But even individual effort is
not thrown away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to
build soup kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away.
And down this other street are the old buildings that I shall cause
to be torn down and there erect others in place of those death-traps
of fire and disease."

Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled
coveys of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children.
It stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry.

Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the
leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who
seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity--a
narrow-chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at a cigarette.

Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly
grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke.

"I want to know you people," he said, sincerely. "I am going to help
you as much as I can. We shall be friends."

As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an
unaccustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man.

He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz.

THE PURPLE DRESS

We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly
in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it
for their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their
noses to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and
blue. We say of princes that they are born to the purple; and no
doubt they are, for the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint
equally with the snub-nosed countenance of a woodchopper's brat. All
women love it--when it is the fashion.

And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course
other colors are quite stylish as well--in fact, I saw a lovely thing
the other day in olive green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce
skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace
opening over a shirred vest and double puff sleeves with a lace band
holding two gathered frills--but you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes,
you do; just take a walk down Twenty-third street any afternoon.

Therefore Maida--the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-colored
hair in the Bee-Hive Store--said to Grace--the girl with the
rhinestone brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her speech--"I'm
going to have a purple dress--a