matter, but his determination was fixed.
Only Gloria understood and approved.
"Philip," said Mr. Strawn, "do not turn this offer down lightly. Such an
opportunity seldom comes twice in any man's life."
"I am deeply impressed with the truth of what you say, Mr. Strawn, and I
am not putting aside a military career without much regret. However, I
am now committed to a life work of a different character, one in which
glory and success as the world knows it can never enter, but which
appeals to every instinct that I possess. I have turned my face in the
one direction, and come what may, I shall never change."
"I am afraid, Philip, that in the enthusiasm of youth and inexperience
you are doing a foolish thing, one that will bring you many hours of
bitter regret. This is the parting of the ways with you. Take the advice
of one who loves you well and turn into the road leading to honor and
success. The path which you are about to choose is obscure and difficult,
and none may say just where it leads."
"What you say is true, Mr. Strawn, only we are measuring results by
different standards. If I could journey your road with a blythe heart,
free from regret, when glory and honor came, I should revel in it and
die, perhaps, happy and contented. But constituted as I am, when I began
to travel along that road, from its dust there would arise to haunt me
the ghosts of those of my fellowmen who had lived and died without
opportunity. The cold and hungry, the sick and suffering poor, would
seem to cry to me that I had abandoned them in order that I might
achieve distinction and success, and there would be for me no peace."
And here Gloria touched his hand with hers, that he might know her
thoughts and sympathy were at one with his.
Philip was human enough to feel a glow of satisfaction at having
achieved so much reputation. A large part of it, he felt, was undeserved
and rather hysterical, but that he had been able to do a big thing made
him surer of his ground in his new field of endeavor. He believed, too,
that it would aid him largely in obtaining the confidence of those with
whom he expected to work and of those he expected to work for.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STORY OF THE LEVINSKYS
As soon as public attention was brought to Philip in such a generous
way, he received many offers to write for the press and magazines, and
also to lecture.
He did not wish to draw upon his father's slender resources, and yet he
must needs do something to meet his living expenses, for during the
months of his inactivity, he had drawn largely upon the small sum which
he had saved from his salary.
The Strawns were insistent that he should continue to make their home
his own, but this he was unwilling to do. So he rented an inexpensive
room over a small hardware store in the East Side tenement district. He
thought of getting in one of the big, evil-smelling tenement houses so
that he might live as those he came to help lived, but he abandoned this
because he feared he might become too absorbed in those immediately
around him.
What he wanted was a broader view. His purpose was not so much to give
individual help as to formulate some general plan and to work upon those
lines.
And yet he wished an intimate view of the things he meant to devote his
life to bettering. So the clean little room over the quiet hardware
store seemed to suit his wants.
The thin, sharp-featured Jew and his fat, homely wife who kept it had
lived in that neighborhood for many years, and Philip found them a mine
of useful information regarding the things he wished to know.
The building was narrow and but three stories high, and his landlord
occupied all of the second story save the one room which was let to
Philip.
He arranged with Mrs. Levinsky to have his breakfast with them. He soon
learned to like the Jew and his wife. While they were kind-hearted and
sympathetic, they seldom permitted their sympathy to encroach upon their
purse, but this Philip knew was a matter of environment and early
influence. He drew from them one day the story of their lives, and it
ran like this:
Ben Levinsky's forebears had long lived in Warsaw. From father to son,
from one generation to another, they had handed down a bookshop, which
included bookbinding in a small way. They were self-educated and widely
read. Their customers were largely among the gentiles and for a long
time the anti-semitic waves passed over them, leaving them untouched.
They were law-abiding, inoffensive, peaceable citizens, and had been for
generations.
One bleak December day, at a market place in Warsaw, a young Jew, baited
beyond endurance, struck out madly at his aggressors, and in the general
m阬閑 that followed, the son of a high official was killed. No one knew
how he became involved in the brawl, for he was a sober, high-minded
youngster, and very popular. Just how he was killed and by whom was
never known. But the Jew had struck the first blow and that was all
sufficient for the blood of hate to surge in the eyes of the race-mad
mob.
Then began a blind, unreasoning massacre. It all happened within an
hour. It was as if after nightfall a tornado had come out of the west,
and without warning had torn and twisted itself through the city,
leaving ruin and death in its wake. No Jew that could be found was
spared. Saul Levinsky was sitting in his shop looking over some books
that had just come from the binder. He heard shots in the distance and
the dull, angry roar of the hoarse-voiced mob. He closed his door and
bolted it, and went up the little stairs leading to his family quarters.
His wife and six-year-old daughter were there. Ben, a boy of ten, had
gone to a nobleman's home to deliver some books, and had not returned.
Levinsky expected the mob to pass his place and leave it unmolested. It
stopped, hesitated and then rammed in the door. It was all over in a
moment. Father, mother and child lay dead and torn almost limb from
limb. The rooms were wrecked, and the mob moved on.
The tempest passed as quickly as it came, and when little Ben reached
his home, the street was as silent as the grave.
With quivering lip and uncertain feet he picked his way from room to
room until he came to what were once his father, mother and baby sister,
and then he swooned away. When he awoke he was shivering with cold. For
a moment he did not realize what had happened, then with a heartbreaking
cry he fled the place, nor did he stop until he was a league away.
He crept under the sheltering eaves of a half-burned house, and cold
and miserable he sobbed himself to sleep. In the morning an itinerant
tinker came by and touched by the child's distress, drew from him his
unhappy story. He was a lonely old man, and offered to take Ben with
him, an offer which was gladly accepted.
