any desire to do violence and their equally normal disposition to
lend a hand. One is inclined to feel that the majority of persons do
not believe in their existence. But if an accident occurs in the
street, there are always several of them who appear to spring out of
the earth to give human sympathy and assistance; if a national
calamity, physical or social, takes place, the world suddenly seems
full of them. They are the thousands of Browns, Joneses, and
Robinsons who, massed together, send food to famine-stricken
countries, sustenance to earthquake-devastated regions, aid to
wounded soldiers or miners or flood-swept homelessness. They are the
ones who have happened naturally to continue to grow straight and
carry out the First Intention. They really form the majority; if they
did not, the people of the earth would have eaten one another alive
centuries ago. But though this is surely true, a happy cynicism
totally disbelieves in their existence. When a combination of
circumstances sufficiently dramatic brings one of them into
prominence, he is either called an angel or a fool. He is neither. He
is only a human creature who is normal.

After this manner Tembarom was wholly normal. He liked work and
rejoiced in good cheer, when he found it, however attenuated its form.
He was a good companion, and even at ten years old a practical
person. He took his loose coppers from the old bureau drawer, and
remembering that he had several times helped Jake Hutchins to sell
his newspapers, he went forth into the world to find and consult him
as to the investment of his capital.

"Where are you goin', Tem?" a woman who lived in the next room said
when she met him on the stairs. "What you goin' to do?"