A sample will suffice:
It has been clearly proven that New York is a great big city
with a great big heart. As always, it responded generously
to the call of Charity. The Hunger Feast at Madison Square
Garden was an extraordinary bit of municipal psychology and
an illuminating object-lesson. Why not make permanent a
state of mind of the public which does so much to dispel the
danger of a bloody revolution? Social unrest can be cured by
only one thing: Charity! Man does not need justice. He needs
the good-will of other men. The newspapers have it in their
power to check the hysterical and un-American clamor against
individual fortunes. They can throw open their columns!
Treat Charity as if it were as important as baseball or at
least billiards. Carry a regular Department of Charity every
day. Give your readers a chance to be kind. It will be a
novelty to many, but it will help all--the giver no less
than the beneficiary. If you will agree, Mr. Editor, I'll
send check.
Other specimens emphasized the non-sectarian phase of such charities as
that conceived and carried to success by one of the most remarkable men
in a city where the best brains of the country admittedly resided.
Intelligent charity, wisely discriminating, truly helpful, had been
placed for all time among the possibilities. Systematized charities were
delusions, chimeras, thin air. There was a demand for the opportunity to
be decent and kind. Let the newspapers supply it. "If your readers want
lurid accounts of murder trials and divorce cases, let them have them.
If they want expert advice on how to help their fellow-men give it to
them, also. It remains to be seen whether there is one newspaper in New
York that knows real news when it sees it!"
There were thirty-eight epistolary models in all.
In the afternoon of the day following the Mammoth Hunger Feast H. R.
called at the Goodchild house.
"Frederick, tell Miss Grace--"
"She 'as _gone_, sir!" said Frederick, tragically.
"Did she leave word when she would return?"
"She 'as _gone_, sir!" persisted Frederick, in abysmal distress at the
news and at his inability to convey it in letters of molten meteors. He
added, "To Philadelphia."
It sounded to him like Singapore. He did not think there was much
difference, anyhow.
"Philadelphia?" echoed H. R., blankly.
"Yes, sir!" said Frederick, with sad triumph.
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