m in
Irving Place.

She was writing a book, and used to sit up half the night. She was a
college-educated girl, who had been trained to think logically. Social
and political questions were keen delights to Esther Claff. She took me
to political rallies; we listened to speeches from anarchists and
socialists; we attended I. W. W. meetings; we heard discussions on
ethical subjects, on religion, on the white-slave traffic, equal
suffrage, trusts. Life at all its various points interested Esther
Claff. She was a plain, uninteresting girl to look at, but she possessed
a rare mind, as beautifully constructed as the inside of a watch, and
about as human, sometimes I used to think.

She was very reticent about herself, told me almost nothing of her early
life and seemed to feel as little curiosity about mine. I lived with
Esther Claff a whole winter with never once an expression from her of
regard or affection. I wondered sometimes if she felt any. Esther was an
example, it seemed to me, of a woman who had risen above the details of
human life, petty annoyances of friendships, eking demands of a
community. I had heard her voice tremble with feeling about some reforms
she believed in, but evidently she had shaken off all desire for the
human touch. I wished sometimes that Esther wasn't quite so emancipated.

My associates were Esther's associates--college friends of hers for the
most part, a circle of girls who inspired me with their enthusiasms and
star-high aspirations. They were living economically in various places
in New York, all keenly interested in what they were doing. There was
Flora Bennett, sleeping in a tiny room with a skylight instead of
uptown with her family, because her father wouldn't countenance his
daughter's becoming a stenographer, making her beg spending money from
him every month like a child. There was Anne DeBois who had left a
tyrannical parent who didn't believe in educating girls, and worked her
way through college. There was a settlement worker or two; there was
poor, struggling Rosa who tried to paint; Sidney, an eager little
sculptor; Elsie and Lorraine, two would-be journalists, who lived
together, and who were so inseparable we called them Alsace and
Lorraine; there was able Maria Brown, an investigator who used to spend
a fortnight as an employee in various factories and stores and write up
the experience afterwards.

There were few or no men in our life. Esther and I frequented our
frien