“I live quietly in my rooms here,” he continued. It was hard to hear his voice above the noise of the court and the roar of the elevated trains. “There is no organized work that I am attempting. I have even given up my church, in order that no machinery may interfere with my purely human relation to my neighbours. I am trying simply to lead a normal life among my brethren. I study; I make calls and receive them. There is nothing extraordinary in the situation. I merely choose my friends, and choose them here, instead of up-town.”
I glanced at the hammer that the Altruist’s hands were clasping nervously. A look of exultation crept into his eyes.
“Yes, I repair the doorstep,” he said. “That I do not do up-town. But somebody has to do it here. I am willing to do anything that will convince my friends here of my desire for good-fellowship.”
The pathos of this unasked service touched me. It was full of the everlasting irony of zeal; the queer achievement mocked the great design.
“But do you not feel a little at a loss,” I asked, “as to what to do next?”
“Does one feel at a loss in De Ruyter or in Endicott Square?” demanded the Altruist, defiantly.
“I have come down here because I have seen great misery,—misery of poverty, misery of sin. I have cast in my lot with the victims of our civilization. The awful condition of these people is the result not only of their transgression of the laws of God, but also of our transgression of the law of Christ. Our whole social and industrial systems are built up on the law of competition, the law of beasts, by which the greedier and stronger snatch the portion of the weak.”
The Altruist had clasped his hands over the end of the upright hammer, and was leaning his chin against them. His voice had taken a high key, and it sounded as if it came from a long way off.
“These people are weak, and are trodden under foot. They are trodden under our feet, and their blood is on our garments.”
He spoke solemnly, and his eyes gleamed with the look of inspiration that the world’s fanatics share with the world’s saints.