It had been known that Carpenter was to honor this house with his presence, and the family were all dressed in their best, and had got together a supper, in spite of hard times and strikes.  We had sandwiches and iced tea and a slice of pie for each of us, and I was interested to observe that the prophet, tired as he was, liked to laugh and chat over his food, exactly like any uninspired human being.  He never failed to get the children around him and tell them stories, and hear their bright laughter.

XLI

But, of course, serious things kept intruding.  Karlin the express driver, had a sick wife, and Carpenter heard about her and insisted upon going to see her.  Apparently there was no end to this business of the poor being sick.  It was a new thing to me—­this world swarming with dirty and miserable and distracted people.  Of course, I had known about “the poor,” but always either in the abstract, or else as an individual, or a family, that one could help.  But here was a new world, thickly peopled, swarming; that was the terrible part of it—­the vastness of it, the thickness of the population in these regions of “the poor.”  It was like some sort of delirium; like being lost in a wilderness, of which the trees were miseries, and deformities, and pains!  I could understand to the full Carpenter’s feeling when he put his hands to his forehead, exclaiming:  “There is so much to do and so few to do it!  Pray to God, that he will send some to help us!”

When he returned from Simon Karlin’s, he brought with him the latter’s wife, whom he had healed of a fever; and here was another of the company whom he insisted upon helping—­“Comrade” Abell, one of the men I had noticed at the meeting last night, and who appeared to be done up.  This man, I learned, was secretary of the Socialist local of Western City.  I had known there were Socialists in the city, just as I knew there were poor, but I had never seen one, and was curious about Abell.  He was a lawyer; and that might suggest to you a pertain type of person, brisk and well dressed—­but apparently Socialist lawyers are not true to type.  Comrade Abell was a shy, timid little man, with black hair straggling about his ears, and sometimes into his eyes.  He had a gentle, pathetic face, and his voice was melancholy and caressing.  He was clad in a frock coat of black broadcloth, which had once been appropriate for Sunday; but I should judge it had been worn for twenty years, for it was green about the collar and the cuffs and button-holes.

Comrade Abell’s office and also his home were in a second story, over a grocery-store in this neighborhood, and here also was a little hall used as a meeting-place by the Socialists.  Every Saturday night Abell and two or three of his friends conducted a soap-box meeting on Western City Street, and gave away propaganda leaflets and sold a few pamphlets and books.  He had had quite a supply of literature of all kinds