“Well, the 'Penny Lunch' is launched, and whether the prices charged will pay the cost of the material, cooking and serving, or not, we feel certain that any little deficiency that may occur will be cheerfully met by the well-to-do of our community.
“A coffee-roasting firm has pledged five pounds of good coffee each week for use at the 'Penny Lunch' room, and we are sure dealers in other lines will be glad to assist. Corby Brothers have been furnishing from fifty to seventy-five loaves of bread for our 'bread line' for many months, and Browning & Baines, coffee dealers, have supplied six pounds of coffee a week for a long time past.
“We greatly appreciate the generous co-operation of all these dear friends, who help us to help others to help themselves.”
The benefits of the Penny Lunch can never be told till the books of eternity are opened, but some idea may be gathered when we state that the report of the bread line from May 12, 1911, to May 12, 1912, was 41,750, but the report from May 12, 1912, to May 12, 1913, was 18,950. The Bread Line is the name of a service at 6 A.M., the year round, when bread and black coffee is served to all who come for it. If people will come before daylight in the winter, or at that early hour in the summer for coffee, without cream or sugar, and a quarter of a loaf of bread, we believe they need it, and we gladly give it, not as a charity, but as a visible token of our sympathy. Now, the fact that 22,800 fewer people took bread and coffee free in the year 1912 to 1913, compared with the preceding year, can only be accounted for that when a man has a few pennies in his pocket he could buy a satisfactory breakfast, and gladly did so rather than to line up for an unrequited kindness.
How shamed many men were to take food in the bread line, but the loving word sweetened many a bitter cup. Once a hand so unusually white and well-kept reached for the cup of coffee. Mrs. Kline looked up and saw the face of a man who had been a minister of the gospel. She said, “Brother, take only the coffee, we want you to take breakfast at our family table this morning.” He sat down to drink the coffee with bitter tears coursing down his shamed face. Of course, every kindness was shown him, “for need has its right, and necessity its claim,” then the blessed Spirit came in and lo, he prayed, and God received back to a useful life a man who had found sorrow and sin bitter and the tears of remorse salt.