Just after the applause that greeted Grace Goodchild's arrival had begun to subside, and the public was about to demand that the feast, for which they had paid, begin a bugle blew.

H.R., who was Fame since he was initials, entered the arena.

Instantly the well-trained Public Sentiment Corps began to shout, angrily:

"Sit down! Sit down!"

That, as intended by H.R., made all rise to their feet.

Then, and only then, did H.R. advance into the arena, followed by the Mayor of the City of New York, the Bishop of the Diocese of the same, and the other dignitaries.

The applause that came from the members of the Society of American Sandwich Artists was not applause. It was fervor, frenzy, fury. They yelled and shouted with the enthusiastic recklessness of free men who knew that after their throats went dry ten beers, also free, would cure.

The audience, seeing and hearing their fellow-men applaud, felt themselves left out of something. They were free men. They therefore also applauded, even more frenziedly.

No beers; not even knowledge; merely insistence upon political equality!

In front of the Goodchild box H.R., whose progress resembled Buffalo Bill's minus the curls, paused. He looked intently at Grace Goodchild.

She knew something was expected of her—something spectacular, thrilling, befitting the imperial consort. She stared back at H.R. agonizedly. Couldn't he prompt her? What was she to do, and how and when?

"Grace! Grace! Grace!" shouted the free sandwiches.

Instantly as well as instinctively the other ninety-nine beautiful perfections rose in their boxes and waved their handkerchiefs.

The crowd, drawn thither by one of the noblest charities of the age, went wild. Grace was rich! She was theirs! They cheered what belonged to them!

Grace Goodchild, actually urged by her aristocratic friends, rose and bowed to H.R. with a queenly air.

H.R. bowed low to her and walked on.

When he reached the stage all the bands began to play the national anthem almost together.

A huge American flag was dropped from the middle of the roof to remind New York what its nationality was.

When the bands finished playing there flashed a dazzling electric sign over the stage.

In huge letters of light the people read:

WELL DONE, NEW YORK!

H.R.

The great building rocked under the applause.

New York can always be trusted to applaud itself.

The lights of the sign went out. H.R. motioned to his stage-manager.

In the back of the stage the curtain that told of the wonderful feeding system—50,000 people, 6¾ minutes!—fell.

A hush also fell on the audience, for back of it was another white sheet on which everybody read:

WATCH YOUR GUESTS EAT

YOU ARE FEEDING THEM!

H.R.

The audience, metamorphosed against its will into charitable hosts, now remembered the starving fellow-beings who were there to eat.

H.R. motioned. A bugler advanced to the front of the stage and sounded, Charge!

The soup began to pour out of the faucets. In fourteen seconds 12,137 cups of steaming soup À la Piccolini were before the guests.

The audience applauded madly. It was perfectly wonderful what charity could do—in fourteen seconds!

The guests were very hungry. The soup, however, was very hot. This made the drinking audible to the remotest recesses of the Garden.

Again the bugle blew. The charitable crowd instantly ceased to look at their guests and gazed at the electric traveling-cranes carrying laden trays. Over six thousand well-fed spectators pulled out their watches and timed the entrÉe.

It took twenty-nine seconds to place the entrÉe before the guests.

"Quick work!" said the watch-holders, approvingly. It took the guests much less than twenty-nine seconds to eat the entrÉe.

The bugle blew for the third time.

The roast appeared. The rear curtain dropped. Behind it was another on which could be read, without the aid of binoculars:

WATCH THEM EAT!

YOUR TICKET DID IT!

H.R.

It happened exactly as H.R. had told Bishop Phillipson. Each charitable person thought of his particular ticket and looked for his individual guest among the 12,137.

Each charitable person felt that his twenty-five cents had made possible the entire feast. At that moment H.R. could have been elected to any office within the gift of a free and sturdy people.

The guests began to eat more slowly.

The hosts, filled with kindliness and the desire to help their fellow-men by getting their money's worth, began to shout:

"Keep it up!"

"Go on!"

"Eat away!"

"Fill up! Fill up!"

"It's free! It's free!"

Charity is not dead, but sleepeth. When it awakens, it is ruthless.

