Slovenly women courtesied and made way.
"The good Lord bless you," I heard as I passed through a dark
hall, "but you are a good man. No such has come this way before."
Oh! the heartache of it, and yet the joy! The Italians in the
Barracks stopped quarreling to help keep order. The worst street
became suddenly good and neighborly. A year or two after, Father
John Tabb, priest and poet, wrote, upon reading my statement that
I had seen an armful of daisies keep the peace of a block better
than the policeman's club:--
Peacemakers ye, the daisies, from the soil
Upbreathing wordless messages of love,
Soothing of earth-born brethren the toil
And lifting e'en the lowliest above.
Ay, they did. The poet knew it; the children knew it; the slum knew
it. It lost its grip where the flowers went with their message. I
saw it.
I saw, too, that I had put my hand to a task that was too great
for me, yet which I might not give over, once I had taken it up.
Every day the slum showed me that more clearly. The hunger for
the beautiful that gnawed at its heart was a constant revelation.
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