ecrets of where and how to buy cheaply. Sometimes
advantage was taken of these hints, but more often not. They didn't
pay much more for many articles than she did but they didn't get as
good quality. However as long as the food tasted good and satisfied
their hunger you couldn't make them take an extra effort and get stuff
because it was more nutritious or more healthful. They couldn't think
ahead except in the matter of saving dollars and cents.

These people of course were of the lower class. There was another
element of decidedly finer quality. Giuseppe for example was one of
these and there were hundreds of others. It was among these that
Ruth's influence counted for the most. They not only took advantage of
her superior intelligence in conducting their households but they
breathed in something of the soul of her. When I saw them send for her
in their grief and in their joy, when I heard them ask her advice
with almost the confidence with which they prayed, when I heard them
give her such names as "the angel mother," "the blessed American
saint," I felt very proud and very humble. Such things made me glad in
another way for the change which had taken her out of the old life
where such qualities were lost and brought her down here where they
counted for so much. These people stripped of convention live with
their hearts very near the surface. They don't try to conceal their
emotions and so you are brought very quickly into close touch with
them. Ruth herself was a good deal like that and so her influence for
a day among them counted for as much as a year with the old crowd.

In the meanwhile I resumed my night school at the end of the summer
vacation and was glad to get back to it. I had missed the work and
went at it this next winter with increased eagerness to perfect myself
in my trade.

During this second year, too, I never relaxed my efforts to keep my
gang up to standard and whenever possible to better it by the addition
of new men. Every month I thought I increased the respect of the men
for me by my fair dealing with them. I don't mean to say I fully
realized the expectations of which I had dreamed. I suppose that at
first I dreamed a bit wildly. There was very little sentiment in the
relation of the men to me, although there was some. Still I don't want
to give the impression that I made of them a gang of blind personal
followers such as some religious cranks get together. It was necessary
to make them se