"And mine wants enough beef stew for three of us."
Two battered tin pails were handed up by small, grimy fingers. Two eager little faces were upturned toward the top of the bright green counter which loomed before them. Two pairs of roguish eyes smiled back at the woman who reached over the counter and took the pails.
"The beef stew will be twelve cents," she said. "It is four cents for each half pint, you know."
"I know," answered the youth. "My mother says when she has to buy the meat and all and cook it and put a quarter in the gas meter, it's cheaper to get it here. My father got his breakfast here, too, and it only cost him five cents."
"And was he pleased?" asked the woman, carefully lowering the filled pail to the outstretched little hand.
"You bet," chuckled the lad, as he turned and followed the little procession down the length of the room and out through the door on the opposite side.
The woman was Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.
The boy was the son of a 'longshoreman living on "Death Avenue," in close proximity to the newly established People's Kitchen, situated on the southeast corner of Tenth Avenue and West Twenty-seventh Street, New York.
So it is here at last—the much talked of, long hoped for, community kitchen.
Within three days after its doors had been opened to the public more than 1,100 persons had availed themselves of its benefits. Within three years, it is promised, the community kitchen will have become national in character. Its possibilities for development are limitless.