erest in all her charity cases. They would
often talk them over at night, and in his easy careless way he would
turn over all his spare money to help in the work. Eleanore would
protest at times, and tell him how utterly foolish he was in not putting
money aside for himself. But soon, deep in another case of poignant
human misery, she would throw all caution to the winds and use her
father's money--every dollar he could spare. That was another vice she
had.

How she hated all the red tape in that huge network of institutions by
which New York City provides "relief." She never dropped a case of hers
into that cumbrous relief machine and then let it slip out of her sight.
She did the hard thing, she followed it up. She had learned, as I had in
my work, to "get on the inside" of this secretive city, to go to the
gods behind it all and so have her cases shoved. One day when one of
them, a woman, was in a hospital so desperately ill that her very life
depended on being moved to a private room--"It can't be done," said the
superintendent. Eleanore took the subway downtown to the Wall Street
office of the man who was the hospital's principal backer. She found
his outer office crowded with men who were waiting to see him on
business. "He can't see you," she was told. Then she scribbled this on
her card:

"I want none of your money, a little of your influence and one minute of
your time on behalf of a woman who is dying."

About twenty minutes later that woman was in a private room.

It is hard to stop talking about my wife. But to return to my sister:

* * * * *

Into my reverie that night Sue burst with a dozen radical friends.
Others kept arriving, and our small rooms were soon a riot of color and
chatter. Banners were stacked against the wall, bright yellow ribbons
were everywhere, faces were flushed and happily tired. Eleanore sat at
her coffee urn, cups and saucers and plates went around, and people
still too excited to rest stood about eating hungrily. The talking was
fast and furious now. I listened, watched their faces.

These "radicals," it seemed to me, had talked straight on both day and
night ever since the evenings years ago when one of their earliest
coteries had gathered in our Brooklyn home. And talking they had
multiplied and ramified all over the town. There was nothing under
heaven their fingers did not itch to change. Here close by my side were
three of them, two would-