He was a product of the Social Settlement Movement. Even as a little boy he had been bitten by the desire to know. The poverty of his family had forced him to go to work, but he had continued his studies in the night classes of a Settlement. His boyish precociousness had attracted attention, and some of the University men of the Settlement, impressed by his eagerness to learn, had helped out his family finances so Isadore could return to school. They had helped him through High School and into the City College. During his sophomore year Isadore had joined the Socialist party. His conversion had been a deep and stormy spiritual experience to him. He knew it would shock and alienate his supporters. Caution, expediency, every prudent consideration had urged him to postpone the issue--at least till he had finished college. But the new vision of life flamed with an impatient glory. He could not wait. His new political faith separated him from the friends who had made things easy for him. But it brought him new ones a-plenty who, if poorer, were truer. He had been compelled to leave college. But he had already developed a marked talent for the kind of journalism the East Side appreciates, less "newsy," but decidedly more literary than the output of the English papers. He found a place on the _Forwaertz_ where, for a bare living wage, he wrote columns about history and science and the drama. It was an afternoon paper, so he had his evenings free to study. He had taken the night course in the New York Law School. It had been a desperate struggle which he could not have won through except for a talent at reducing work to a routine and for one of those marvellous constitutions--like Yetta's--which seem the special heritage of their race, a physical and nervous endurance, which is probably explained by agelong observance of the strict dietary regulations of Moses. He was not an attractive person to look at. His face was heavily lined and lumpy. His short, stocky body had been twisted by much application to desk work. His right shoulder was noticeably higher than his left. Nor was his type of mind attractive. It was too utilitarian to admit of any graces. He was twenty-five years old, and, since the days of enthusiasm when he had become a Socialist, he had imposed on himself an iron rule. He had not given himself a vacation, he had not read any book, had not consciously done anything in these five years, which did not seem to him useful. With the same merciless singleness of purpose which had marked Jake Goldfogle's struggle to become rich, Isadore Braun had driven himself in the acquisition of abilities, which would make him a more forceful weapon in the fight for Socialism.