"I invited her to lunch, you know," he said. What a liar. Mrs. H. invited them both, the actor and his wife.
I am going to see the Manager. It's settled. I am weary and worn. But I won't go until I have told him all I think of this rotten place.
AT NIGHT
Finished. The whole thing has weighed so heavily on me. All interest in the work has gone. I have seen every form of misery the human mind could imagine. The facts merely repeat themselves. Hunger, degradation, insults, epilepsy. The investigators, the janitor, the policeman and Sam. From morning until night the same thing. I got to be callous. Well, people get trained to tolerate the most deadly poisons.
Thank God, my soul is not lost there. I cannot say that I come out unscathed. Oh, no. But I have retained my soul. Of all the different forms and institutions of charity which have come under my notice this is the worst place. Paris, London and Montreal are nothing to it. Of all the mills, here they grind the finest. I am leaving. Just going to finish the week. And I gave Sam a thrashing. I boxed his ears solidly and felt great pleasure in doing it. But this is not all. I did it in front of the applicants in the waiting room and finished it up thoroughly. Let me tell you how it happened.
About three weeks ago I was sent to investigate a case. Thoroughness was recommended. The address was in Sixty-sixth Street. Just as I entered the block a woman I had met casually at public meetings greeted me and asked whether I would not come up and have a glass of cold water. It was very warm and I did not refuse. I knew the woman but did not know her name and she did not know my present occupation. Great was my astonishment when we entered the very same house to which I was sent. It did not take long before I knew that she was the applicant.
I told her nothing, but inquired how she was getting along since her husband died. She told me that some relatives sent her money to open a grocery store and that a society in which her husband was an active member gave her a few hundred dollars. She intended to peddle with laces and curtains and perfumery. She even showed me a bill from a firm from whom she had bought merchandise to the value of one hundred and fifty dollars to start with. As she spoke her children came in, a girl of about ten and a boy of eleven. The children had never seen me before. They knew some one from the charities was expected. I divined it from their countenances that they expected to be questioned and had been schooled by the mother as to what to answer. I was right. When I asked the boy if he skated well, he answered that he had no skates, though I saw them under the bed. The mother interrupted him: "Sure he skates. He is one of the best skaters in the block. Put them on, Himey." The boy looked at the mother understandingly, as though he would ask, Is this not the one? and the mother repeated with emphasis: "Put them on, Himey." Pride, mother pride, was getting hold of her. "You should see them eat after a run!" I sat in the house a long time and convinced myself that she did not need help from charity. Her life and the life of her children would be wrecked. She had money. Her children go to school all day. She is strong and young. In accepting help from charity she and her children will become pauperised. She will not be able to attend to her business. She will have to do it secretly. All things taken into consideration, she will be the loser. I wanted to tell her all that, explain to her the wrong she is inflicting on herself and her children, that she is selling her soul and the lives of her children to the devil. But I could not open my mouth. I had come as a visitor.