ever it wants--even the truth
and honest government."

They were passing rows of narrow old-fashioned tenement-houses,
standing, like crumbling walls of red brick, behind sagging wooden
fences; and suddenly, while Stephen's eyes were on the lights that came
and went so fitfully in the basement dining-rooms, Darrow stopped the
car in the gutter of cobblestones, and motioned in silence toward the
pavement. As Stephen got out, he glanced vaguely round him at the
strange neighbourhood.

"Where are we?"

"North of Marshall Street. A quarter which was once very prosperous; but
that was before your day. This is one of several rows of old houses,
well-built in their time, better built, indeed, than any houses we're
putting up now; but their day is over. The cost of repairing them would
be so great that the agent is deliberately letting the property run down
in the hope that this part of the street will soon be turned over to
negroes. The negroes are so crowded in their quarter that they are
obliged to expand, and when they do, this investment will yield a still
higher interest. Coloured tenants stand crowding better than white ones,
and they will pay a better rent for worse housing. As it is the rent of
these houses has doubled since the beginning of the war."

"Good God!" said Stephen. "Do we stop here?"

"I want you to see Canning, the man the Governor told you about. He
can't pay his rent, which was raised last Saturday, and the family is
moving to-morrow."

"He ought to be paid for living here. Where will he go?"

"Oh, people can always find a worse place, if they look long enough.
Canning was in the war, by the way. He's got some nervous trouble--not
crazy enough to be taken care of--just on edge and unstrung. The war
used him up, I reckon, and anxiety and undernourishment used up his wife
and children. It all seems to have come out in the baby--queerest little
kid you ever saw--born about a year ago. Mighty funny--ain't it?--the
way we let children just a few squares away from us grow up pinched,
half-starved, undersized, uneducated, and as little moral as the gutters
can make 'em, and all the time we're parading and begging and even
collecting the pennies out of orphan asylums, for the sake of the
children on the other side of the world. But it's a queer thing,
charity, however you happen to look at it. My father used to say--and he
had as much sense as any man I ever met--that charity is the greatest
traveller