What could be hoped for in such surroundings? With every effort to be
clean the dirt accumulates faster than it can be washed away. It was
impossible, I found by my own experience, to be really clean. There was
a total absence of beauty in everything--not a line of grace, not a
pleasing sound, not an agreeable odour anywhere. One could get used to
this ugliness, become unconscious even of the acrid smells that pervade
the tenement. It was probable my comrades felt at no time the discomfort
I did, but the harm done them is not the physical suffering their
condition causes, but the moral and spiritual bondage in which it holds
them. They are not a class of drones made differently from us. I saw
nothing to indicate that they were not born with like _capacities_ to
ours. As our bodies accustom themselves to luxury and cleanliness,
theirs grow hardened to deprivation and filth. As our souls develop with
the advantages of all that constitutes an ideal--an intellectual,
esthetic and moral ideal--their souls diminish under the oppression of a
constant physical effort to meet material demands. The fact that they
become physically callous to what we consider unbearable is used as an
argument for their emotional insensibility. I hold such an argument as
false. From all I saw I am convinced that, _given their relative
preparation_ for suffering and for pleasure, their griefs and their joys
are the same as ours in kind and in degree.

* * * * *

When one is accustomed to days begun at will by the summons of a tidy
maid, waking oneself at half-past five means to be guardian of the hours
until this time arrives. Once up, the toilet I made in the nocturnal
darkness of my room can best be described by the matron's remark to me
as I went to bed: "If you want to wash," she said, "you'd better wash