cking came.

Hendrik himself walked briskly up-town. When a man is pleased with
himself he can always continue in that condition by the simple expedient
of continuing to see whatever he wishes to see. Hendrik opened his eyes
very wide and continued to see the ladder of success that great men use
to climb to their changing heaven. Hendrik's heaven just then happened
to be one in which a man of brains could make the money-makers pay him
for allowing them to make money for him. After finding the ladder, all
that was necessary was for Hendrik to think of George G. Goodchild's
money. That made him see red; and whenever he saw red he could see no
obstacles whatever; and because of his self-inflicted blindness he was
intelligently ready to tackle anything, even the job of helping his
fellow-men. To be an efficient philanthropist a man must have not only
love, but murder, in his heart. That is one of the two hundred and
eighty-six reasons why scientific charities make absolutely no inroads
on the world's store of poverty.

Mr. Rutgers met the charter members of his union at the time and place
indicated by Providence through the medium of Mr. Rutgers's lips.

There were fourteen sandwich-men.

Hendrik, not knowing what to say, gazed at the faces before him in
impressive silence. So long as you keep a man guessing, he is at your
mercy. Orators have already discovered this.

"Holy smoke! What in the name of Maginnis do you call this?" shrieked a
messenger-boy. "Free freak show?"

A crowd gathered about them by magic. Opportunity held out its right
hand and Hendrik Rutgers grasped it in both his own. If all New York
could be made to talk about him, all New York could be made to pay him,
as it always pays for the privilege of talking of the same thing at the
same time. You cannot get anybody to talk about the Ten Commandments;
therefore, there is nobody to listen; therefore nobody capitalizes them.

It _is_ the first rung that really matters. All other rungs in the
ladder of success are easier to find and to fit. Hendrik could now
gather together his various impulses and thoughts and motives and
arrange them in their proper sequence, as great men do, to make easier
the work of the historian. It was a crusade that he had undertaken, for
the liberation of the most abject of all modern slaves; he had changed
the scum of the earth into respectable humanity.

That was history.

The facts, however, happened to be as follows: He