e superintendent's office. There he will be
asked one question. It is not a catch question. No puns permitted. No
double meaning. No particularly deep or recondite significance. It is a
plain question, vital to the welfare of all New-Yorkers, affecting the
destiny of the American nation. The answer is perfectly obvious. The
Mayor has been invited to be present, and he will see to it that no
fraud is perpetrated on the thousands of people who have bought tickets
in good faith--"

"I thought the object of the tickets was to feed hungry--" began a
serious-eyed reporter.

"It is; but charity carries a reward in cash. It is the modern way. You
might add that there will be no reserved seats, no privileged classes.
Where all men are alike charitable, all men are equal before God and
man!"

Napoleon revolutionized the art of war by moving quickly and
overwhelming the foe with artillery. H. R. made charity a success by
appealing not alone to the charitable instinct of New-Yorkers, but to
every other instinct he could think of. Therefore everybody who was not
hungry logically decided to go to the Mammoth Hunger Feast. The
newspapers printed long and reassuring accounts of the police
arrangements.

H. R., being a republican at heart, had reserved the Imperial Box for
Grace Goodchild and her friends, and ninety-nine Royal boxes for the
other ticket-sellers and their fiances. His free sandwich men occupied
the front row of arena seats and had been coached by the leader of the
Grand Opera claque. At a given signal they were to cheer Grace
Goodchild. When the bugle announced H. R.'s entrance they were to go
crazy.

Ten beers _after_ the show.

XXII

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 e