed to a frigid "How perfectly silly!" It was not so difficult to treat the sandwich episode humorously now, or even to take intelligent advantage of the publicity. She knew that, with the negligible exception of a few old fogies, the crass vulgarity of H. R.'s public performances would not harm her unless her father took it seriously enough to appeal to the law about it, when the same old fogies would say she should have ignored it. But she could not clearly see the end of it—that is, an ending that would redound to her glory. This man was a puzzle, a paradox, an exasperation. He was too unusual, too adventurous, too clever, too dangerous; he had too much to gain and nothing to lose. How should she treat him? He did not classify easily. He was masterful. He loved her. Masterful men in love have a habit of making themselves disagreeable.

In how many ways would this masterful man, who was resourceful, original, undeterred by conventions, indifferent to the niceties of life, unafraid of public opinion as of social ostracism, make himself disagreeable? Was he serious in his determination to marry her? Or was it merely a scheme to obtain notoriety? Was he a crank or a criminal? She couldn't marry him. What would he do? What wouldn't he do? How long would he keep it up? Must she flee to Europe?

Her foot was tap-tapping away furiously. She ceased to think in order to hate him! Then because she hated him she feared him. Then because she feared him she respected him. Then because she respected him she didn't hate him. Then because she didn't hate she began to think of him. But all she knew about him was that he said he loved her and everybody in New York knew it! Who was he? What was he? Should she start an inquiry? And yet—

"I beg pardon, miss. But the men—" Frederick paused.

"Yes?"

"They are standing." He meant the sandwiches.

"Well?"

"They are," he reminded her, desperately but proudly, "Mr. Rutgers's men."

"Tell them to go away," she said.

He stared a moment, for as the consort of the owner of the men she had feudal obligations to fulfil. He remembered that this was America.

"Very good, miss," he said.

She went up-stairs. She wished to think. It would probably make her head ache. She therefore told her maid to wake her at six and, taking up one of Edwin Lefevre's books, she went to sleep.

XII

On Nassau Street twenty sandwich-men were parading, ten on each side of the street, in the block where the Ketcham National Bank stood. Each sandwich bore this legend:

Besides 12,466 men and 289 women, 13 reporters read the sandwiches.

The men looked pleased; they were seeing a show on D. H. tickets. The women sighed enviously and opened their latest Robert W. Chambers in the street as they walked on. The thirteen reporters walked into the bank, went straight into the president's office, and while he was still smiling his welcome asked him why he would not let H. R. marry Grace.

Mr. Goodchild nearly sat in the electric chair. The vice-president fortunately was able to grasp in time the hand that held the big paper-weight.

"Remember the bank!" solemnly counseled the vice-president.

"To hell with the bank!" said Mr. George G. Goodchild for the first and only time in his Republican life.

"Unless you talk to us fully and politely," said the Globe man, "we propose to interview your directors and ask each and every one of them to tell us the name of your successor. If you raise your hand again I'll not only break in your face, but I'll sue you and thus secure vacation money and a raise in salary. The jury is with me. Come! Tell us why you won't let Mr. Rutgers marry Grace."

Here in his own office the president of a big Wall Street bank was threatened with obliterated features and the extraction of cash. The cause of it, H. R., was worse than a combination of socialism and smallpox; he was even worse than a President of the United States in an artificial bull market.

Mr. Goodchild walked up and down the room exactly thirteen times—one for each reporter—and then turned to the vice-president.

"Send for the police!" he commanded.

"Remember the newspapers," agonizedly whispered the vice-president.

The Globe man overheard him. "Present!" he said, and saluted. Then he took out a lead-pencil, seized a pad from the president's own desk, and said, kindly, "I'll take down all your reasons in shorthand, Mr. Goodchild!"

"Take yourself to hell!" shrieked the president.

"Après vous, mon cher Alphonse," retorted the Globe man, with exquisite courtesy. "Boys, you heard him. Verbatim!"

All the reporters wrote four words.

The Globe man hastily left the president's room and went up to the bank's gray-coated private policeman who was trying to distinguish between the few who wished to deposit money and the many who desired to ask the sandwich question or at least hoped to hear the answer. The sacred precincts of the Ketcham National Bank had taken on the aspect of a circus arena. H. R.'s erstwhile fellow-clerks looked the only way they dared—terrified! They would have given a great deal to have been able to act as human beings.

