... Don't you think we shall find a
common meeting-place some day, where these two will cancel out?... when
reality will touch hands with the poet's ideal--

"And the stranger hath seen in the stranger his brother at last,
And his sister in eyes that were strange..."

The slum doctor paused. The confused appearance was gone from his face;
he looked now introspective, quite without consciousness of himself;
rather like a man listening with somewhat dreamy approbation to the
words of another. And Cally, having felt her antagonism mysteriously
slipping away from the moment her eyes rested upon his face, now knew,
quite suddenly and definitely, that she wasn't going to speak to him
about the articles.

The knowledge, the whole matter, was curiously disturbing to her. Where
was the hostile hardness of the religious fellow, justifying distrust
and dislike? Why should her father's attacker make her think now, of all
times, of that night in Hen's parlor, the morning on Mr. Beirne's
doorstep, that rainy May-day in his Dabney House when he had overwhelmed
her with the knowledge of his superiority?...

"And--and--I think women should be especially interested in all that
makes for a new common freedom," observed the youthful speaker, "for
they have suffered somewhat in that way--haven't they?... [Applause, led
by Miss Cooney.] You know the processes of history--how men, first of
all by superior muscle, have made it a man's world.... Till to-day,
large groups of women find themselves cribbed and cabined to a single
pursuit, marriage: surely the noblest of all callings, but--perhaps you
will agree with me--the meanest of all professions. I, for one, am glad
to see women revolting from this condition, asking something truer,
something commoner, than chivalry. For that, I say, steps the march to
the great goal, a boundless commonwealth, a universal republic of the
human spirit. It seems to me we need to socialize, not industry, but the
heart of Man to his brother. Rich and poor, men and women--God, I am
sure of it, meant us all to be citizens of the world...."

A certain self-consciousness seemed here to descend upon the tall
orator. He ceased abruptly, and disappeared from the platform, having
neglected to make his bow to the chairman.

Then the moment's dead silence was suddenly exploded with a burst of
clapping, quite as hearty as Mr. Pond had received, and really something
like the "storm" we read about. And in the