appeal to them. For one
thing they are suspicious and for another they don't like to spend any
more than they have to day by day. Later on through Ruth's influence
we carried our scheme a little farther with just the people in the
house and bought flour and sugar that way but it was made possible
only through their absolute trust in her. We always insisted on
carrying out every such little operation on a cash basis and they
never failed us.

Ruth's influence had been gradually spreading through the
neighborhood. She had found time to meet the other families in the
house and through them had met a dozen more. The first floor was
occupied by Michele, an Italian laborer, his wife, his wife's sister
and two children. On the second floor there was Giuseppe, the young
sculptor, and his father and mother. The father was an invalid and the
lad supported the three. On the third floor lived a fruit peddler, his
wife and his wife's mother--rather a commonplace family, while the
fourth floor was occupied by Pietro, a young fellow who sold cut
flowers on the street and hoped some day to have a garden of his own.
He had two children and a grandmother to care for.

It certainly afforded a contrast to visit those other flats and then
Ruth's. Right here is where her superior intelligence came in, of
course. The foreign-born women do not so quickly adapt themselves to
the standards of this country as the men do. Most of them as I
learned, come from the country districts of Italy where they live very
rudely. Once here they make their new quarters little better than
their old. The younger ones however who are going to school are doing
better. But taken by and large it was difficult to persuade them that
cleanliness offered any especial advantages. It wasn't as though they
minded the dirt and were chained to it by circumstances from which
they couldn't escape--as I used to think. They simply didn't object to
it. So long as they were warm and had food enough they were content.
They didn't suffer in any way that they themselves could see.

But when Ruth first went into their quarters she was horrified. She
thought that at length she was face to face with all the misery and
squalor of the slums of which she had read. I remember her chalk-white
face as she met me at the door upon my return home one night. She
nearly drove the color out of my own cheeks for I thought surely that
something had happened to the boy. But it wasn't that; she had h