Dinner For A Penny

There are diners and diners in this city of oontrasts. Some men here find it a difficult thing toget a satisfactory dinnei1 for $25 ; otbers get along nicely on a substantial m3&] that costs a dime or less. And t.hern is at least one strange little restaurant berewhere a fullrepast can be purchased for 1 cent. It is without doubt the cheapest eating house in the world. This cheapest dining room of all is huddled down in a corner almost touching the famous Marinera' temple of Oliver street, a block away from Chatbam square, where strearos of people from all the fonr corners of town pass and repass. It is little more than a wooden hut, some 18 feet long and perhaps 7 broad, with a little addition tacked on to it, which serves as a kitchen. Small as it is, however, it feeds an average of 1,000 people in a day, 20 being able tosqueeze in before the counter at one time ; on some days as many as 1,400 have eaten there. Tramps, outcasts, vagrants and men who have fallen so low that they will never get up in the world again, come daily, sometimes three times a day, with the last copper they have in their pockets, to drink coffee, munch the bread and eat the pea soup that constitute the bill of f are of this most lowlyof eating houses. It is a strange congregation truly that one sees withiu its narrow four walls - a congregation of faces stamped with vice and debauchery, of patched and rusty garments and unwashed cuticle. Women occasionally come to this penny dining room, but as the proprietür doesn't care for their cnstom, they do not annoy him often. Yon ask, What can a copper buy? Well, incredible as it may seem in these days of lavish expenditnre, three coppers expended at this tiny restaurant will buy a bowl of coffee, a bowl of pea sonp and four slicesof bread. A bowl of coffee and a slice of bread, the slice cut generously, costs but a cent. For a cent, too. a large bowl of soup is served, with another slice of bread. A cent more will buy two additional pieces of bread. The bowl of soup is a full quart, the bowl of coffee a pint. "If a man wants to eat more than this at one time," the little proprietor says, "he must be a glutton. " At all events, no vagrant should starve with one of these 8 cent dinners snugly stowed away beneath his soiled linen. The pea soup i s rich, the coffee is cheap, bnt as good as one finds in many pretentious dining rooms here, and the bread is so palatable that the proprietor eats it himself. Thisl cent eating house has been running for over five years, and dnring that time has fed hundreds of thousands. Some months the meáis served have reached the 30,000 noten.