ire of faith!

Meantime, Ruth Leigh went on her round. One day was like another, except
that every day the kaleidoscope of misery showed new combinations,
new phases of suffering and incompetence, and there was always a fresh
interest in that. For years now this had been her life, in the chill of
winter and the heat of summer, without rest or vacation. The amusements,
the social duties, the allurements of dress and society, that so much
occupied the thoughts of other women, did not seem to come into her
life. For books she had little time, except the books of her specialty.
The most exciting novels were pale compared with her daily experiences
of real life. Almost her only recreation was a meeting of the
working-girls, a session of her labor lodge, or an assembly at the
Cooper Union, where some fiery orator, perhaps a priest, or a clever
agitator, a working-man glib of speech, who had a mass of statistics at
the end of his tongue, who read and discussed, in some private club of
zealots of humanity, metaphysics, psychology, and was familiar with the
whole literature of labor and socialism, awoke the enthusiasm of the
discontented or the unemployed, and where men and women, in clear but
homely speech, told their individual experiences of wrong and injustice.
There was evidence in all these demonstrations and organizations that
the world was moving, and that the old order must change.

Years and years the little woman had gone on with her work, and she
frankly confessed to Edith, one day when they were together going her
rounds, that she could see no result from it all. The problem of poverty
and helplessness and incapacity seemed to her more hopeless than when
she began. There might be a little enlightenment here and there, but
there was certainly not less misery. The state of things was worse than
she thought at first; but one thing cheered her: the people were better
than she thought. They might be dull and suspicious in the mass, but she
found so much patience, unselfishness, so many people of good hearts and
warm affections.

"They are the people," she said, "I should choose for friends. They are
natural, unsophisticated. And do you know," she went on, "that what most
surprises me is the number of reading, thoughtful people among those
who do manual labor. I doubt if on your side of town the best books, the
real fundamental and abstruse books, are so read and discussed, or the
philosophy of life is so seriously cons