sehood, if it was a falsehood, or the partial truth, if it
was a twisted truth, full as poisonous as if it had been true
throughout. Also, if the thing were not true, how came it that
everyone in practical life believed it to be so--how came it
that everyone who talked in praise of honesty and virtue
looked, as he talked, as if he were canting and half expected
to be laughed at?

All about her as badly off as she, or worse off. Yet none so
unhappy as she--not even the worse off. In fact, the worse off
as the better off were not so deeply wretched. Because they
had never in all their lives known the decencies of life clean
lodgings, clean clothing, food fit to eat, leisure and the
means of enjoying leisure. And Susan had known all these
things. When she realized why her companions in misery, so
feeble in self-restraint, were able to endure patiently and for
the most part even cheerfully, how careful she was never to say
or to suggest anything that might put ideas of what life might
be, of what it was for the comfortable few, into the minds of
these girls who never had known and could only be made wretched
by knowing! How fortunate for them, she thought, that they had
gone to schools where they met only their own kind! How
fortunate that the devouring monster of industry had snatched
them away from school before their minds had been awakened to
the realities of life! How fortunate that their imaginations
were too dull and too heavy to be touched by the sights of
luxury they saw in the streets or by what they read in the
newspapers and in the cheap novels! To them, as she soon
realized, their world seemed the only world, and the world that
lived in comfort seemed a vague unreality, as must seem
whatever does not come into our own experience.

One lunch hour an apostle of discontent preaching some kind of
politics or other held forth on the corner above the shop.
Susan paused to listen. She had heard only a few words when
she was incensed to the depths of her heart against him. He
ought to be stopped by the police, this scoundrel trying to
make these people unhappy by awakening them to the misery and
degradation of their lot! He looked like an honest, earnest
man. No doubt he fancied that he was in some way doing good.
These people who were always trying to do the poor good--they
ought all to be suppressed! If someone could tell them how to
cease to be poor, that would indeed be good. But such a thing