m retreat to his shack among the tall weeds. I heard the door
close. I fancied him lie down in a heap in the corner and go to sleep.
He was a better philosopher than I was, and he had called me a coward,
but he had not altered my determination. I began to sweat. It was like
the action of a fever on my body, and I became very nervous; but I was
determined to meet the crisis, and go.

A sudden change in affairs was created by an unearthly scream--the
scream of a woman. I looked around suddenly and discovered that the
only two-story shack on "the bottoms" was in a blaze, and the thought
occurred to me that I might be of some help and accomplish my purpose
at the same time.

In a moment I was beside the burning hut. It appeared that a lamp had
exploded upstairs, and that three small children were hemmed in. That
was the cause of the scream.

A plank that reached to the upstairs window was lying at the wood
pile. I pushed it against the house and climbed like a cat into the
burning bedroom. By this time the neighbours had collected, and I
helped the woman and lowered the three children down, one by one, and
then deliberately groped for the stairs to get hemmed in, the smoke
suffocating me as I did so. By the time I found the stairs, my hair
was singed, my arms were burned, but I was gradually losing
consciousness, and before I reached the bottom I fell, suffocated with
the smoke. In that last moment of consciousness, my whole life came up
in review. I had no regrets. I had played a part and it was over.

When I came out of coma, I was lying on my cot in the hut, the
neighbours crowding my little bedroom and standing outside in scores.
One of the newspapers that had most severely criticized my
interference in politics, gave me a pass to Colorado and return--and
in the mountains of Colorado, the door of my soul opened again, and I
saw the world beautiful--and opportunities that were golden for
helpfulness and service awaiting my touch. So I returned to my hut
with the sense of God more fully developed in me than it had ever
been.

They had a system in that city that I was very much ashamed of--that I
thought all men ought to be ashamed of--the segregation of the "social
evil." I discovered that the city fined these poor creatures of the
streets, and that these fines, amounting to thousands of dollars every
year, went straight into the public school fund, so that it could
truly be said that the more debauched society was,