The Public Menu Commission had been having pitched battles. The Public Sentiment Corps had been bombarding the newspapers with letters asking for the official menu, but the commission refused to be hurried by popular clamor, and said so to the reporters. Their own sessions were held behind locked doors. Omelette soufflÉe au curaÇoa was definitely stricken off Signor Piccolini's tentative menu, on the theory that the filling was not permanent.

"Air is cheap," protested Piccolini, "and we have to consider the expense."

"But we want something that will stay by the hungry more than fifteen minutes."

"Then," said Piccolini, scathingly, "give them sliced rubber boots."

"If you prepared the sauce, dear master," interjected H.R., who happened to be present, "I'd rather eat it than any other artist's filet ChÂteaubriand aux—"

Piccolini bowed to him profoundly. Then he shrugged his shoulders at the others.

"Nevertheless," he said, with conviction, "Omelette soufflÉe—"

"What can you expect from the other members?" whispered H.R. to him. "If we prolong the debate there won't be any hungry men alive to eat our dinner. Yield, dear master, for the sake of humanity." Then he said aloud, "Let's try beans."

The Commission therefore reported progress and adjourned for the day.

The newspapers, spurred thereto by the avalanche of letters and favorite recipes from charitable ladies in Brooklyn, who gave their names, addresses, and terms per week, devoted much space to the ideal hunger-appeaser.

For the first time in history New York began to take an intelligent interest in menus. Everybody talked about eating as if Hungarian orchestras and Brazilian dances did not exist.

Presently the newspapers announced on unimpeachable authority that serious dissensions existed among the members of the Public Menu Commission. It was hinted that resignations would be called for.

Applications for the vacant places and suggestions from really competent men poured into the editorial rooms. It made the commission, as usual, an editorial target. More space!

That impelled the Commission, speaking with difficulty by reason of the swollen lips of the chairman, to announce the menu. H.R. had it printed on academy board.

New York, on the tiptoe of expectation to learn what an ideal hunger-appeaser would consist of, and how it could be done for twenty-five cents and how the commission could decide without bloodshed, made haste to read the menu:

O.K.
H.R.,
Sec.

The exact recipe of each dish would be made public after the Hunger Feast. It would remain a secret until then!

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.

The theatrical profession howled individually, collectively, in person, in writing, by telephone, and through press agents. Nightly these favorites would ask, more or less nasally and slightly below pitch, whether they were not perfectly beautiful, and gave the audience the opportunity to judge of fifteen-sixteenths of their persons. And the unanimous reply was, "You are!"—from the claque. It became the topic of the day, and as such divided families and parted friends.

At the end of three days H.R. diabolically announced that only sixty-eight had been selected.

"Aren't there one hundred perfectly beautiful girls in Greater New York?" he feverishly asked the reporters. "Aren't there?"

The literary misogynists propounded the same query—in the head-lines, at that! On the very morning that saw that insulting question printed it was estimated by one of the newspapers that 318,029 answered, "Present." It was probably an exaggeration, as there doubtless was some repeating.

The Public Beauty Commission added fourteen to the list of utter pulchritudes. Names, addresses, and portraits duly printed.

Elderly persons signing William H.P. or James G.C. in feminine hand-writing asked the most conservative newspapers whether there was nothing else fit to print but the disgusting travesty on charity or the appalling vulgarity of immodest females.

The newspapers printed the letters. One of them, an afternoon sheet, stopped printing names and portraits of the successful. It stopped for one issue.

The circulation department interviewed the city department. The paper went back, under a new city editor, to the business of printing all the news that was fit to print.

The public demanded it.

On Sunday all the newspapers published the full list of one hundred perfectly beautiful girls who alone would sell tickets admitting the holder to the Mammoth Hunger Feast in the capacity of spectator. One to each customer; no more.

On Monday they printed a facsimile of H.R.'s ticket.