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.