The other residents came in; several more guests arrived, and the Altruist, who had been unusually silent for the last fifteen minutes, became the centre of a group of listeners.
One of the callers was a Salvation Army captain, whose regiment was passing through the city. One was a street-car driver. He had half an hour off, and had come to ask the time of a lecture to be given that night. Mrs. Milligan, the washerwoman who lived next door, ran in with her youngest boy. Then came a lady from Endicott Square, in a superb Parisian gown.
We conversed most amicably in the intervals of the music. When this was over, a domestic appeared with a tray, and the literary man made tea.
Before I left I had a few more words with the young Socialist.
“There’s no use talking,” he said earnestly. “However little direct practical good we do, there is no doubt that our opportunity is great for investigating. It is obviously better to study the working of economic laws in society itself than in books. I am trying to get acquainted with the working-people, and look at their grievances from their point of view. Socialism has been treated entirely too much from the standpoint of the scholar and the fanatic. I want to work in a more practical way, getting at the new political economy in the making.”
I came away quite willing to allow any number of young men with Ph.D. degrees, and honest enthusiasm, and a saving sense of fun, to live in the slums.
But I did not admit this to the Altruist.
CHAPTER X
After a first visit to the settlement of young women in the West End I found myself going there very often. The gracious friendliness with which I was met attracted me strongly, and I became more and more interested in the social experiment.
This new house was not in the slums. It stood in one of the old city squares, whose aristocratic inhabitants had long ago drifted away, leaving empty rooms for the families of mechanics and poorly paid clerks.