"I move we adjourn!"
"Second the motion!" shrieked Andrew Barrett from a rear pew.
The Bishop had to put the motion. Not having been called upon to pledge money, the assembly decided it was prudent to get out before the situation changed. The motion was unanimously carried.
H. R. received the reporters in the vestry-room. He even shook hands with them. Then he said, as usual giving them the "lead" for their stories:
"These are the points to emphasize: The tickets are unlike any other tickets ever invented. They cost twenty-five cents. They will carry a coupon. To a person with brains that same coupon will be worth ten thousand dollars in cash. Chance has nothing to do with it. Brains! In any event, the twenty-five cents will buy one Ideal Meal. The menu will be prepared by the Menu Commission, composed of competent persons, which is another novelty in commissions—the highest-paid chefs in New York, the proprietors of the three best restaurants, the three leading diet specialists, and three experts on hunger. No food fads and no disguised advertisements of breakfast foods or nerve-bracers. What Dr. Eliot's Five-foot Book-shelf did for literature the S. A. S. A. Ideal Hunger-Appeaser will do for the masses. That menu inaugurates a revolution without bloodshed, vulgar language, or the destruction of fundamental institutions. The low price of our meal is made possible by the application of automobile-factory methods and the fact that we have no profit to make. Play fair with the restaurant-keeper, boys, and make this strong:
"The S. A. S. A., after epoch-making experiments, psychological and physiological, has succeeded in making fraudulent hunger impossible. We have a cash-detector which will enable us to discard any applicant who can pay for his food, and our alcoholic thirst-tester automatically eliminates booze-fighters. The mammoth hunger feast will be held at Madison Square Garden. Each ticket admits the buyer to the feast—as an eye-witness that he may see where his money has gone. The coupon will be detached by the ticket-taker at the entrance and returned to the ticket-holder. Uncharitable people who have no brains need not buy a ticket.
"No shop, church, or bank will offer the tickets for sale; only our own sellers in person and only one to each customer. We are not going to pay anybody twenty thousand dollars. That's flat! The names of the members of our various commissions will be announced later." He nodded dismissingly. Then he seemed to remember that these were gentlemen. He said: "My secretary, who has taken down my remarks in shorthand, will give you typewritten copies of same. Use what you will. Only correct my English, won't you? I'm not literary."
That made them his friends. But the Tribune man said:
"I'm from Missouri and I'm not going to print anything unless—"
"I don't expect you to print news. These gentlemen know I receive no salary. They know as well as I do that my sole object is to win the hand of Grace Goodchild."