t is left? The woman is prematurely old--her hair is gray, her face
drawn and wrinkled, or flabby and soiled, her back bent, her hands raw
and red and big. Beauty has gone, and with the years of drudgery, much
of the over-glory, much of the finer elements of love and joy, have
vanished. Her mind is absorbed by little things--details of the day. She
has ceased to attend church, she has not stepped beyond the street
corner for years, she has not read or played or rested. Much is dead in
her. Love only is left. Love of a man, love of children. She is a fierce
mother and wife, as of old. And she knows the depth of sorrow and the
truth of pain.

He repeated his programme. Perhaps--he afterward thought so
himself--this editorial was a bit too pessimistic. But he had to write
it--had to ease his soul. He set it off, however, by a lovely little
paragraph which he printed boxed. Here it is:

Possibly much of the laughter heard on this planet comes from
the mothers and fathers who are thinking or talking of the children.

In this way, then, Joe entered into the life of the people.

IV

OTHERS: AND THEODORE MARRIN

Joe became a familiar figure in Greenwich Village. As time went on, and
issue after issue of _The Nine-Tenths_ appeared, he became known to the
whole district. Whenever he went out people nodded right and left,
passed the time of day with him, or stopped him for a hand-shake and a
question. He would, when matters were not pressing, pause at a stoop to
speak with mothers, and people in trouble soon began to acquire a habit
of dropping in at his office to talk things over with the "Old Man."

If it was a matter of employment, he turned the case over to some member
of the Stove Circle; if it was a question of honest want, he drew on the
"sinking-fund" and took a note payable in sixty days--a most elastic
note, always secretly renewable; if it was an idle beggar, a vagrant, he
made short work of his visitor. Such a visitor was Lady Hickory. Billy
was at his little table next the door; over in the corner the
still-despondent Slate was still collapsing; at the east window sat
Editor Sally Heffer, digging into a mass of notes; and near the west,
at the roll-top desk, a visitor's chair set out invitingly beside him,
Joe was writing--weird exercise of muttering softly, so as not to
disturb the rest, and then scratching down a sentence.

Billy leaped up to receive her ladyship, who fatly roll