I found Wolffert sitting up in a chair, but looking wretchedly ill. He, however, declared himself much better. I learned afterward—though not from him—that he had caught some disease while investigating some wretched kennels known as "lodging houses," where colonies of Jews were packed like herrings in a barrel; and for which a larger percentage on the value was charged as rental than for the best dwellings in the city. His own little room was small and mean enough, but it was comfortably if plainly furnished, and there were books about, which always give a homelike air, and on a little table a large bunch of violets which instantly caught my eye. By some inexplicable sixth sense I divined that they had come from Eleanor Leigh; but I tried to be decent enough not to be jealous; and Wolffert's manifest pleasure at seeing me made me feel humble.
We had fallen to talking of his work when I said, "Wolffert, why do you live in this horrible quarter? No wonder you get ill. Why don't you get a room in a more decent part of the town—near where John Marvel lives, for instance?"
Wolffert smiled.
"Why?—what is the matter with this?"
"Oh! Why, it is dreadful. Why, it's the dirtiest, meanest, lowest quarter of the city! I never saw such a place. It's full of stinking"—I was going to say "Jews"; but reflected in time to substitute "holes."
Wolffert, I saw, supplied the omitted objection.
"Do you imagine I would live among the rich?" he demanded; "I thought you knew me better. I don't want to be fattened in the dark like a Strasbourg goose for my liver to make food acceptable to their jaded appetites. Better be a pig at once."
"No, but there are other places than this—and I should think your soul would revolt at this—" I swung my arm in a half circle.
"Are they not my brethren?" he said, half smiling.
"Well, admit that they are—" (And I knew all along that this was the reason.) "There are other grades—brethren of nearer degree."