These people of course were of the lower class. There was another element of decidedly finer quality. Giuseppe for example was one of these and there were hundreds of others. It was among these that Ruth's influence counted for the most. They not only took advantage of her superior intelligence in conducting their households but they breathed in something of the soul of her. When I saw them send for her in their grief and in their joy, when I heard them ask her advice with almost the confidence with which they prayed, when I heard them give her such names as "the angel mother," "the blessed American saint," I felt very proud and very humble. Such things made me glad in another way for the change which had taken her out of the old life where such qualities were lost and brought her down here where they counted for so much. These people stripped of convention live with their hearts very near the surface. They don't try to conceal their emotions and so you are brought very quickly into close touch with them. Ruth herself was a good deal like that and so her influence for a day among them counted for as much as a year with the old crowd. In the meanwhile I resumed my night school at the end of the summer vacation and was glad to get back to it. I had missed the work and went at it this next winter with increased eagerness to perfect myself in my trade. During this second year, too, I never relaxed my efforts to keep my gang up to standard and whenever possible to better it by the addition of new men. Every month I thought I increased the respect of the men for me by my fair dealing with them. I don't mean to say I fully realized the expectations of which I had dreamed. I suppose that at first I dreamed a bit wildly. There was very little sentiment in the relation of the men to me, although there was some. Still I don't want to give the impression that I made of them a gang of blind personal followers such as some religious cranks get together. It was necessary to make them see that it was for their interest to work for me and with me and that I did do. I made them see also that in order to work for me they had to work a little more faithfully than they worked for others. So it was a straight business proposition. What sentiment there was came through the personal interest I took in them outside of their work. It was this which made them loyal instead of merely hard working. It was this which made them my gang instead of Corkery's gang--a thing that counted for a good deal later on.