object to abolish--as all manner of disease is produced by vitiated air.
With better conditions such men will disappear; nay, the very possibility
of their existence will be gone."

"But in the meantime," I rejoined, "they are surely damaging our Cause,
and scenes like the one we have just witnessed would, if known to the
public, bring our party into ridicule and discredit."

"The Cause is too great and too high to be influenced by such men or such
scenes," answered the doctor with conviction. "Moreover it is our duty to
bring fresh blood and life into the party, so that no place will be left
to renegades of the Myers type."

And in face of Armitage's unswerving faith and optimism my moment of
disgust and perplexity passed, and I felt more than ever determined to
bring my quota of time and strength to the propagation of the Anarchist
ideals. "I have only seen a very limited and narrow circle," I said to
myself; "the field is wide, and I only know one obscure and unclean corner
of it. I cannot judge from this night's experience."

As far as the squalor of the men and their surroundings was concerned,
although it was at first something of a shock to me, I did not allow
myself to be disconcerted on its account. I had no desire or ambition to
be a mere dilettante Socialist, and as dirt and squalor had to be faced,
well, I was ready to face them. A famous Russian writer has described a
strange phase through which the Russian youth passed not many years since,
the "V. Narod" ("To the People!") movement, when young men and girls by
the thousands, some belonging to the highest classes in society, fled from
their families, tore themselves free from all domestic and conventional
yokes, persuaded that it was their duty to serve the cause of the masses,