We will not chronicle the wanderings of these two in pursuit of food and
shelter, for it would take too long to tell in sequence how they finally
reached America, of the tinker's death, and of the evolution of the
tinker's pack to the well ordered hardware shop over which Philip lived.
CHAPTER IX
PHILIP BEGINS A NEW CAREER
After sifting the offers made him, Philip finally accepted two, one from
a large New York daily that syndicated throughout the country, and one
from a widely read magazine, to contribute a series of twelve articles.
Both the newspaper and the magazine wished to dictate the subject matter
about which he was to write, but he insisted upon the widest latitude.
The sum paid, and to be paid, seemed to him out of proportion to the
service rendered, but he failed to take into account the value of the
advertising to those who had secured the use of his pen.
He accepted the offers not alone because he must needs do something for
a livelihood, but largely for the good he thought he might do the cause
to which he was enlisted. He determined to write upon social subjects
only, though he knew that this would be a disappointment to his
publishers. He wanted to write an article or two before he began his
permanent work, for if he wrote successfully, he thought it would add to
his influence. So he began immediately, and finished his first
contribution to the syndicate newspapers in time for them to use it the
following Sunday.
He told in a simple way, the story of the Turners. In conclusion he said
the rich and the well-to-do were as a rule charitable enough when
distress came to their doors, but the trouble was that they were
unwilling to seek it out. They knew that it existed but they wanted to
come in touch with it as little as possible.
They smothered their consciences with the thought that there were
organized societies and other mediums through which all poverty was
reached, and to these they gave. They knew that this was not literally
true, but it served to make them think less badly of themselves.
In a direct and forceful manner, he pointed out that our civilization
was fundamentally--wrong inasmuch as among other things, it restricted
efficiency; that if society were properly organized, there would be none
who were not sufficiently clothed and fed; that the laws, habits and
ethical training in vogue were alike responsible for the inequalities in
opportunity and the consequent wide difference between the few and the
many; that the result of such conditions was to render inefficient a
large part of the population, the percentage differing in each country
in the ratio that education and enlightened and unselfish laws bore to
ignorance, bigotry and selfish laws. But little progress, he said,
had been made in the early centuries for the reason that opportunity
had been confined to a few, and it was only recently that any
considerable part of the world's population had been in a position to
become efficient; and mark the result. Therefore, he argued, as an
economical proposition, divorced from the realm of ethics, the far-
sighted statesmen of to-morrow, if not of to-day, will labor to the end
that every child born of woman may have an opportunity to accomplish
that for which it is best fitted. Their bodies will be properly clothed
and fed at the minimum amount of exertion, so that life may mean
something more than a mere struggle for existence. Humanity as a whole
will then be able to do its share towards the conquest of the complex
forces of nature, and there will be brought about an intellectual and
spiritual quickening that will make our civilization of to-day seem as
crude, as selfish and illogical as that of the dark ages seem now to us.
Philip's article was widely read and was the subject of much comment,
favorable and otherwise. There were the ever-ready few, who want to re-
make the world in a day, that objected to its moderation, and there were
his more numerous critics who hold that to those that have, more should
be given. These considered his doctrine dangerous to the general
welfare, meaning their own welfare. But upon the greater number it made
a profound impression, and it awakened many a sleeping conscience as was
shown by the hundreds of letters which he received from all parts of the
country. All this was a tremendous encouragement to the young social
worker, for the letters he received showed him that he had a definite
public to address, whom he might lead if he could keep his medium for a
time at least. Naturally, the publishers of the newspaper and magazine
for which he wrote understood this, but they also understood that it was
usually possible to control intractable writers after they had acquired
a taste for publicity, and their attitude was for the time being one of
general enthusiasm and liberality tempered by such trivial attempts at
control as had already been made.
No sooner had he seen the first story in print than he began formulating
his ideas for a second. This, he planned, would be a companion piece to
that of the Turners which was typical of the native American family
driven to the East Side by the inevitable workings of the social order,
and would take up the problem of the foreigner immigrating to this
country, and its effect upon our national life. In this second article
he incorporated the story of the Levinskys as being fairly
representative of the problem he wished to treat.
In preparing these articles, Philip had used his eyes for the first time
in such work, and he was pleased to find no harm came of it. The oculist
still cautioned moderation, but otherwise dismissed him as fully
recovered.
CHAPTER X
GLORIA DECIDES TO PROSELYTE THE RICH
While Philip was establishing himself in New York, as a social worker
and writer, Gloria was spending more and more of her time in settlement
work, in spite of the opposition of her family. Naturally, their work
brought them much into each other's society, and drew them even closer
together than in Philip's dark days when Gloria was trying to aid him in
the readjustment of his life. They were to all appearances simply
comrades in complete understanding, working together for a common cause.
However, Strawn's opposition to Gloria's settlement work was not all
impersonal, for he made no secret of his worry over Gloria's evident
admiration for Dru. Strawn saw in Philip a masterly man with a
prodigious intellect, bent upon accomplishing a revolutionary adjustment
of society, and he knew that nothing would deter him from his purpose.
The magnitude of the task and the uncertainties of success made him fear
that Gloria might become one of the many unhappy women who suffer
martyrdom through the greatness of their love.
Gloria's mother felt the same way about her daughter's companion in
settlement work. Mrs. Strawn was a placid, colorless woman, content to
go the conventional way, without definite purpose, further than to avoid
the rougher places in life.
She was convinced that men were placed here for the sole purpose of
shielding and caring for women, and she had a contempt for any man who
refused or was unable to do so.
Gloria's extreme advanced views of life alarmed her and seemed
