moment, holding to the realization that their labors were of vital worth.  Under their administration communities passed from shameless misery to self-respect; as the result of their generosity, courts were sustained in which little children could make their plea and wretched wives could have justice.  Servants, wantons, outcasts, the insane, the morally ill, all were given consideration in this new religion of compassion.  It was amazing to Kate to see light come to dull eyes—­eyes which had hitherto been lit only with the fires of hate.  As she walked the gray streets in the performance of her tasks, weary and bewildered though she often was, she was sustained by the new discovery of that ancient truth that nothing human can be foreign to the person of good will.  Neither dirt nor hate, distrust, fear, nor deceit should be permitted to blind her to the essential similarity of all who were “bound together in the bundle of life.”

It was not surprising that at this time she should begin writing short articles for the women’s magazines on the subjects which presented themselves to her in her daily work.  Her brief, spontaneous, friendly articles, full of meat and free from the taint of bookishness, won favor from the first.  She soon found her evenings occupied with her somewhat matter-of-fact literary labors.  But this work was of such a different character from that which occupied her in the daytime that so far from fatiguing her it gave an added zest to her days.

She was not fond of idle evenings.  Sitting alone meant thinking, and thought meant an unconquerable homesickness for that lonely man back in Silvertree from whom she had parted peremptorily, and toward whom she dared not make any overtures.  Sometimes she sent him an article clipped from the magazines or newspapers dealing with some scientific subject, and once she mailed him a number of little photographs which she had taken with her own camera and which might reveal to him, if he were inclined to follow their suggestions, something of the life in which she was engaged.  But no recognition of these wordless messages came from him.  He had been unable to forgive her, and she beat down the question that would arise as to whether she also had been at fault.  She was under the necessity of justifying herself if she would be happy.  It was only after many months had passed that she learned how a heavy burden may become light by the confession of a fault.

Meantime, she was up early each morning; she breakfasted with the most alert residents of the Caravansary; then she took the street-car to South Chicago and reported at a dismal office.  Here the telephone served to put her into communication with her superior at Settlement House.  She reported what she had done the day before (though, to be sure, a written report was already on its way), she asked advice, she talked over ways and means.  Then she started upon her daily rounds.  These might carry her to any one of half a dozen suburbs or to the Court of Domestic Relations, or over on the West Side of the city to the Juvenile Court.  She appeared almost daily before some police magistrate, and not long after her position was assumed, she was called upon to give evidence before the grand jury.