He was very evidently a favorite with Mrs. Schulz, and with small wonder, for he was always most considerately kind to her and to her children; but I thought that her liking for him grew quite as much out of her admiration for his strict regard to his church duties. She went to early mass herself, but she never failed to have breakfast ready for Dennis at exactly seven o’clock. Mr. Schulz and she were devout Catholics, only I could but admire her devotion the more. It seemed to me to be put to so crucial a test. With but a raw Swedish girl to help her, she had the care of her five children besides all the cooking and other housework for a dozen boarders whose meals must be served on the minute. I am sure that I never saw her lose her temper, and I think that I never heard her complain, which is the greater wonder when one takes into account the fact that she was the sole bread-winner of the family. Mr. Schulz had had a job as a night watchman, but had lost it, and was now looking for work--not too conscientiously, I fear, for he impressed me as a weak man who found his wife’s support a welcome escape from a personal struggle for existence. He had, at least, the negative virtue of sobriety, and the positive one of loyalty to church duty, and in the house he perhaps could not have served his wife to better purpose than by taking care of the children as he did. He was certainly very proud of Mrs. Schulz. One day he confided to me the fact that she was a cook when he married her, and that in her day she had served in some of the palaces on Michigan Avenue. Such an experience explained the admirable cooking of the simple fare which she gave us, and the homelike management of her house; and her knowledge and skill in these domestic matters bore no small relation, I thought, to the spirit of contentment among the men, which held them to their quiet evenings in her sitting-room against the allurements of the town. Her sheer physical endurance was a marvel. It was the unflinching courage of a brave soul, for she had little strength besides. Very tall and slight, emaciated almost to gauntness, she had a long, thin face with sunken cheeks and a dark complexion and jet-black hair, and round, soft, innocent eyes, which, matched with her indomitable spirit, were eloquent of the love which is “comrade to the lesser faith that sees the course of human things,” and seeing finds life worth living and is willing to endure.