CHAPTER III
The Altruist was terribly in earnest. He considered our social system all wrong, and he wrote and lectured and preached about it constantly.
He lived in one of the city slums.
The morning after my arrival I went down to the East End to ask him about his work. I had heard much about him. He had left a home of great beauty to go to that sin-stricken corner of the city, and the fame of his sacrifice had spread abroad.
I found him nailing a board to the steps of the tenement-house where he lived. He greeted me cordially, holding out a small, shapely right hand in welcome.
The house stood in a row of tall tenements, near the terminus of an elevated road. All round it the streets were swarming with children, Russian and Jewish children, dirty, ragged, and forlorn. Some of them were kicking dirt toward the Altruist’s clean steps; others were eyeing him with respectful curiosity.
“What do you do down here? How can you help?” I asked when the Altruist had seated me in his study. It was in the rear of the building, on the ground floor, and it looked out into a densely populated court.
“Do? Oh, very little actual work. I just live, for the most part,” he answered, smiling.
He still held in his hand the hammer with which he had been working. I watched him closely, as he sat in the rough wooden chair in the bare, uncarpeted room.
He was a small man, with vivid blue eyes and dark hair. There was a touch of excitement in his manner, and I thought I detected in his face a certain dramatic interest in the situation.