He talked to her of the pressure of the
struggle for existence, of the poverty that lies like a blight
over whole sections of cities, spreading disease and cruelty and
disorder, crushing the souls of its victims, poisoning their
hearts and bodies. He showed her a world at odds and ends, in
which it was accepted as the natural thing that some should starve
while others were waited upon by servants.
He made her see how the tendency of environment is to reduce all
things to a question of selfinterest, and how the great triumphant
fact of life is that love and kindness persist. Her interest was
insatiable. She poured questions upon him, made him tell her
stories of the things he had seen in that strange underworld that
was farther from her than Asia. So she learned of Oscar Marchant,
coughing all day over the shoes he half-soled and going out at
night to give his waning life to the service of those who needed
him. He told her--without giving names--the story of Sam Miller
and his wife, of shop girls forced by grinding poverty to that
easier way which leads to death, of little children driven by want
into factories which crushed the youth out of them.
Her eyes with the star flash in them never left his face.
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