A week later I received a letter of thanks from him. He was in the hospital. Three weeks later another letter came. He had been given a home by an elderly couple. Luck had turned. He had all he wanted. Two more weeks brought another letter. He was living somewhere else now and he would like to hear from me. And then he appeared in person. It was the first time I had ever seen him. He sat down beside my desk and I looked at him. Death stared out of the man. And I noticed at once the curious kindliness of him. He talked slowly and told me of his experiences. He was courteously brief, and even better than that, he spoke without emotion. “There is nobody to blame,” he said. “Not even myself. It is just the way things go. And if I can’t blame myself, how can I blame the world? The city is like that. I’m no good. I’m done. Worn out, useless. People try to take care of the useless ones. There are institutions. Well, I had two good homes and was in two institutions, thanks to the thing you wrote. But they kicked me out. They said I was a faker. Somehow I don’t appeal to charitably inclined people.” Later I understood why. It was because of the man’s smile--a feeble, tenacious grimace that seemed to be offering a sardonic reproof. It could never have been mistaken for a courageous smile. Philanthropy had taken Winkelburg up and then dropped him. Quickly and definitely. Because of his smile. The secret of its aggravating quality was this: in it Winkelburg accused himself of his uselessness, his feebleness, his poverty. It was as if he were regarding himself continually through the annoyed eyes of others and addressing himself with the words of others--“You, Winkelburg, get out of here. You’re a nuisance. You make me uncomfortable, because you’re poor and diseased and full of gloom. Get out. I don’t want you around. Why the devil don’t you die?” And the aggravating thing was that people looked at Winkelburg’s smile as into a mirror. They saw in it a shrewd reflection of their own attitude toward the man. They felt that Winkelburg understood what they thought of him. And they didn’t like that. They didn’t like to feel that Winkelburg was aware that deep inside their minds they were always asking, “Why doesn’t this Winkelburg die and have it over with?” Because that made them out as cruel, heartless people, not much different in their attitude toward their fellow-man from predatory animals in their attitude toward fellow predatory animals. And somehow, although they really felt that way toward Winkelburg, they preferred not to believe it. At least, they disliked accusation where there should have been only gratitude. Not that Winkelburg was ungrateful. He was thankful, obliging and properly humble. But his smile persisted. And his smile was a mirror that would not let his benefactors escape the truth. And eventually Winkelburg’s smile became for them one of those curious mirrors that exaggerate images grotesquely.