ensions 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:

Soup a la Piccolini
Entree a la Hotel Regina
Roast a la Perry
Vegetable a la Weinpusslacher
Dessert a la Fitz-Marlton
Bread a la Prof. Preston
Milk a la Pasteur
Coffee a la Manhattan
Tea as Wanted

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 wh