human
But people have got to stand alone. She might as well begin.
gpt
But she is so young.
human
Yes, I know. She is in the way of temptation, but so long as she works industriously, and loves her mother, and feels the obligation, which the poor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not in so much moral danger as other girls of her age who lead idle and self-indulgent lives. The working-girls of the city learn to protect themselves.
gpt
And you think this is enough, without any sort of religion--that this East Side can go on without any spiritual life?
human
I don't know that anything can go on. Let me ask you a question, Father Damon. Do you think there is any more spirituality, any more of the essentials of what you call Christianity, in the society of the other side than there is on the East Side?
gpt
It is a deep question, this of spirituality, replied Father Damon, who was in the depths of his proselyting action a democrat and in sympathy with the people, and rated quite at its full value the conventional fashion in religion.
human
I shouldn't like to judge, but there is a great body of Christian men and women in this city who are doing noble work.
gpt
Yes, replied the little doctor, bitterly,
human
You surely cannot ignore, replied the father, still speaking mildly,
gpt
Yes, I know; charity, charity, the condescension of the rich to the poor. What we want are understanding, fellowship, and we get alms! If there is so much spirituality as you say, and Christianity is what you say it is today, how happens it that this side is left in filth and misery and physical wretchedness? You know what it is, and you know the luxury elsewhere. And you think to bridge over the chasm between classes with flowers, in pots, yes, and Bible-readers and fashionable visitors and little aid societies--little palliatives for an awful state of things. Why, look at it! Last winter the city authorities hauled off the snow and the refuse from the fashionable avenues, and dumped it down in the already blockaded and filthy side streets, and left us to struggle with the increased pneumonia and diphtheria, and general unsanitary conditions. And you wonder that the little nihilist groups and labor organizations and associations of agnostics, as you call them, meeting to study political economy and philosophy, say that the existing state of things has got to be overturned violently, if those who have the power and the money continue indifferent.
human
I do not wonder, replied Father Damon, sadly.
gpt
The world is evil, and I should be as despairing as you are if I did not know there was another life and another world. I couldn't bear it. Nobody could.
human
And all you've got to offer, then, to this mass of wretchedness, poverty, ignorance, at close quarters with hunger and disease, is to grin and bear it, in hope of a reward somewhere else!
gpt
I think you don't quite--
human
Oh, she hastened to say, almost as impetuously as she had spoken before,
gpt
I don't mean you--I don't mean you. I know what you do. Pardon me for speaking so. I get so discouraged sometimes. They stood still a moment, looking up and down the hot, crowded, odorful street they were in, with its flaunting rags of poverty and inefficiency.
human
I see so little result of what I can do, and there is so little help.
gpt
I know, said the father, as they moved along.
human
I don't see how you can bear it alone.
gpt
If we could only know. And then, after a moment, she asked,
human
Do you, Father Damon, see any sign of anything better here?
gpt
Yes, today. And he spoke very slowly and hesitatingly.
human
If you will excuse the personality of it. When I entered that room today, and saw you with that sick child in your arms, and comprehended what it all meant, I had a great wave of hope, and I knew, just then, that there is coming virtue enough in the world to redeem it.
gpt
Ah,