"The reporters are in the president's room!" ran the whisper among the clerks. From there it reached the curious mob within the bank. From there it spread to the congested proletariate without the doors. Said proletariate began to grow. Baseball bulletin-boards were not displayed, but the public was going to get something for nothing. Hence, free country.

The Globe man heard one of the bank's messengers call the policeman "Jim." Being a contemporary historian, he addressed the policeman amicably.

"Jim, Mr. Goodchild says to bring in Senator Lowry and party."

With that he beckoned to the Globe's militant photographers and five colleagues and preceded them into the president's private office.

"Quick work, Tommy," warned the reporter.

"Flash?" laconically inquired "Senator Lowry." He was such a famous portraitist that his sitters never gave him time to talk. Hence his habit of speaking while he could. He prepared his flash-powder.

"Yep!" and the reporter nodded.

The others also unlimbered their cameras. The Globe man threw open the door.

The president was angrily haranguing the reporters.

"Mr. Goodchild," said the Globe man, "look pleasant!"

Mr. Goodchild turned quickly and opened his mouth.

Bang! went, the flash-powder.

"Hel—" shrieked Mr. Goodchild.

"—p!" said the pious young Journal man, with an air of completing the presidential speech. A good editor is worth his weight in pearls.

The photographers' corps retreated in good order and record time.

"For the third and last time will you tell us why you won't let your daughter marry Mr. Rutgers!" asked the Globe.

"No."

"Then will you tell us why you won't let Mr. Rutgers marry your daughter?"

Mr. Goodchild was conservative to the last. Too many people who needed money had talked to him in the borrower's tone of voice. He could not grasp the new era. He said, "You infernal blackmailer—"

"Sir," cut in the Globe man, with dignity, "you are positively insulting! Be nice to the other reporters. I thank you for the interview!" He bowed and left the office, followed by all the others except the Evening Post man, who, unfortunately, had never been able to rid himself of the desire to get the facts. It was partly his editor, but mostly the absence of a sense of humor.

"I think, Mr. Goodchild, that you'd better give me an official statement. I'll give the Associated Press man a copy, and that will go to all the papers."

"But I don't want to say anything," protested Mr. Goodchild, who always read the Post's money page.

"The other reporters will say it for you. I think you'd better."

"He's right, Mr. Goodchild," said the vice-president.

"But what the dickens can I say?" queried Mr. Goodchild, helplessly, not daring to look out of the window for fear of seeing the sandwiches.

"If I were you," earnestly advised the Post man, "I'd tell the truth."

"What do you mean?"

"Say why you won't let your daughter—"

"It's preposterous!"

"Say it; but also say why it is preposterous."

Two directors of the bank came in. They were high in high finance. In fact, they were High Finance. They therefore knew only the newspapers of an older generation, as they had proven by their testimony before a Congressional Committee. The older director looked at Mr. Goodchild and began:

"Goodchild, will you tell me why—"

"You, too?" interrupted Mr. Goodchild, reproachfully but respectfully. "First the reporters and now—"

The directors gasped.

"You didn't—actually—talk—for—publication?"

They stared at him incredulously.

"No. But I'm thinking of giving out a carefully prepared statement—"

The higher of the high financiers, with the masterfulness that made him richer every panic, assumed supreme command. He turned to the Post man and said: "I'm surprised to see you here. Your paper used to be decent. Mr. Goodchild has nothing to say."

"But—" protested the anguished father of Grace Goodchild.

"You haven't!" declared $100,000,000.

"I have nothing to say!" meekly echoed one-tenth of one hundred.

The Post man walked out with a distinctly editorial stride. He began to envy the yellows and their vulgar editors, as all Post men must at times.

Mr. Goodchild's efforts to suppress the publication of his family affairs were in vain. He unfortunately sought to argue over the telephone with the owners.

The owners spoke to the editors.

"It's News!" the editors pointed out.

"It's News," the owners regretfully explained to the bank president.

"But it's a crime against decency," said Mr. Goodchild.

"You are right. It's a damned shame. But it's News!" said the owners, and hung up.

Mr. Goodchild summoned his lawyer. The lawyer looked grave. He recognized the uselessness of trying to stop the newspapers, and realized that there would be no fat fees, even if he were otherwise successful. He tried to frighten H. R., but was referred to Max Onthemaker, Esquire.

