and mount them on large posters
for the public to see. That part of the work
will be intensely interesting. I don't mind
pounding away at the typewriter from daylight
till dark, but I must confess to you what I'll
not tell any one at home. The other part of the
work, the contact with the suffering and misery
and dirt that we see daily simply makes me
sick.

"I asked _Orphant Annie_ how he supposed a
dainty little woman like Mrs. Blythe stands it,
and he said she had answered that question
herself in a poem that she had written by
request for the Riverville _Herald_. I was so
surprised to know that she is a poet too, that
he said he'd look up the verses for me. He did,
and brought me a copy of them when he came that
night at dinner. He doesn't seem as pop-eyed
now that I know him better, and he says some
very bright things occasionally. This is the
poem. I am sending it so that you'll see how
mistaken I was at first in assuming that Mrs.
Blythe was just a kind-hearted little social
butterfly, who had taken up housing betterment
as a fad. Some of the divine fire that
inspired the great reformers of all the ages
must burn in her soul, or she couldn't have
written this poem that she calls _The Torch_.

"'Make me to be a torch for feet that grope
Down Truth's dim trail; to bear for wistful eyes
Comfort of light; to bid great beacons blaze,
And kindle altar fires of sacrifice!

"'Let me set souls aflame with quenchless zeal
For great endeavors, causes true and high.
So would I live to quicken and inspire,
So would I, thus consumed, burn out and die.'

"Mr. Berry says that is just what Mrs. Blythe
is, a torch to set others aflame. He has heard
her talk to clubs and societies about her work,
and he says that she is so convincing that
before the summer is over she'll have me
blazing like a house afire, the biggest beacon
in the bunch. But I don't think much of
_Orphant Annie_ as a prophet. It is just one of
his ways of always saying the gobelins'll git
you. I know they'll never get me to the extent
of making me 'speak in meetin'.' Now you know