The Nine-Tenths

a center of quiet and chaste respectability, with its winding streets, its old-fashioned low brick houses, its trees, its general air of detachment and hushed life. Now it was a scene

ong French windows on the first floor. Behind those French windows was a four-room flat; beneath

.. In the faded sunshine of the unusually warm winter afternoon, with its vistas of gold-dusty air, and its noise of playing children and on-surging trolleys and trucks and all the minute life of the saloons and the stores-women hanging out of windows to get the recreation of watching the confused drama of the streets, ne

land, under new skies, in a new clime, and there was all the romance of the mysterious and all the fear of the untried. Beginnings always have the double quality of magic and timidity-the dreaded, delicious first plunge into cold water, the adventurous striking out into

So the whole city was but a conglomeration of nests of worlds, woven together by a few needs and the day's work, worlds as yet undiscovered in every direction,

elp shape his fight, perhaps be the woman to gird on his armor, put sword in his hand, and send him forth. For he needed her, needed her as a child needs a teacher, as a recruit needs a disciplined vete

at the Woman's League. Until she had broken down and wept, she had hardly seemed a woman-rather a voice crying in the wilderness, a female Isaiah, the toile

ad something to show for his new life-until, possibly, he had a copy of that magazine which was still a hy

they sat down opposite each other, utterly alone ... no boarding-house flutter and gossip and noise, no unpleasant jarring personalities, no wholesale cookery. All was quiet and peace-a brooding, tinkling silence. They both smiled and smiled, their eyes moist, and the food tasted so go

oke aw

ther ... and it's

ut her eyes seemed to spa

first time we've had anything l

the vanished days of the shanty on

ut their own lives

quiet shelter where she ruled. It would be a joy to go marketing, it would be a delight

red pleasing details to consider-where to place furniture, what to buy, whether to hav

em, and the old-fashioned stove which stood in the center and sprouted up a pipe nearly to the ceiling and then at right angles into the wall was made red-hot with wood and coal

this a slum,"

t to two people prepared to plunge into dirt, danger, and disease.... Later Joe learned that some of the city's magazine writers had settled in the district on purpos

long time. They lay awake tingling with a strange happiness, a fine freedom, a freshness of re-created life. Only to the pioneer comes this thrill of a new-made Eden, only to those who tear themselves fro

with tremendous purpose the little human creature in the vastness, that somehow expresses itself and heightens and changes itself in human lives and all the dreams and doings of men. Joe felt that life, thrilling to it, opening his heart to it, letting it surcharge and overflow his being with strength and joy. And he knew then that he lay as in a warm nest of the toilers and the poor, that crowded all about him in every direction were slee

hty labors and mingled joys. He felt great strength; he felt equal to his purposes; he was sure he could help in the advancing processes.... Even as he was par

ght he yearned for her, hungered through all his being. She ha

know nothing of the crisis you speak of. I know that "ye have the poor always with you," I know that there is much suffering in the world-I have suffered myself-but I cannot see that living among the poor is going to help vitally. Should we not all live on the highest level possible? Level up instead of leveling down. Ignorance, dirt, and sickness do not attract me ... and now here among the hills the terrible city seems like a fading nightmare. It would

ur

Y

y-that the clothes she wore, the food she ate, the books she studied, the letter she wrote him, even down to ink, pen, and paper, the education and advantages she enjoyed, were all wrought in the mills, the mines, the offices

on; she was giving him up; she was loosening her hold over him; she was nobly sacrificing her love to his life-work. An

would thrill with a new comprehension, a new awakening.... In a world so mysterious, in an existence so strange, s

aping about him and within him to bear his life through strange ways and among strange people. His theories, so easy as he drank them out of books, were to