Good straight talk that, and it had its effect. You could see the audience straighten up and hold themselves the better for it. Every meeting was well attended and there was never the slightest sign of restlessness in the audiences, though sometimes the talks lasted nearly two hours. In the meanwhile Ruth in her quiet way was doing as much as the rest of us to keep up interest in the undertaking. She made it a point to get acquainted with all the farmer wives in the neighborhood. She had them up to the house in groups and dropped many a word of encouragement and gave many a bit of advice which came from a full experience. “Billy,” she said to me one night, “it’s the deadly uninspired routine of their lives that’s killing the women. They cook and sew and scrub without a single dream to help them along. And that’s because the men don’t dream. If you succeed in rousing the husbands and sons you’ll bring the wives and mothers to life, too.” “That’s what we want to do,” I said. “It shows that it isn’t lack of money that makes poverty, Billy,” she said. “All these women have good homes and plenty to eat and wear and yet--and yet I honestly believe they are poorer than our old friends of the tenements.” “We were never so poor in our lives as when we lived with plenty to eat and wear in the suburbs,” I reminded her. “That’s just it,” she nodded. “This is the same kind of poverty. It comes from the fact that for these women life ends with the end of each day. They die every time they crawl into bed at night. There is never anything for them to look forward to on the morrow.” “If we could only make them realize that this condition is largely their own fault--” “That wouldn’t make any difference at all,” she broke in; “we must change the conditions. Most of our misfortunes are our own fault, but that doesn’t make them any less misfortunes. It’s another misfortune that our misfortunes are our own fault. I don’t know but what that’s the worst misfortune of all.” She was right. It doesn’t do much good to blame people for their faults. We ourselves, after making public our experiences in the suburbs, received many hard letters from people who couldn’t see anything in our plight but the well deserved consequences of our own folly. If we hadn’t done this or that, if we had done this or that, we were assured that we would have come out all right. To be sure. That applies to every human being who ever tried to live this life. If we were all as wise as Solomon to start with and lived up to all Solomon’s precepts, then would come the millennium. But we aren’t. We all have to learn and in the learning we make many mistakes. Then we make them again. And the man who blames us and lets it go at that isn’t our friend, and some day is going to make a mistake himself. CHAPTER IX SPRING