More space! See? Could the newspapers help it? Didn't people have to have something to talk about? If they didn't, what could the editorial writers have to write about?
Knowing that talk must continue in order that interest in the Hunger Feast might not abate, H. R. himself went to the shops on Fifth Avenue. The shops elsewhere would follow the Avenue fashions.
He told each window-dresser the same thing.
"I come to you first because you are an artist concerned with color effects and striking arrangements. You also are a psychologist, since you compel people to halt on the sidewalk and then mutely induce them to use the doors. You really are the man who declares the dividends on the firm's capital stock. Yes, you do, and I'll see that the big chief acknowledges it, too. Now I've come to you—first! Whatever you do will be copied. It makes you plagiarizable, and that is merely the recognition of greatness. You have the window. In order to dissociate the idea of money from your shop in the public's mind I'm going to give you a chance to prove that you are above mere money-making, which is something no Fifth Avenue shop ever did before. Remember in this connection the psychology of the crowd and of the money they wish to spend and at the same time keep in their pockets. You and your windows are New York—the New York that draws the crowd of natives and Americans. Give a whole window, not to my charity, but to New York's—to yours! Put this menu on an easel, with a background of that wonderful velvet you had the other day—the one that killed your competitors. It was wonderful!"
Before the artist could draw his breath H. R. had warmly bid him good-by, leaving a menu in the astonished artist's hand.
They did. It was original, as they explained to the boss. And even department-store bosses know that originality means novelty, and novelty is what New York pays for.
Within six hours the first edition of menus was exhausted. In every shop window in New York the public could read the Public Menu Commission's masterpiece. Cost: $68.14 + H. R.
The undoubted possessors of perfect beauty gave more trouble than the menu, and therefore got more space in the newspapers. A regular detail of police guarded not only the Allied Arts Building day and night, but also the honor and features of the Public Beauty Commission. Grace Goodchild was compelled to make use of her neighbor's house, Mrs. Vantine's, in order to reach the street. She used the Seventy-sixth Street entrance. Mrs. Vantine congratulated Grace each time on her deserved triumph and asked her to look at Louise, her youngest.
H. R. had told Barrett to convey delicately to the press that the relatively young wife of one of the members of the commission had left for Reno. No name was mentioned. Therefore the portraits of all the male members were impartially published. A neat little interrogation-mark after each name did not constitute libel.
The commissioners were thereafter compelled to be particularly nice to their own wives in public.