Max Onthemaker, Esquire, was in heaven. He finally had butted into polite society! From the Bowery to Wall Street! At last he was opposed by the very best. A lawyer is known by his opponents!

Mr. Lindsay protested with quite unprofessional heat. It was an outrage.

"Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur," Mr. Onthemaker solemnly reminded the leader of the corporation bar. "Also, dear Mr. Lindsay, I am ready to accept service of any paper you may see fit to honor us with. My client means to fight to the bitter end."

"Yes, in the newspapers!" bitterly said the eminent Mr. Lindsay through his clenched teeth.

"And with sandwiches! When we ask for bread you give us a stone. But we give you a sandwich. There's no ground for criminal action in view of the public's frame of mind toward the money power. But if you will sue us for one million dollars damages I'll name my forthcoming baby after you."

Mr. Lindsay hung up with violence, mistaking the telephone-holder for Mr. Onthemaker's cranium.

XIII

The reporters of the conservative journals sought H. R. later in the day—simply because the reporters for the live newspapers did. The system was to blame. A daily paper may eschew vulgarity, but it must not be beaten. By using better grammar and no adjectives they intelligently show they are never sensational.

The newspaper-men confronted H. R. eagerly. It was the day's big story. They asked him about it.

He said to them, very simply, "I love her!"

They wrote it down. He waited until they had finished. Then he went on:

"She is the most beautiful girl in the world—to me. Don't forget that—to me!"

Those two words would prevent two million sneers from the other most beautiful girls in the world who at that moment happened to reside in New York. Indeed, all his words would be read aloud to young men by said two million coral lips. Perfect Cupid's bows. She was beautiful—to him!

"Her parents oppose my suit," went on H. R., calmly.

"Is this a free country," interjected Max Onthemaker, vehemently, "or are we in Russia? Has Wall Street established morganatic marriages in this Republic, or—"

H. R. held up a quieting hand. Max Onthemaker smiled at the rebuke. Two reporters had taken down his remarks.

"I have told her parents that I propose to marry Miss Goodchild—peacefully. Get that straight, please. Peacefully! I am a law-abiding citizen. She is very beautiful. But I am willing to wait—a few weeks."

"Yes. But the sandwiches," began a reporter who entertained hopes of becoming a Public Utility Corporation's publicity man.

H. R. stopped him with an impressive frown. He cleared his throat.

The reporters felt it coming.

"What I have done—" he began.

"Yes! Yes!"

"—is merely the employment for the first time in history of psychological sabotage!"

The reporters, now having the head-line, rushed off. All except one, who whispered to H. R.'s counsel:

"What in blazes is sabotage? How do you spell it?"

"Quit your joking," answered Max. "You know very well what it is. Isn't he a wonder? Psychological sabotage!"

The newspapers gave it space in proportion to the extent of their Wall Street affiliations. The Evening Post, having none, came out with an editorial on "Psychological Sabotage." It held up H. R. as a product of the times, made inevitable by T. Roosevelt. The World editorialized on "The Wall Street Spirit versus Love"; the Times wrote about "The Ethics of Modern Courtship"; and the Sun about "The Decay of Manners under the Present Administration and its Mexican Policy." The American's editorial was "Intelligent Eugenics and Unintelligent Wealth."

But all of them quoted "Psychological Sabotage." This made the Socialist papers espouse the cause of H. R.

The Globe, however, beat them all. It offered to supply to the young couple, free of charge, a complete kitchen-set and the services of a knot-tier. It printed the names and addresses of sixteen clergymen, two rabbis, three aldermen, and the Mayor of the City of New York.

The Public Sentiment Corps copied two hundred and thirty-eight letters prepared by the boss, praising and condemning H. R. and Mr. Goodchild. This compelled the newspapers that received the letters to run Grace's portrait daily—a new photograph each time.

As for Grace herself, crowds followed her. She could not go into a restaurant without making all heads turn in her direction. People even stopped dancing when they saw her. And six of New York's bluest-blooded heiresses became her inseparable companions. They also had their pictures printed.

Grace hated all this notoriety. She said so, at times. But her friends soothed her and developed the habit of looking pleasantly at cameras.

H. R. on the third day sent all the clippings to Grace with beautiful flowers and a note:

For your sake!

One of Grace's friends asked to be allowed to keep the note. It reminded her, she said, of the early Christians; also of the days of knighthood.

