Early the next morning he left us, not waiting to thank us, which was quite unnecessary; nor hardly stopping to say good-bye to us. But a few days afterward he wrote to me, saying that after four years he was back with his father and mother, brother and sisters, in his own room, sleeping in his own bed. The family had arranged it just the same as it had been before he left them for those sad years in prison. His father had purchased him a new suit for Easter. The next day he was to start to work. Nearly a year later he visited me. His work had taken him out of town. "When I first met you," he said. "I didn't have a home. Now it is a question which one to visit first, but I thought I would come out to see you, and then go this evening and see my other father." [Illustration] OUR FRIEND, THE ANARCHIST. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. --_Bible._ Our Friend, The Anarchist He said that he came from Germany, but he didn't look it, for Germany is a beautiful country, and he was far removed from even a suggestion of beauty. Had he said he had just arrived from "No Man's Land," it would have been easily accredited. For a German, even his accent and grammatical construction were unsatisfactory. He did not begin his sentences in the middle and talk both ways at once, after the well established custom of Americanized Teutons. In the stress of his excitement he expressed himself concisely and clearly. He was seated in the Charity House awaiting the investigation of the social workers. He held his head in his hands, while his body convulsed frequently, and tears were in his eyes. To see a man with unkempt whiskers indulging in a crying spell like a delicate woman, is almost as humorous as it is pathetic, unless one knows what the man is crying about. Then, too, the Germans, unlike the Irish, take their trouble seriously, so that their despair often creates for them the hell they fear. Surely it wasn't a German who in the old Bible days sent hired mourners to go about the street; it was undoubtedly an Irishman whose genius conceived the idea of paying other men to do his weeping for him. "Where are you from?" I asked the German. He surveyed me suspiciously from head to foot, then replied politely enough: "I am of German parentage and have lived the greater part of my life in Heidelberg, where my father and grandfather were instructors in the University." "When did you arrive in America?" I asked him. "A few days ago," he answered. "I came from Paris, where I met with heavy--heavy for me--financial reverses. I attempted to conduct a business similar to your brokers, who loan money on personal property, but being unfamiliar with French law, I found I could not legally enforce payments of the loans I made to the Frenchmen. My entire life savings--small, it is true--were lost. In disgust I came to America, and my condition now is worse than ever. I am desperate."