"Isn't it because you persist in approaching them as though they were strange, wild beasts?" the young woman went on. "You speak of them just as if they were different from us. But they are not, are they? They have their feelings just like we have; they fall in love and they get married and they quarrel and they die, just like we do. There is not more crime in the tenement-houses than there is in the rest of the city--not if you remember how many more people live in the tenement-houses. There isn't less joy there, or less sorrow either. There is quite as much happiness, I reckon, and a good deal more fun. They are not the lower animals; and it just makes me mad all over when I hear them spoken of in that way. They are human beings, after all--and if you can't understand them it's because you're not ready to go to them as your equals." "That's what I say," the Irishman agreed; "we must approach them on the plane of human sympathy--that's the only way to get them to open their hearts." "Why should we expect them to open their hearts to us?" Miss Peters continued. "We don't open ours to strangers, do we?" "That's quite true," admitted Barry. "Sometimes I wonder if it isn't impertinent we are when we thrust ourselves into a poor man's room. I doubt we should like him to thrust himself into ours." "I think that is a most amusing suggestion of yours," Mrs. Jimmy declared. "I shall look forward with delight to the day when the Five Points send missionaries up to Fifth Avenue." "What an absurd idea!" cried Mrs. Canton, in disgust. "Come now," the Irishman returned, "I deny that the suggestion is mine; but it is not so absurd--really, it isn't. There's lots of things they can teach us. I don't know but what we have more to learn from them than they have from us--really I don't. Christianity, now--practical Christianity--'inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these,' and all that sort of thing--well, there's more of that among the poor than there is among the rich, I'm thinking." "If you want to pick up picturesque bits of low life in New York," broke in De Ruyter, "you must get a chance to see a candle in the plate." "A candle in the plate?" echoed Barry. "I've never heard of it." "It sounds like the title of a tale of superstition transplanted from Europe and surviving here in America," said Mrs. Jimmy.