The commercial phase of the mission of the Society of American Sandwich Artists had become in the meanwhile a matter of real importance to the business world. Business men, not being artists, are stupid because they deal with money-profits, and they are imitative because money-making in the ultimate analysis is never original. When the merchants of New York perceived that Fifth Avenue had sanctified sandwiching by paying cash for it, and that the better shops elsewhere had perforce resorted to it, they accepted it as one of the conditions of modern merchandising. It did not become a fad, but worse—an imagined necessity and, as such, an institution. The little Valiquet-made statuettes of the Ultimate Sandwich sold by the thousands, greatly adding to the personal assets of the secretary and treasurer of the society. And what New York did, other cities wished to do.

Then the blow fell!

On the same day that H. R. sent his early Christian message to Grace, Andrew Barrett reported that while some of the streets were almost impassable for the multitude of sandwiches, the greater part of the latter, alas! were non-union men!

"They are using their porters and janitors to carry boards," said Andrew Barrett, bitterly. "I tell you, H. R., this is a crisis!"

H. R., thinking of Grace, nodded absently and said, "Send for Onthemaker."

Max came on the run. Nearly three days had elapsed without a front-page paragraph for him.

Barrett told him about the crisis. Their idea had been stolen and utilized by unscrupulous merchants who were sandwiching without permission and using scabs.

"I get you," said Max Onthemaker. Then he turned to the chief and told him:

"H. R., you've got to do something to make George G. Goodchild sue you for a million dollars." He had drawn and kept ready for use sixty-three varieties of restraining orders, writs, etc.

"What's that got to do with our—" began Andrew Barrett, impatiently.

"Certainly!" cut in Mr. Onthemaker. "We must fight Capital with its own weapon. The Money Power is great on injunctions. I wish to say that when it comes to injunctions I've got Wall Street gasping for breath and—"

"Yes, but what about the scabs? Can't you stop 'em?" persisted Barrett.

The future of the Barrett Itinerant Advertising Agency was at stake.

"Sure! We can hire strong-arm—"

"No!" said H. R., decisively.

Andrew Barrett, who had begun to look hopeful, frowned at his leader's negative, and said, desperately, "Something has got to be done!"

When human beings say "Something" in that tone of voice they mean dynamite by proxy.

"Certainly!" agreed H. R., absently, his mind still on Grace.

Andrew Barrett stifled a groan. He whispered to Max, "It's the girl!"

Max looked alarmed, then hopeful. Grace was almost as much News as H. R. himself.

Andrew Barrett turned to H. R., and said, reproachfully:

"Here we've made sandwiching what it is, and these infernal tightwads—"

"That's the word, Barrett," cut in H. R. "Go to it, my son!"

"How do you mean?" asked Barrett.

"Advertise in all the papers, morning and evening."

Young Mr. Barrett stared at him, then he shook his head, tapped it with his knuckles, and confessed: "Solid!"

"Give me a pencil!" said H. R. It sounded like "Fix bayonets!"

"Nothing," Mr. Onthemaker permitted himself to observe, judicially, "is so conducive to front-page publicity as intelligent violence. This is not a strike, but a cause. Look at the militants—"

"There is something in that," admitted A. Barrett.

"There is something," said H. R., gently, "in everything, even in Max's cranium. But, this is not a matter of principle, but of making money."

"But if you first establish—"

"No," interrupted H. R. "If you make money, the principle establishes itself. The situation does not call for a flash of inspiration, but for common sense. Listen carefully: Nothing is so timid as Capital!"

He looked at them as if further talk were redundant, superfluous, unnecessary, a waste of time, and an insult.

"Well?" said Barrett, forgetting himself and speaking impatiently.

"Utilize it. Treat it as you would a problem in mathematics. You start with an axiom. Build on it. Capital is timid. Therefore, people who have money never do anything original; that is to say, venturesome; that is to say, courageous. All new enterprises are begun and carried through by people who have no money of their own to lose. I, single-handed, could defeat an army commanded by Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, and U. S. Grant, if I could put into the pockets of each of the enemy's private soldiers six dollars in cash. No man likes to be killed with money in his clothes. Money is fear! Fear is unreasoning. I am opposed to injecting fear into the situation. No, sir; instead, we must capitalize another human force. Have this printed. Big blank margin. All the papers."

He gave them what he had written: