It was a wonder to me how, in spite of these manifold activities, he found time for the thousand and one little kindnesses, the varied personal relations he maintained with all sorts and conditions of men. Once a week or so he dined at the University Club, more often at the settlement, and the other nights he took pot-luck on the top floor of some tenement with one of his Arbeiter Studenten. In the same way he found time to remember me and bring cheer into the hospital. That first morning, in speaking of the newspaper story, I asked him if he was a socialist. "Hanged if I know," he said. "I never joined any socialist organization. I don’t care much for these soap-box people. They talk about reconstructing our industrial institutions, and most of them don’t know how to make change for a dollar. They talk about overthrowing Wall Street, and they don’t know railroad-stock from live-stock. They don’t begin to realize what a big thing it is—nor how unjust and crazy and top-heavy. But sometimes I think I must be a socialist. I can’t open my mouth and say anything serious without everybody calling me a socialist. I don’t know." The remaining weeks in the hospital gave me a great fund of things to ponder over. My mind works retrospectively. I have always sympathized with the cud-chewing habit of the cow. The impressions of the hour are never clear-cut with me. For an experience to become real, I must mull over it a long time; gradually it sinks into my consciousness and becomes a vital possession. Benson’s sort of kindness was absolutely new to me. No one had ever done things for me as he did. And as it surprised me to have him take the trouble to send me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was a thing undreamed of. "Come with me, up on to a high mountain, and I will show you all the wonder of the world"—such was Ann’s gift to me. Out of the horror of darkness, from the very bottom of the slough of despond, she led me up into the white light of the summit peaks of life. As I read back over these pages, I find that I have described Ann as a voice, as a person who thought and talked of serious things, who seemed principally absorbed in an ambition, which up to that time had borne no fruit. I would like to picture the woman who came to me in the darkness with a wealth of cheer and tenderness and love. Some day I hope our literature and our minds will be purified so that such things can be dealt with sanely and sweetly. But that time has not yet come and I must be content with the tools at hand. Ann brought to me in those desolate days all the wondrous womanly things—the quaint and gentle jests of love, the senseless sweet words and names which are caresses, the sudden gusts of self revelation, the strange and unexpected restraints—of which I may not write. I was not lonely any more—not even when Miss Wright was on duty—there was so much to ponder over.