Presently men and women at the tables, who had thought they were in paradise surrounded by angels, began to throw up their hands and shake their heads helplessly.

A storm of hisses greeted the ingratitude. Fat hosts began to shout:

"Fakes!"

"Fraud!"

"Take 'em out!"

In self-defense some of the guests began to rub their paunches. Here and there those who remembered close experiences with Christian mobs rose in their benches ostentatiously, let out their belts, and sat down again determinedly.

The hosts clapped madly. They understood, and therefore forgave. Then the hosts began to think that fifteen cents would have been enough.

The bugle blew. Dessert was served. It was determinedly put away.

Having convicted themselves of both charity and extravagance, each host felt that he was not only a philanthropist but a New-Yorker.

The bugle blew again. The paper dishes were gathered up, and also such of the knives and forks as the guests had not put in their pockets. The trays were whisked away by the traveling-cranes.

Suddenly all the lights went out. With the utter darkness a hush fell upon the vast audience. Then from all the bands came a mighty crashing chord. Instantly there blazed an electric sign that stretched from one side of the Garden to the other above the stage.

And both hosts and guests saw an American flag in red, white, and blue lights, and below it, in letters ten feet high, they read:

AND THE GREATEST OF THESE

IS CHARITY

H.R.

Everybody cheered, for everybody agreed with the sentiment. Some even thought it was original.

Then all the lights were turned on again. The tables were carried away by the cranes. The guests, directed by H.R.'s lieutenants, formed in line and paraded around the Garden. The lame, the old, the young, the hopeless, the wicked, the maimed—all who had hungered—marched jauntily round the vast arena that their benefactors might see who it was that really had made the Mammoth Hunger Feast a success. They carried their heads erect, proudly, conscious of their importance in the world. The benefactors thereupon cheered the beneficiaries. By so doing they showed what they thought of the benefactors. It was none the less noble!

The reporters looked at their watches. A full page on Saturday night is no laughing matter to the make-up man. One of them rose and asked H.R.:

"Is this all? We've got to write—"

"It is not all!" answered H.R., and motioned to the trumpeter, who instantly blew the Siegfried motif. The crowd looked stageward. The rear drop-curtain showed in high letters:

DANCING!

The guests hesitated.

The curtain was lowered a few feet. Above "Dancing!" the crowd now read:

FREE OF CHARGE!

Everybody started for the floor.

H.R. left the stage and walked into the Goodchild box. Grace had been receiving congratulations all the evening until she had convinced herself that this was her dinner. It was all H.R. could do to force his way through the plutocracy in the Imperial Box. Talking to Grace at the same time were three young men who never before had accepted Mrs. Goodchild's invitations to marry Grace. But Grace was now the most-talked-of girl in all New York. And she was officially very beautiful and Goodchild pÈre was not enough. And Grace was very kind to all of them. All empresses are kindly when they haven't Dyspepsia or Dynamite Dreams. All unpleasant things seem to begin with a "D." There is Death and Damnation; also Duty.

Mr. Goodchild frowned when he saw H.R. in the box. But when he saw that H.R. never even looked at him he became really angry.

Mrs. Goodchild looked alarmed and hissed, "Don't you talk to him, Grace!"

Grace, knowing herself desired by the most eligible young men in her set, decided to squelch H.R. in public. H.R., however, walked past everybody, looking neither to left nor right. Feeling themselves treated as so many chairs or hat-racks, the Élite of New York began to feel like intruders.

Then, as an imperial mandate is given, H.R. said to Miss Goodchild:

"We're needed!"

He offered her his arm. The young men rose and made room for him. Duty called, and they never interfered with duty.

Grace hypnotically obeyed, for H.R. was frowning. Together they walked down to the floor of the Garden.

The Public Sentiment Corps did their duty. They had not yet received the beer. They shouted, frenziedly:

"H.R.! H.R.! H.R.!"

The public took up the cheering. Thousands of outstretched hands reached out for his. But H.R. merely bowed, right and left, and walked to the middle of the floor.

"Smile at them!" he whispered, fiercely, to Grace.

