As financial prosperity gradually returned, making the ends meet became easier to Belden. Among his round of note-paper customers he established friendly relations and was able to enlarge his stock of salable articles, and he won the confidence of two large concerns that gave him goods on the instalment plan. At this time the superintendent of the home wrote me:
"I am deeply interested in Peter Belden, for he has been a good, honest, industrious man ever since he came to us. I want to tell you that your kindly efforts are fully appreciated by him. He is earnestly working up in a business way, and all who have anything to do with him as a man have confidence in him."
Belden's interests, too, began to widen and his frequent letters to me at this time are like moving pictures, giving glimpses of interiors of various homes and of contact with all sorts of people—a sympathetic Jewish woman, a brilliant Catholic bishop, a fake magnetic healer and spiritualistic fraud. He even approached the celebrated Dean Hole at the conclusion of a lecture in order to secure the dean's autograph, which he sent me; and he had interesting experiences with various other characters. He was frequently drawn into religious discussions, but firmly held his ground that creeds or lack of creeds were nothing to him so long as one was good and helpful to others. This simple belief was consistent with his course of action. Pity dwelt ever in his heart, and I do not believe that he ever slighted a chance to give the helping hand. He did not forget the prisoners left behind in the penitentiary where he had been confined, sending them magazines and letters, and messages through me. In one of his letters I find this brief incident, so characteristic of the man as I have known him:
"While I was canvassing to-day I saw a poor blind dog— It was a very pitiful sight. He would go here a little and there a little, moving backward and forward. The poor thing did not know where he was, for he was blind as could be, and not only blind but lame also. Something struck me when I saw him; I said to myself, 'I am crippled but I might be like this poor dog some day; who can tell? I certainly shall do what I can for him.'
"I could not take him home with me but I did the next best thing, for I took him from the pack of boys who began chasing him and gave him to a woman who was looking out of a window evidently interested and sympathetic; she promised to care for him."
In the hundreds of letters written me by Belden I do not find a line of condemnation or even of harsh criticism of any one, although he shares the prejudice common to men of his class against wealthy church-members. Not that he was envious of their possessions, but, knowing too well the cruelty and the moral danger of extreme poverty and ready to spend his last dollar to relieve suffering, he simply could not conceive how it was possible for a follower of Christ to accumulate wealth while sweat-shops and child labor existed.
At this period of Belden's life his knowledge of mathematics afforded him great pleasure, and it brought him into prominence in the newspaper columns given to mathematical puzzles, where "Mr. Belden" was quoted as final authority. Numerous were the newspaper clippings enclosed in his letters to me, and I have before me an autograph note to Belden from the query editor of a prominent paper, in which he says:
"Your solution of the problem is a most ingenious and mathematically learned analysis of the question presented, and highly creditable to your talent."
This recognition of superiority in the realm of his natural gift and passion was precious indeed to Belden, but he was extremely sensitive in regard to his past and avoided contact and acquaintance with those who might be curious about it. And to be known as an inmate of the home was to be known as an ex-convict.