At half after seven that night H.R., accompanied by eighteen contemporary historians and six magazine psychological portraitists, went to the entrance of the hungry. It was in the rear of the Garden and was dark and narrow.

Symbolism!

It was the same entrance that a few weeks previously had admitted the circus's beasts; only the beasts were not hungry.

Fourth Avenue seethed with humanity. A blind man afflicted with stone deafness could have told that hungry people were there provided his nose worked.

The street-cars had stopped running at 6.30 p.m., after the twenty-seventh accident.

The crowd was orderly and silent, as really hungry people are. And they had good manners, as the physically weak always have. And they were not impatient, for the prospect of eating always makes the starving hopeful.

A merciful darkness covered the hideousness of ten thousand faces. The reporters began to fidget like nervous women at a military play just before the execution.

H.R., seizing the exact psychological moment, said to the reporters:

"Let us press the button!"

It is the modern way—the press and the pressure.

He pressed the button. It turned on the lights of an electric sign hung above the entrance. The starving men read in blazing letters:

IF YOU ARE HUNGRY AND

HAVE NO MONEY WALK IN!

By their light the reporters were able to see the faces of the crowd plainly.

"My God!" said the young man from the Times.

The dazzling invitation was so worded as to prevent unseemly haste and unnecessary crowding. It said, "Walk in."

"It is easy to assume, gentlemen," said H.R., calmly, to the reporters, "that all these people are hungry."

"Yes, let 'em all in!" entreated those reporters who were not jotting down impressions.

H.R. shook his head sternly.

"We have our duty to the public to perform. We must determine whether they have no money."

"Your duty is to feed them all," said the Sun man.

"You can't afford to make a single mistake. Did you see that white-haired woman—"

"Come with me, gentlemen," cut in H.R., leading the way within.

Streams of people began to flow in at each entrance, sedately; four big policemen, representing the majesty of the law, stood, two on either side of each entrance. The majesty was of locust wood, held in the air, ready to descend on the cranium of the lawless and even of the ill-mannered.

As the starving entered the door they found themselves in a passageway with sides of heavy plank that narrowed until they were walking in single file, just as they do in abattoirs and sheep-dipping pens.

One by one they thus came. There was a small inclosure on one side of the passage. There stood H.R. and his reporters. Beside them was a small table. A heap of shining silver quarters was on the table in plain sight of all.

H.R. asked the first man, "Are you hungry?"

"Yes. I haven't had a bite in—"

H.R. held up a hand to check the autobiography. He inquired, sternly:

"Got any money?"

"Nope."

"Sure?"

"Yep."

The reporters began to sneer. What did this H.R., who was said to be clever, expect such people to answer? That's the trouble with all wealthy philanthropists. They are damned fools. They don't know human nature nor their own compatriots.

"Do you want a quarter?" asked H.R., kindly, at the same time lifting a big handful of silver to show there was plenty.

"You bet!"

"Wouldn't you rather have a dollar?" asked H.R. He picked up four quarters and jingled them in his open palm by bouncing them up and down in the air, gently, invitingly.

The man stared at H.R. and refused to answer.

It must be a trap!

"Don't you or do you? Speak quickly!" said H.R., impatiently.

"Of course!"

"You'll have to let us search you to see how much you've got on you if you really want a dollar instead of the quarter."

"Say, yous—" began the man.

"Frisk him!"

"To hell with your dollar," said the man, defiantly clapping one hand to his pocket. "I knew it was a plant!"

"This way," politely said the plain-clothes men, leading away the pauper who didn't wish to be searched.

The colloquy had not been overheard by the other hungry guests. The man was led into a storeroom, where he was kept so that he might not empty his pockets and come in again from the street for the dollar he did not really want.

"You see how we will eliminate those who have money and—"

But the reporters were not listening to H.R. They were too busy writing. This man was no philanthropist. He was intelligent.

There were some guests who said they objected to the indignity of being searched, though they had no money. They joined the first man in the storeroom.

"No taxpayers' subterfuges tolerated," H.R. said.

But most of the hungry were perfectly willing to be searched and prove they had no money. They were told by H.R. to pass on. To those who asked for the money H.R. said, sternly:

"Do you wish to swallow a quarter or do you want to eat food?"

They grumbled. They were human. They passed on. They were hungry.

Having shown the reporters how the undoubted penury of the deserving hungry was established, H.R. led them into the presence of the Infallible Booze-detector.

"Yes, but when those poor people said they were willing to be searched and thereby prove they had no money, I notice you didn't give 'em the quarter," observed young Mr. Lubin of the Onward.

"We never promised to give money. We asked them if they wanted a quarter and then if they wouldn't prefer a dollar."

"Yes. But you cruelly raised their hopes," remonstrated Lubin. "These are human beings—"

"And we are going to fill their bellies," interrupted H.R. "Giving money to those who haven't any simply perpetuates Capitalism besides alienating the Christian vote. We share food. That's Socialism. We do not give alms. That's insulting. Besides, we do not own the quarters. They're borrowed."

Lubin was silenced.

That silence from the Socialist reporter was H.R.'s greatest triumph thus far.

As the penniless guests left the glittering heap of stage quarters unsearched they walked on along a gallery. At the end of it was another glittering electric sign. It said:

THIS WAY IF YOU ARE HUNGRY!

The hungry walked on eagerly. A few feet from the door that led into the arena where the waiting tables were they had to pass by a wide-open door. Within, in plain sight of the passers-by, was a long bar. Behind the bar were white-jacketed bartenders. The beer-kegs formed an inspiring background. On the bar itself stood dozens of big schooners—full.

Above the bar could be read:

FREE BEER! Frei! Gratis!

A few walked on—straight to the dining-hall.

But every one who walked into the free-beer room was told to go through a door on the left.

"That way!" a policeman told the thirsty.

The first man who went into the inner room found a policeman standing beside a table on which were a dozen full schooners.

"If you drink now you don't eat," courteously said the cop.

"Kismet!" said the starving man, and reached for a schooner.

"It's for after eating!" gently warned the policeman.

"Life is uncertain. I'll drink now and—"

"This way!" The policeman now spoke in his regular voice.

He led the thirsty out of the room by another door which led into still another room used for storing the heavy circus impedimenta.

"Do you see?" asked H.R., sweetly, to the reporters and the students of sociology from the magazines. "Do you?"

"Mr. Rutgers, Columbus and his egg had nothing on you," said the earnest young theorist from the Evening Post.

The others were busily turning out literature.

"It won't cheat 'em out of a meal," H.R. whispered to young Mr. Lubin from the Onward. "But they don't eat with the others."

That is how H.R. kept his promise to the business men of New York. He had circumvented fraud, which is the chief aim of modern charity. Also he had discouraged the formation of a professional pauper class—the one danger against which all commonwealths must guard.

"I'd like to know what you are going to do with the culls," the Sun man asked H.R. He had of late been trying to elevate the tone of the magazines with real fiction; which they refused to print.

"Those who fell through thirst will be fed later," H.R. answered.

"And those that wouldn't be searched? They looked mighty hungry to me." He was an expert in hunger. It drove him out of Literature.

"We'll sell the left-over meals to them at cost. We are intelligent philanthropists. We shall now have a beer, gentlemen, and let us pass on."

That beer had taken on a subtle quality of exclusiveness. All the reporters drank with gusto.

---