She did. She knew then what it was to be a Queen. She felt an overpowering kindliness toward all these delightful, simple people. Reggie was not brilliant, but that wasn't expected of a Van Duzen. She did not love Reggie, but she liked him. As Mrs. Van Duzen she would always have what she liked. She would never marry H.R.! It was preposterous.

The band began to play. The crowd, instead of dancing, moved toward the sides—to give H.R. room to dance.

Never before on Manhattan Island had such a triumph of personality fallen to the lot of any man.

H.R. put his arm about Grace Goodchild. She shrank from the symbolism of bondage.

"The world is looking on!" he admonished her.

Knowing that she danced very well, she now had but one fear—that her partner might make her ridiculous.

But H.R. was the best dancer she had ever honored.

She felt her resolution not to marry him slipping away. He led divinely. She felt that she herself had never danced so well in her life. He brought out the best that was in her.

"Ever try the Rutgers Roll?" he whispered, tensely.

"N-no! she gasped.

"Let yourself go!"

When a woman lets herself go, all is over except the terms of the capitulation. She let herself go desperately, because she was forced to do it; fearfully, because of the appalling possibility of a fiasco.

She did not know how it was done. She had looped the loop and was still dancing away—a new but unutterably graceful undulation of torso and rhythmical leg work and exquisite sinuous motions of the arms and hands.

A storm of applause came to her ears, a hurricane steeped in saccharine. A man who could dance like that was fit to be any girl's husband!

The Élite flocked on the floor and began to indulge in old-fashioned specialties, some of which were nearly a fortnight old. You heard delighted remarks:

"That's Mrs. Vandergilt!"

"There goes Reggie Van Duzen!"

"Look at Katherine Van Schaick!"

Then the New York that Americans call ruffianly, impolite, vulgar, selfish, spendthrift, money-loving, self-satisfied, and stupid, also began to dance decorously! The veteran reporters did not believe their eyes, but they made a note of the fact, nevertheless.

Grace was nearly out of breath. She said, "I'm—I'm—I'm—"

"Certainly, dear girl." And H.R. deftly piloted her out of the crush. They stopped dancing, and he gave her his arm. She took it.

"Grace," he said, "when will you marry me?"

"Never!" she answered, determinedly. "And you must not call me Grace."

"Right-O!" he said, gratefully. "I'll call to-morrow afternoon. Shall I speak to Bishop Phillipson, or will father—"

"I said never!" she frowned.

"I heard you," he smiled, reassuringly. "I—"

Andrew Barrett and the reporters came up to him.

"What about the men that fell for the beer?"

"Oh, give 'em the left-over grub, if you boys think it's right. But don't print it. The W.C.T.U. would howl at the thought of giving food to people who had first wanted booze."

Grace looked on, marveling at the way he ordered things done and at the way men listened to his words.

"But what about that ten-thousand-dollar cash to the coupon-holders?" asked young Mr. Lubin, finally taking his eyes off the beautiful capitalist. Feeling that he was beginning to condone with capitalistic crimes, he spoke sternly to H.R. in self-defense.

"Oh yes!" said H.R. and turned to Grace. "My dear, I'll have to leave you. Shall I take you to mother?"

Reggie Van Duzen saved him the trip.

"Say, Mr. Rutgers, could I have—"

"Yes, my boy!" gratefully smiled H.R. He shook hands with Reggie and said, very seriously, "I leave her in your care!"

Reggie, who was very young and careless, flushed proudly. Here was a man who understood men! He would protect Grace with his life. And it gave him a new respect for other women.

"I don't blame you, Grace," he said, with his twelve-year-old's smile that clung to him through life and made even poor people like him. "He is a wonder! Beekman Rutgers had the nerve to tell me that all the Rutgerses are like H.R. What do you think of that?"

Grace answered, "Certainly not!"

She was not going to marry H.R., but if you intend to have it known that you have refused to marry a man who is crazy to marry you, the greater the man the greater the refusal. She added, with conviction:

"There is only one Rutgers like that and his first name is Hendrik."

Reggie nodded, looked at her, sighed, and began to dance.

