idered, as in certain little
circles of what you call the working-classes."
"Isn't it all very revolutionary?" asked Edith.
"Perhaps," replied the doctor, dryly. "But they have no more fads than
other people. Their theories seem to them not only practical, but they
try to apply them to actual legislation; at any rate, they discriminate
in vagaries. You would have been amused the other night in a small
circle at the lamentations over a member--he was a car-driver--who was
the authoritative expositor of Schopenhauer, because he had gone off
into Theosophy. It showed such weakness."
"I have heard that the members of that circle were Nihilists."
"The club has not that name, but probably the members would not care
to repudiate the title, or deny that they were Nihilists
theoretically--that is, if Nihilism means an absolute social and
political overturning in order that something better may be built up.
And, indeed, if you see what a hopeless tangle our present situation is,
where else can the mind logically go?"
"It is pitiful enough," Edith admitted. "But all this movement you speak
of seems to me a vague agitation."
"I don't think," the doctor said, after a moment, "that you appreciate
the intellectual force that is in it all, or allow for the fermenting
power in the great discontented mass of these radical theories on the
problem of life."
This was a specimen of the sort of talk that Edith and the doctor often
drifted into in their mission work. As Ruth Leigh tramped along late
this afternoon in the slush of the streets, from one house of sickness
and poverty to another, a sense of her puny efforts in this great mass
of suffering and injustice came over her anew. Her indignation rose
against the state of things. And Father Damon, who was trying to save
souls, was he accomplishing anything more than she? Why had he been so
curt with her when she went to him for help this afternoon? Was he just
a narrow-minded, bigoted priest? A few nights before she had heard him
speak on the single tax at a labor meeting. She recalled his eloquence,
his profound sympathy with the cause of the people, the thrilling,
pathetic voice, the illumination of his countenance, the authority, the
consecration in his attitude and dress; and he was transfigured to her
then, as he was now in her thought, into an apostle of humanity. Alas!
she thought, what a leader he would be if he would break loose from his
superstitious traditions!
|