onscious that
he was holding up a dill pickle), he worked through one of his most
thrilling periods.

Yes, I laughed, and yet there was so brave a simplicity about this odd,
absurd little man that what I laughed at was only his outward appearance
(and that he himself had no care for), and all the time I felt a growing
respect and admiration for him. He was not only sincere, but he was
genuinely simple--a much higher virtue, as Fenelon says. For while
sincere people do not aim at appearing anything but what they are,
they are always in fear of passing for something they are not. They are
forever thinking about themselves, weighing all their words and thoughts
and dwelling upon what they have done, in the fear of having done
too much or too little, whereas simplicity, as Fenelon says, is an
uprightness of soul which has ceased wholly to dwell upon itself or its
actions. Thus there are plenty of sincere folk in the world but few who
are simple.

Well, the longer he talked, the less interested I was in what he said
and the more fascinated I became in what he was. I felt a wistful
interest in him: and I wanted to know what way he took to purge himself
of himself. I think if I had been in that group nineteen hundred years
ago, which surrounded the beggar who was born blind, but whose anointed
eyes now looked out upon glories of the world, I should have been among
the questioners:

"What did he to thee? How opened he thine eyes?"

I tried ineffectually several times to break the swift current of his
oratory and finally succeeded (when he paused a moment to finish off a
bit of pie crust).

"You must have seen some hard experiences in your life," I said.

"That I have," responded Bill Hahn, "the capitalistic system--"

"Did you ever work in the mills yourself?" I interrupted hastily.

"Boy and man," said Bill Hahn, "I worked in that hell for thirty-two
years--The class-conscious proletariat have only to exert themselves--"

"And your wife, did she work too--and your sons and daughters?"

A spasm of pain crossed his face.

"My daughter?" he said. "They killed her in the mills."

It was appalling--the dead level of the tone in which he uttered those
words--the monotone of an emotion long ago burned out, and yet leaving
frightful scars.

"My friend!" I exclaimed, and I could not help laying my hand on his
arm.

I had the feeling I often have with troubled children--an indescribable
pity that they have had to pass