“I don't suppose you can go into detail just now,” she added, noting young Ried's hesitation and embarrassment; “but I was wondering if you could give me some general idea of what she wanted to do, or thought could be done.”
“There were a great many things that she wanted to do, and I believe she thought they could be done; but I don't think she knew the world very well,” said this aged cynic. “She judged everybody from the standpoint of her own unselfishness. I remember she was not in sympathy with soup-houses, and dinner-tickets, and great public charities of that sort. Or, I don't know that I should say she was not in sympathy with them. I mean, rather, that those would not have been her ways of working. She was thinking of young people, and to give them a dinner now and then, she would not have considered a very great step toward elevating them morally and spiritually. Mrs. Roberts, it was just that which she wanted to do,—lift them up. She thought there could be invented ways of reaching them, so that they would want helping, want teaching,—crave it, I mean; and she thought that Christian homes of wealth and culture could be opened to them, and they gradually toled in,—made to feel on a level with others, in the social scale; in short, she believed that instead of people going down to them in a condescending spirit, they could be drawn up to the level of others, so that they would realize their manhood, and be led to make earnest efforts to take their rightful places in the world. I know I am bungling dreadfully; I don't know how to tell you her plans, only that they were splendid. But I am afraid the world will have to be made over, before they can be carried out.”
“Perhaps so. Christ is at work making the world over, you know.” The lady before him, whose eyes never for an instant moved from his face, spoke with exceeding sweetness and gravity. Neither by word nor glance did she give him to understand that she thought his schemes wild. “But I find that, after all, I want details. I catch a glimpse of the grandness of your sister's meaning. What were some of the steps,—the little steps, such as you and I could take, toward accomplishing? Yet, even while I ask the question, I see something of what the answer must be. 'Christian homes opening to receive them!' That is a new thought to me, and in the plural number I do not see how just now, it could be done, but one Christian home,—I ought to be able to manage that. Mr. Ried, that is the way to begin it, you may depend. Indeed, I suppose you have tried it? The city is full of boys, and many of them are away down. Since we cannot reach all of them this week, we must try to reach seven; and failing in that, suppose we say one? For which one have you been working? Just who, at this moment, specially interests you? I hope it is one of my boys, because, you see, they appeal to me, just now, as no others can. Which is it, Mr. Ried? and what have you tried to do for him? and to what extent have you succeeded?”
There were never any hotter cheeks than young Ried's just at that moment. This was the most extraordinary person with whom he had ever talked. It was impossible to generalize with her. Not that he wanted to generalize; on the contrary, he at once saw the possibilities growing out of individual effort, and caught at the idea of undertaking something. But the question was, Why had he not thought of it before? One person to reach after, and try for!—surely, he might have attempted it, instead of trying to carry the hundreds that he stumbled against, and so accomplish nothing for any of them. It was humiliating, the confession that he had to make:—
“Indeed, Mrs. Roberts, I have not one in mind. If you asked me what one hundred I was most anxious about, I might possibly be able to answer; but I see that there has been no individuality about it, unless, perhaps, the half-dozen or more boys who compose that class are taking a little stronger hold on me than any of the others; but even for them I have tried to do nothing, unless two or three attempts to secure a permanent teacher for them—which have ended in failure—may count for effort. I don't blame myself as much as I might, because, now that you suggest personal work to me, I realize that there is nothing for one situated as I am to do. I have no Christian home at my command.”
“Ah, but we are to come down to very small numbers, you know,—to fractions, if need be. You have a piece of Christian home at command, I trust?”
But he looked at her inquiringly, and she explained:—
“Why, you have the privacy of your own room, which is, of course, your corner of home just now, and it is a Christian corner. Is there not room in it sometimes for two?”
He smiled faintly over that.
“Mrs. Roberts, there is one thing with which you evidently are not familiar, and that is the corner which a poor clerk in the city has to call home. Mine is the fourth story back of a fourth-rate boarding-house, where the thermometer drops often below the freezing-point, and this place I share with as uncongenial a fellow as ever breathed. What would you think of labelling such accommodations 'home?' and what can I do in it for others?”