g! I see!" said the policeman, and smiled appreciatively.
He had feared they might be starving men.

"Yes," said H. Rutgers, quite loudly, "advertising the fact that a man
out of a job in New York, who is too proud to beg and too honest to
steal, has to become a sandwich-man and make from twenty-five to
forty-five cents for ten hours work--not in China or Mexico, but in New
York, to-day; men who are willing to work, but are old or sickly or have
no regular trade. You know how the Mayor feels about the rights of
citizens who are not rich and the duty of paid officials of this city.
He and I are opposed to too much law in the way of clubs. So kindly pass
the word down the line, officer."

The big traffic policeman, far more impressed by the delivery than by
the speech itself, touched his hand to his cap so very respectfully that
the grinning crowd at once became serious. Each woman turned on her
neighbor and frowned furiously the unuttered scolding for the other's
unseemly levity.

"What does it mean?" asked hundreds. All looked toward Hendrik Rutgers
for explanation, for official permission to laugh at a spectacle that
was not without humorous suggestions. But he kept them guessing. This is
called knowledge of stage effects; also psychological insight; also
cheap politics. Historians even refer to it as statesmanship.

Something that makes one hundred thousand New-Yorkers gasp and stare is
not necessarily news; an ingenius street-sign or a five-dollar-a-day
Steeple Jack could do it. But that not one of one hundred thousand
omniscient New-Yorkers knew whether to laugh, to curse, or to weep at
what they saw made that sight very decidedly "news." An interrogation
marker in one hundred thousand otherwise empty heads loomed gigantic
before the hair-trigger minds of the city editors. They sent their star
men to get answers to the multitudinous question; and, if possible, also
the facts.

Just south of Thirty-fourth Street the _Herald_, _Times_, _Sun_, and
_Evening Journal_ reporters overtook H. Rutgers. He made the procession
halt. That again made all Fifth Avenue halt. He waited until all the
reporters were near him, and then he spoke very slowly, for he guessed
that shorthand and literature do not necessarily coexist.

"The sandwich-men have formed a union. It includes sandwich-men from the
five boroughs. We are going to have an annual dinner at six o clock--we
are not fashionable folk, you know. There will be speeches