g."

"We look at these people from different points of view, I fear."
And after a moment he said: "But, doctor, I wanted to ask you about
Gretchen. You see her?"

"Occasionally. She works too many hours, but she seems to be getting on
very well, and brings her mother all she earns."

"Do you think she is able to stand alone?"

Dr. Leigh winced a little at this searching question, for no one knew
better than she the vulgarizing influence of street life and chance
associations upon a young girl, and the temptations. She was even forced
to admit the value in the way of restraint, as a sort of police force,
of the church and priestly influence, especially upon girls at the
susceptible age. But she knew that Father Damon meant something more
than this, and so she answered:

"But people have got to stand alone. She might as well begin."

"But she is so young."

"Yes, I know. She is in the way of temptation, but so long as she works
industriously, and loves her mother, and feels the obligation, which the
poor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not
in so much moral danger as other girls of her age who lead idle and
self-indulgent lives. The working-girls of the city learn to protect
themselves."

"And you think this is enough, without any sort of religion--that this
East Side can go on without any spiritual life?"

Ruth Leigh made a gesture of impatience. In view of the actual struggle
for existence she saw around her, this talk seemed like cant. And she
said:

"I don't know that anything can go on. Let me ask you a question, Father
Damon. Do you think there is any more spirituality, any more of the
essentials of what you call Christianity, in the society of the other
side than there is on the East Side?"

"It is a deep question, this of spirituality," replied Father Damon, who
was in the depths of his proselyting action a democrat and in sympathy
with the people, and rated quite at its full value the conventional
fashion in religion. "I shouldn't like to judge, but there is a great
body of Christian men and women in this city who are doing noble work."

"Yes," replied the little doctor, bitterly, "trying to save themselves.
How many are trying to save others--others except the distant and
foreign sinners?"

"You surely cannot ignore," replied the father, still speaking mildly,
"the immense amount of charitable work done by the churches!"

"Yes, I know; charity, charity, the condescens