Park like a flash came the plan.
He must go among the poor, he must get to know them--not in this
neighborhood, "a prophet is not without honor, etc."--but in some new
place where he was unknown. He thought of Greenwich Village. Did not
Fannie Lemick tell him that Sally Heffer lived in Greenwich Village?
Well, he would look into the matter. He was a printer; why not then
print a little weekly newspaper directly for the toilers, for his
neighbors? He could tell all that way, pour out his enlightenment, stir
them, stand by them, take part in their activities, their troubles and
their strikes and lead them forth to a new life. He was sure they were
ripe for the facts, powder awaiting the spark; he would go down among
them and make his paper the center of their disorganized life.

The more he thought of the plan the more it thrilled him. What was
greater than the power of the press? What more direct? He was done with
palliatives, finding men jobs, giving Christmas turkeys, paying for
coal. What the people needed was education so that they could get
justice--all else would follow.

But even at that perfervid period of his life Joe was saved from being a
John Brown by his sense of humor. This was the imp in him that always
poked a little doubt into his heart and laughed at his ignorance and
innocence. By next morning Joe was smiling at himself. Nevertheless, he
was driven ahead.

He called for Marty Briggs and they went to lunch together. Third Avenue
lay naked to the rain, which swept forward in silvery gusts, dripping,
dripping from the elevated structure, and the pattering liquid sound had
a fresh mellow music. Here and there a man or woman, mush-roomed by an
umbrella, dashed quickly for a car, and the trolleys, gray and crowded,
seemed to duck hurriedly under the downpour. The faces of Joe and Marty
were fresh-washed and spattering drops; they laughed together as they
walked.

"I've some business to talk over with you," explained Joe, and they
finally went into a little restaurant on Third Avenue. The stuffy little
place, warm and damp with the excluded rain, and odorous with sizzling
lard and steaming coffee and boiling cabbage, was crowded with people,
but Joe and Marty took a little table to themselves in the darkest
corner. They sat against the dirty rear wall, whose white paint was
finger-marked, fly-specked, and food-spotted, and in which a
shelf-aperture furnished the connection with the kitchen. To this hole