H. R. Edwin Lefèvre

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. Did you ask why we should have a union? I'll tell you why: because we didn't have one; because employers have not thought of us as human beings, but as human derelicts. A starving man who doesn't want to steal and is ashamed to beg will sandwich for thirty cents a day ten hours; and he can't always collect his wages. And who is going to fight for him? When you think of the importance of all advertising, do you consider the peculiar picturesqueness of advertising through sandwiches? In the Middle Ages they had their heralds and their pursuivants—the sandwich-men of feudalism; and later the town criers; and later still, us. Do you know in what esteem sandwich-men are held in the south of France and in the Orient? Did you know that sandwich-men take the place of bells on Good Friday in Moldavia? Do you know why there are no commercial sandwich-men in Russia or in Spain? Did you ever read what Confucius wrote about 'Those men who with letters on their garments dispel the ignorance of buyers,' and a lot more? Did you? Did any clergyman ever tell you that sandwich-men are, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alluded to twice in the Old and five times in the New Testament? Don't you think that as intelligent investigators of industrial conditions and of the submerged tenth it would be worth your time to come to our annual dinner and hear our version of it? And also see how starving men eat the first square meal of the year?"

      Of course it was pure inspiration and, as such, impressive.

      "Yes, sir," respectfully replied the Evening Journal man—a tall, dark chap with gold-rimmed spectacles and a friendly smile. "What's the name of the restaurant?"

      "Caspar Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant," said H. Rutgers.

      "Spell it!" chorused the reporters; and H. Rutgers did, slowly and patiently. At once the Evening Journalist rushed on to telephone the caption of a story to his paper. That would enable the office to get out an extra; after which would come another edition with the story itself. He was the best head-line reporter in all New York.

      Long before the National Street Advertising Men's Association reached the Colossal Restaurant, Caspar Weinpusslacher converted himself into a Teutonic hurricane and changed thirty short tables into three, long ones. On his lips was a smile, and in his heart a hope that glowed like an incandescent twenty-dollar gold piece, for Max Onthemaker had rushed in breathlessly and gasped:

      "He is a smart feller, all right. What?" And he gave an Evening Journal to Caspar Weinpusslacher, wherein he read this:

SANDWICH PARADE