He turned to meet a smiling, straw-haired youth, who shook his hand, and relieved him of his suitcase. “I’m right? Helen gave me a good description, and I was sure it was you! My name is Blake—Will Blake. Well, how’s Port Royal? And my friend Hastings of the Record? And Judge Beecher and Rabbi Nathan, Dr. Truesdale and the rest of ’em? I know Port Royal quite well, I’ve lectured there so much. And Helen tells me you’re the reporter that gave our series such good stories.”
Felix bewilderedly recognized this affable youth as the university instructor whose lectures in the extension series on sociological problems he had attended and reported; and he realized that between Port Royal and Chicago, so remote in his imagination, there were at least some few human links. Even so, this struck him as being in the nature of a remarkable coincidence.
Meanwhile, Felix had been escorted to a street-car. It was dusk, and the streets were crowded. But Blake’s friendly questioning served to distract his attention from the bewildering hugeness of the city. With but the slightest opportunity for feeling his individual insignificance against this new background of rushing, roaring life, he was talked half way across Chicago to a place where, at an intersection of busy and dirty little streets, rose a gracious and homelike building. “This is Community House,” said Blake. “I’ll take you right up to your room, and you can meet the Head and the residents at dinner.”
Left alone in the room—where, as his escort had casually assured him, he was to stay until he had made other plans—Felix strove to regain his sense of the verities.
He knew already of the existence, and the purposes, of Community House. It was one of those institutions which he had discussed, knowingly and scornfully, in the Socialist local back in Port Royal—it was one of the “bourgeois-idealistic” attempts to obscure, by means of a futile benevolence, the class-struggle between the rich and the poor....
His actual feeling, however, was one of gratitude toward the cheerful shelter of this little room. He went to the window. It was strangely exhilarating to look out over the smoke and grime of this tumble of roofs, from the window of a room so instantly and pleasantly his own.
He had a curious feeling of ease and security—a feeling which he strove to repress....
Secure, and at ease—that seemed indeed a foolish way for one to feel who was about to commence the grim battle of life in Chicago!