had a strong sense of justice, and he soon became fired with a passion
to redress wrong. It was with gratitude that I hailed these signs of a
new interest in life, though I little dreamed what the outcome would
be. With the enthusiasm of a boy he plunged excitedly into these new
pursuits, regardless of whither they led him.

He had been used always to the laboratory, and so it was that he turned
the dining room into a sociological laboratory. Here came to dinner
all sorts and conditions of men,--scientists, politicians, bankers,
merchants, professors, labor leaders, socialists, and anarchists. He
stirred them to discussion, and analyzed their thoughts of life and
society.

He had met Ernest shortly prior to the "preacher's night." And after the
guests were gone, I learned how he had met him, passing down a street at
night and stopping to listen to a man on a soap-box who was addressing
a crowd of workingmen. The man on the box was Ernest. Not that he was
a mere soap-box orator. He stood high in the councils of the socialist
party, was one of the leaders, and was the acknowledged leader in the
philosophy of socialism. But he had a certain clear way of stating the
abstruse in simple language, was a born expositor and teacher, and
was not above the soap-box as a means of interpreting economics to the
workingmen.

My father stopped to listen, became interested, effected a meeting, and,
after quite an acquaintance, invited him to the ministers' dinner. It
was after the dinner that father told me what little he knew about him.
He had been born in the working class, though he was a descendant of
the old line of Everhards that for over two hundred years had lived
in America.* At ten years of age he had gone to work in the mills,