How can I ask you to go into the peril, the dirt, and disease of this struggle?  And how can I refrain from going in myself?  Let me see you once more.  Do not deny me that.  And understand that through life my love will follow you ... a love greatened, I trust, by what little I do in the great cause....

  Ever yours, JOE

He waited for an answer and none came, and he felt during those days that the life was being dragged out of him.  Feverishly then he buried himself in his tasks and his books, he went on cramming himself with theories until he reached the bursting-point and wanted to go out on fire with mission, almost a fanatic, an Isaiah to shake the city with invective and prophesy change.  What could he do to spread the tidings, the news?  The time had come to find an outlet for the overbearing flood within him.  And then one evening in the Park like a flash came the plan.  He must go among the poor, he must get to know them—­not in this neighborhood, “a prophet is not without honor, etc.”—­but in some new place where he was unknown.  He thought of Greenwich Village.  Did not Fannie Lemick tell him that Sally Heffer lived in Greenwich Village?  Well, he would look into the matter.  He was a printer; why not then print a little weekly newspaper directly for the toilers, for his neighbors?  He could tell all that way, pour out his enlightenment, stir them, stand by them, take part in their activities, their troubles and their strikes and lead them forth to a new life.  He was sure they were ripe for the facts, powder awaiting the spark; he would go down among them and make his paper the center of their disorganized life.

The more he thought of the plan the more it thrilled him.  What was greater than the power of the press?  What more direct?  He was done with palliatives, finding men jobs, giving Christmas turkeys, paying for coal.  What the people needed was education so that they could get justice—­all else would follow.

But even at that perfervid period of his life Joe was saved from being a John Brown by his sense of humor.  This was the imp in him that always poked a little doubt into his heart and laughed at his ignorance and innocence.  By next morning Joe was smiling at himself.  Nevertheless, he was driven ahead.

He called for Marty Briggs and they went to lunch together.  Third Avenue lay naked to the rain, which swept forward in silvery gusts, dripping, dripping from the elevated structure, and the pattering liquid sound had a fresh mellow music.  Here and there a man or woman, mush-roomed by an umbrella, dashed quickly for a car, and the trolleys, gray and crowded, seemed to duck hurriedly under the downpour.  The faces of Joe and Marty were fresh-washed and spattering drops; they laughed together as they walked.