On Monday they printed a facsimile of H. R.'s ticket.
No. 1 was a coupon to be detached by the seller. It was in the nature of both wages and a vote to show which was the perfectest of the perfect. It would mean the only fair election ever held in America. Only one ticket to each customer. There would be no rich man buying tickets by the thousand, no stuffing of the ballot-boxes by the gallant commander of a militia regiment, no undue influence on the part of high political officials. No man could resist a perfectly beautiful girl who asked him to buy one ticket for a quarter of a dollar, twenty-five cents.
No bribing by kisses was necessary.
The rest of the ticket was retained by the buyer. It bought what the masses were beginning to speak of as the dandy belly-filler for a hungry person who was warranted not to have any money. No. 3 coupon was to be detached by the doorkeeper at Madison Square Garden and returned to the ticket-buyer. If the holder of said coupon exercised his or her brains he or she would receive ten thousand dollars in cash. Conditions governing the collection of said ten thousand dollars would be published on Saturday morning. It would not be a lottery.
It now behooved charitable New-Yorkers to buy the tickets which would feed all hungry persons who positively had no money to buy food with, and at the same time receive ten thousand dollars in cash, brains being present—all for twenty-five cents.
The ten thousand would be paid in cash, with United States Treasury notes obtained from the National Bank of the Avenue. This insured their genuineness.
On Monday the perfectly beautiful started. It was, fittingly, a perfectly beautiful day. In automobiles (makers' names given, since it was for charity) decked with beautiful flowers (donating florists also honorably mentioned in the public prints, and paid advs. besides) the perfectly beautiful hundred went forth to appeal to the great heart of New York.
They were indeed beautiful. At least the men, being blind and possessing the suffrage, thought so. Why, they even clamored to be allowed to buy. And found ways and means of repeating. They never can vote honorably.
The newspapers reported that by 11 p.m. 38,647 tickets had been sold. Also they announced twenty-three engagements of perfectly beautiful ticket-sellers.