The theatrical profession howled individually, collectively, in person, in writing, by telephone, and through press agents. Nightly these favorites would ask, more or less nasally and slightly below pitch, whether they were not perfectly beautiful, and gave the audience the opportunity to judge of fifteen-sixteenths of their persons. And the unanimous reply was, "You are!"--from the claque. It became the topic of the day, and as such divided families and parted friends. At the end of three days H. R. diabolically announced that only sixty-eight had been selected. "Aren't there one hundred perfectly beautiful girls in Greater New York?" he feverishly asked the reporters. "Aren't there?" The literary misogynists propounded the same query--in the head-lines, at that! On the very morning that saw that insulting question printed it was estimated by one of the newspapers that 318,029 answered, "Present." It was probably an exaggeration, as there doubtless was some repeating. The Public Beauty Commission added fourteen to the list of utter pulchritudes. Names, addresses, and portraits duly printed. Elderly persons signing William H. P. or James G. C. in feminine hand-writing asked the most conservative newspapers whether there was nothing else fit to print but the disgusting travesty on charity or the appalling vulgarity of immodest females. The newspapers printed the letters. One of them, an afternoon sheet, stopped printing names and portraits of the successful. It stopped for one issue. The circulation department interviewed the city department. The paper went back, under a new city editor, to the business of printing all the news that was fit to print. The public demanded it. On Sunday all the newspapers published the full list of one hundred perfectly beautiful girls who alone would sell tickets admitting the holder to the Mammoth Hunger Feast in the capacity of spectator. One to each customer; no more. On Monday they printed a facsimile of H. R.'s ticket. [Illustration] No. 1 was a coupon to be detached by the seller. It was in the nature of both wages and a vote to show which was the perfectest of the perfect. It would mean the only fair election ever held in America. Only one ticket to each customer. There would be no rich man buying tickets by the thousand, no stuffing of the ballot-boxes by the gallant commander of a militia regiment, no undue influence on the part of high political officials. No man could resist a perfectly beautiful girl who asked him to buy one ticket for a quarter of a dollar, twenty-five cents. No bribing by kisses was necessary.