“They are the people,” she said, “I should choose for friends.  They are natural, unsophisticated.  And do you know,” she went on, “that what most surprises me is the number of reading, thoughtful people among those who do manual labor.  I doubt if on your side of town the, best books, the real fundamental and abstruse books, are so read and discussed, or the philosophy of life is so seriously considered, as in certain little circles of what you call the working-classes.”

“Isn’t it all very revolutionary?” asked Edith.

“Perhaps,” replied the doctor, dryly.  “But they have no more fads than other people.  Their theories seem to them not only practical, but they try to apply them to actual legislation; at any rate, they discriminate in vagaries.  You would have been amused the other night in a small circle at the lamentations over a member—­he was a car-driver—­who was the authoritative expositor of Schopenhauer, because he had gone off into Theosophy.  It showed such weakness.”

“I have heard that the members of that circle were Nihilists.”

“The club has not that name, but probably the members would not care to repudiate the title, or deny that they were Nihilists theoretically—­that is, if Nihilism means an absolute social and political overturning in order that something better may be built up.  And, indeed, if you see what a hopeless tangle our present situation is, where else can the mind logically go?”

“It is pitiful enough,” Edith admitted.  “But all this movement you speak of seems to me a vague agitation.”

“I don’t think,” the doctor said, after a moment, “that you appreciate the intellectual force that is in it all, or allow for the fermenting power in the great discontented mass of these radical theories on the problem of life.”

This was a specimen of the sort of talk that Edith and the doctor often drifted into in their mission work.  As Ruth Leigh tramped along late this afternoon in the slush of the streets, from one house of sickness and poverty to another, a sense of her puny efforts in this great mass of suffering and injustice came over her anew.  Her indignation rose against the state of things.  And Father Damon, who was trying to save souls, was he accomplishing anything more than she?  Why had he been so curt with her when she went to him for help this afternoon?  Was he just a narrow-minded, bigoted priest?  A few nights before she had heard him speak on the single tax at a labor meeting.  She recalled his eloquence, his profound sympathy with the cause of the people, the thrilling, pathetic voice, the illumination of his countenance, the authority, the consecration in his attitude and dress; and he was transfigured to her then, as he was now in her thought, into an apostle of humanity.  Alas! she thought, what a leader he would be if he would break loose from his superstitious traditions!

VII