her sane views, her quick thinking, her never-failing good humor
and faith, acted upon him as a tonic.

"Miss Sally," he said once, "what would I ever do without you?"

Sally looked at him with her clear eyes.

"Oh," she said, "I guess you'd manage to stagger along somehow."

But after that she hovered about him like a guardian angel. What
bothered her chiefly, when she thought of Joe's work, was her lack of
education, and she set about to make this up by good reading, and by
attending lectures at night, and by hard study in such time as she could
snatch from her work. She and Joe were comrades in the best sense. They
could always depend upon each other. It was in some ways as if they
were in partnership. And then there was that old tie of the fire to
draw them together.

She was of great help in setting him right about the poor.

"People are happy," she would say--"most people are happy. Human nature
is bigger than environment--it bubbles up through mud. That's almost the
trouble with it. If the poor were only thoroughly unhappy, they'd change
things to-morrow. No, Mr. Joe, it's not a question of happiness; it's a
question of justice, of right, of progress, of developing people's
possibilities. It's all the question of a better life, a richer life.
People are sacred--they mustn't be reduced to animals."

And with her aid he gained a truer perspective of the life about
him--learned better how to touch it, how to "work" it. The paper became
more and more adapted to its audience, and began to spread rapidly. Here
and there a labor union would subscribe for it in bulk for all its
members, and the Stove Circle soon had many a raw recruit drumming up
trade, making house-to-house canvasses. In this way, the circulation
finally reached the five-thousand mark. There were certain unions, such
as that of the cloak-makers, that regarded the paper as their special
oracle--swore by it, used it in their arguments, made it a vital part of
their mental life.

This enlarged circulation brought some curious and unlooked-for results.
Some of the magazine writers in the district got hold of a copy, had a
peep at Joe, heard of his fame, and then took copies up-town to the
respectable editors and others, and spread a rumor of "that idiot, Joe
Blaine, who runs an underground paper down on Tenth Street." As a
passion of the day was slumming, and as nothing could be more piquant
than the West Tenth Street establishment, Joe was amused