"First gun: The National Street Advertising Men will hold their annual dinner here next Saturday, about one hundred of us, thirty cents each; regular dinner. _That_ is legitimate news and will be printed as such. It will advertise the Colossal and the Colossal thirty-cent dinner. You won't be out a cent. We pay cash for our dinner. I'll supply a few decorations; all you'll have to do is to hang them from that corner to this. You might also arrange to have a little extra illumination in front of the place. Have a couple of men in evening clothes and high hats on the corner, pointing to the Colossal, and saying: '_Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant! Three doors down. Just follow the crowd!_' Arrange for all these things so that when you see that I am delivering the goods you won't be paralyzed. Another thing: There will be reporters from every daily paper in the city here Saturday night. Provide a table for them and pay especial attention to both dinner and drinks. _They_ will make you famous and rich, because you will tell them that they are getting the regular thirty-cent dinner. It will be up to you to be intelligently generous now so that you may with impunity be intelligently stingy later, when you are rich. I advise you to have Max here, because you seem to be of the distrustful nature of most damned fools and therefore must make your money in spite of yourself. Next Saturday at six P.M.! You'll make at least two hundred thousand dollars in the next five years. Now I am going to eat. Come on, Onthemaker." H. Rutgers sat down, summoned the Herculean waiter, and ordered two thirty-cent dinners. C. Weinpusslacher, a dazed look in his eyes, approached Max and whispered, "Hey, dot's a smart feller. What?" "Well," answered M. Onthemaker, lawyer-like, "you haven't anything to lose." "You said I should sign the paper," Caspar reminded him, accusingly. "You're all right so long as you don't give him a cent unless I say so." "I won't; not even if you say so." With thirty cents of food and thirty millions of confidence under his waistcoat, Hendrik Rutgers walked from the Colossal Restaurant down the Bowery and Center Street to the City Hall. At the door of the Mayor's room he fixed the doorkeeper with his stern eye and requested his Honor to be informed that the secretary of the National Street Advertising Men's Association would like to see his Honor about the annual dinner of the association, of which his Honor had been duly informed. One of the Mayor's secretaries came out, a tall young man who, as a reporter on a sensational newspaper, had acquired a habit of dodging curses and kicks. Now, as Mayor's secretary, he didn't quite know how to dodge soft soap and glad hands. "Good afternoon," said Hendrik, with what might be called a business-like amiability. "Will the Mayor accept?"