to come down to the settlement, instead, and to
take supper with him there some evening. He wanted to show me the
splendid organization of things there: the club rooms, the dance hall,
the gymnasium and reading room. He wanted to introduce me to the
resident leaders. He wanted to persuade me to become a leader, myself:
to attend one of the clubs of young boys, to join with them in their
meetings, their debates, their entertainments and studies, to help them
by friendliness and example.

"I suppose," he said, when he left me at a subway kiosk, "that you feel
mighty sorry that you didn't make a fraternity, don't you? Well, I'm
offering you a membership in a bigger and better one than ever had a
chapter in a college--the brotherhood of humanity. You'll be proud of
it, little fellow, if you'll join. So come along down and let us 'rush'
you!"

It was so good-natured a joke that I could not resent it. I had had my
eyes opened, tonight, by some of the things that Mr. Richards had told
me. I had learned that the city has its poor, its sick and wicked, its
boys and girls embroiled in wrong environments, its lonely and
unambitious, who must be comraded and wakened. And I had learned that I,
young as I was, was able to help, to foster, to do good for such as
these.

On the way home, I passed a street corner where boys a few years younger
than myself were loitering in obscene play. A little further on I came
to a girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen, who was being followed by
some toughs. She was a Jewish girl, too, I noticed--and she was crying
with fright. I put her on a street car to get her out of harm's way.

It was of just such as these, both boys and girls, that Mr. Richards had
spoken this evening. Perhaps he was right--and what a noble thing to be
able to join in the help and companionship which the settlement could
give them. I resolved to go down to him the very next evening.

When I reached home, Aunt Selina was just getting ready for bed. She
came out into the hall in a pink silk dressing-gown, all frills and
ruffles, and asked me complainingly where I had been so long. She was
angry at my abrupt departure when her evening's guests arrived.

"I have been to hear a lecture delivered by a Mr. Lawrence Richards," I
told her.

"Oh! That settlement man?" she asked.

"Yes."

She almost snorted. "I met him once at a meeting of our Ladies'
Auxiliary. He is such a plain, undistinguished fellow!"

I hesitated a mo