All this had been narrated to me by the child's mother, who had
worked as a packer of "beers," and who had loved little Angelo. As I
repeated her broken words about the little mangled body, I saw some
of my auditors wipe away a surreptitious tear.

After I had stopped, several women came up to talk with me at the
last, when most of the company was departing, there came one more,
who had waited her turn. The first thing I saw was her loveliness,
the thing about her that dazzled and stunned people, and then came
the strange sense of familiarity. Where had I met this girl before?

She said what everybody always says; she had been so much
interested, she had never dreamed that such conditions existed in
the world. I, applying the acid test, responded, "So many people
have said that to me that I have begun to believe it."

"It is so in my case," she replied, quickly. "You see, I have lived
all my life in the South, and we have no such conditions there."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Our negroes at least can steal enough to eat," she said.

I smiled. Then--since one has but a moment or two to get in one's
work in these social affairs, and so has to learn to thrust quickly:
"You have timber-workers in Louisiana, steel-workers in Alabama. You
have tobacco-factories, canning-factories, cotton-mills--have you
been to any of them to see how the people live?"

All this I said automatically, it being the routine of the agitator.