He didn't touch H.R. as a dancer.

"Can you do the Rutgers Roll?" she asked.

"No!" he confessed.

She could never marry Reggie. She knew it now. But of course she would not marry H.R.

In the mean time H.R., accompanied by the reporters, drove to the Cardinal's residence. They explained their mission to a pleasant-faced young priest and sent in their cards.

The young priest began to make excuses and spoke of the lateness of the hour.

H.R. said to him, deferentially: "Monsignor, we have come to the Cardinal because he is the supreme authority in this case. The Mayor of New York and the representative of the Socialist press, Mr. Lubin, here, have agreed to leave it to the decision of his Eminence."

The Cardinal sent back word that he would see Mr. Rutgers.

H.R. went in alone. He saw not the head of the Catholic hierarchy, but a man in whose eyes was that light which comes from believing in God and from hearing the truth from fellow-men who told him their sins. H.R. bowed respectfully before the aged priest.

"How may I help you? asked the Cardinal. He was an old man and this was a young man. No more; no less; both of them children.

"Your Eminence, I am the unfortunate American who in his misguided way has tried to feed the hungry in order that New York's grown children may realize that charity is not dead. If I have used the methods of a mountebank it is because I have labored where God had been forgotten, almost."

"Generalities are not always verities, though they may come close to them. I know about your work. I shall be glad to do what I can for you."

"Thank you, sir. I promised to give ten thousand dollars in cash to any New-Yorker who could answer this question: What is it we have all heard about from earnest childhood and that we acknowledge exists; that is neither a person nor a beast, neither a thing nor an object, but something that no man can kill, though it is dead to-day; that all men need and most New-Yorkers neglect; that should be present everywhere and is found in no trade? The answer is a word of five letters and begins with 'A.' There is a synonym that, though not exactly obsolete, is at least obsolescent."

"Five letters? Is it in English?" smiled the Cardinal.

"It is in every good English dictionary. I think the dictionary is the only place in which I can find it nowadays."

"Oh no, my son." And the Cardinal shook his head in kindly dissent.

"Reverend sir, I said anybody with brains could guess it."

"It was not an ingenuous question, Mr. Rutgers."

"It was a coupon that entitled anybody who held it to answer the question and get ten thousand dollars. It was part of a ticket for which the holder paid twenty-five cents to feed a starving fellow-being. But what I wish you to do is to assure the reporters that it was a legitimate question. The word is Anima."

"I knew it."

"Because you use it every day."

"But your condition—"

"New York's condition, your Eminence," corrected H.R., politely. "I said the synonym, soul, would answer. Nobody won the ten thousand dollars. New York will cudgel its brains because it did not win the ten thousand dollars. In searching for the missing word it may find something more precious—the missing soul."

"Your way is not our way, but perhaps—" The Cardinal was silent, his kindly eyes meditatively bent on H.R.

"The reporters, your Eminence—" began H.R., apologetically.

"Ah yes!" And the white-haired prelate accompanied H.R. to the room where the reporters were waiting.

"I have heard Mr. Rutgers's question. The word of five letters beginning with an 'A' I think answers it, from his point of view, which is not unreasonable. I cannot say that the inability to guess proves the non-possession of brains—"

"The Cardinal knew at once," put in H.R.

"But that nobody should have guessed is astonishing."

"They were not all Christians," explained H.R.

"What is the answer?" asked a reporter.

"A word of five letters beginning with 'A,'" said H.R.

"Can't we publish it?"

"It is our secret now. New York is very rich. When it discovers that one word—or its synonym of four letters—it will be infinitely richer in every way."

The reporters brightened up. They saw columns and columns of guesses. But the Cardinal looked thoughtful. Then he said to H.R.:

"Come and see me again."

"Thank you. I will, your Eminence."

The Cardinal bowed his head gravely and H.R. and the newspaper men left.

"Are you a Catholic?" the World man asked.

"No," answered H.R., doubtfully.

"All roads lead to Rome," interrupted Lubin, with a sneer.

"Excepting one, Lubin," said H.R., pleasantly. "Keep on going, my boy. It's nice and warm there."

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