The men who
profited by present conditions were not monsters. They were as
kind of heart as he was, effects of the system just as much as the
little bootblack on the corner. No possible good could come of a
blind hatred of individuals.
His Bohemian instinct sent Jeff ranging far in those days. He made
friends out of the most unlikely material. Some of the most
radical of these were in the habit of gathering informally in his
rooms about once a week. Sometimes the talk was good and pungent.
Much of it was merely wild.
His college friend, Sam Miller, now assistant city librarian, was
one of this little circle. Another was Oscar Marchant, a fragile
little Socialist poet upon whom consumption had laid its grip. He
was not much of a poet, but there burnt in him a passion for
humanity that disease and poverty could not extinguish.
One night James Farnum dropped in to borrow some money from his
cousin and for ten minutes listened to such talk as he had never
heard before. His mind moved among a group of orthodox and
accepted ideas. A new one he always viewed as if it were a
dynamite bomb timed to go off shortly. He was not only suspicious
of it; he was afraid of it.
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