WELL DONE, NEW YORK!
H. R.
The great building rocked under the applause.
New York can always be trusted to applaud itself.
The lights of the sign went out. H. R. motioned to his stage-manager.
In the back of the stage the curtain that told of the wonderful feeding system—50,000 people, 6¾ minutes!—fell.
A hush also fell on the audience, for back of it was another white sheet on which everybody read:
WATCH YOUR GUESTS EAT
YOU ARE FEEDING THEM!
H. R.
The audience, metamorphosed against its will into charitable hosts, now remembered the starving fellow-beings who were there to eat.
H. R. motioned. A bugler advanced to the front of the stage and sounded, Charge!
The soup began to pour out of the faucets. In fourteen seconds 12,137 cups of steaming soup à la Piccolini were before the guests.
The audience applauded madly. It was perfectly wonderful what charity could do—in fourteen seconds!
The guests were very hungry. The soup, however, was very hot. This made the drinking audible to the remotest recesses of the Garden.
Again the bugle blew. The charitable crowd instantly ceased to look at their guests and gazed at the electric traveling-cranes carrying laden trays. Over six thousand well-fed spectators pulled out their watches and timed the entrée.
It took twenty-nine seconds to place the entrée before the guests.
"Quick work!" said the watch-holders, approvingly. It took the guests much less than twenty-nine seconds to eat the entrée.
The bugle blew for the third time.
The roast appeared. The rear curtain dropped. Behind it was another on which could be read, without the aid of binoculars:
WATCH THEM EAT!
YOUR TICKET DID IT!
H. R.
It happened exactly as H. R. had told Bishop Phillipson. Each charitable person thought of his particular ticket and looked for his individual guest among the 12,137.
Each charitable person felt that his twenty-five cents had made possible the entire feast. At that moment H. R. could have been elected to any office within the gift of a free and sturdy people.
The guests began to eat more slowly.
The hosts, filled with kindliness and the desire to help their fellow-men by getting their money's worth, began to shout:
"Keep it up!"
"Go on!"
"Eat away!"
"Fill up! Fill up!"
"It's free! It's free!"
Charity is not dead, but sleepeth. When it awakens, it is ruthless.
Presently men and women at the tables, who had thought they were in paradise surrounded by angels, began to throw up their hands and shake their heads helplessly.
A storm of hisses greeted the ingratitude. Fat hosts began to shout:
"Fakes!"
"Fraud!"
"Take 'em out!"
In self-defense some of the guests began to rub their paunches. Here and there those who remembered close experiences with Christian mobs rose in their benches ostentatiously, let out their belts, and sat down again determinedly.
The hosts clapped madly. They understood, and therefore forgave. Then the hosts began to think that fifteen cents would have been enough.
The bugle blew. Dessert was served. It was determinedly put away.
Having convicted themselves of both charity and extravagance, each host felt that he was not only a philanthropist but a New-Yorker.
The bugle blew again. The paper dishes were gathered up, and also such of the knives and forks as the guests had not put in their pockets. The trays were whisked away by the traveling-cranes.
Suddenly all the lights went out. With the utter darkness a hush fell upon the vast audience. Then from all the bands came a mighty crashing chord. Instantly there blazed an electric sign that stretched from one side of the Garden to the other above the stage.
And both hosts and guests saw an American flag in red, white, and blue lights, and below it, in letters ten feet high, they read:
AND THE GREATEST OF THESE
IS CHARITY
Everybody cheered, for everybody agreed with the sentiment. Some even thought it was original.
Then all the lights were turned on again. The tables were carried away by the cranes. The guests, directed by H. R.'s lieutenants, formed in line and paraded around the Garden. The lame, the old, the young, the hopeless, the wicked, the maimed—all who had hungered—marched jauntily round the vast arena that their benefactors might see who it was that really had made the Mammoth Hunger Feast a success. They carried their heads erect, proudly, conscious of their importance in the world. The benefactors thereupon cheered the beneficiaries. By so doing they showed what they thought of the benefactors. It was none the less noble!
The reporters looked at their watches. A full page on Saturday night is no laughing matter to the make-up man. One of them rose and asked H. R.:
"Is this all? We've got to write—"
"It is not all!" answered H. R., and motioned to the trumpeter, who instantly blew the Siegfried motif. The crowd looked stageward. The rear drop-curtain showed in high letters: