It's a pretty hopeless problem--the individual
case--charity is all rotten from root to branch. If you could see the
harm that's been done by mistaken charity! Why, look at my friend, Mrs.
Page, now. She tried to work it out that way, and what came of it
except more rottenness? And yet until the State looks after the
unemployed, there is obliged to be charity."
"Do you mean Mrs. Kent Page?" asked Stephen in surprise, and remembered
that his mother had once accused Corinna of trying to "undermine
society."
"She is one of my best friends," answered the old man, with mingled
pride and affection. "I go to see her in her shop every now and then,
and I reckon she values my advice about her affairs as much as
anybody's. Well, when she came home from Europe she found that she
owned a row of tenements like this one, and her agent was profiteering
in rents like most of the others. I wish you could have seen her when
she discovered it. Splendid? Well, I reckon she's the most splendid
thing this old world has ever had on top of it! She went straight to
work and had those houses made into modern apartments--bathrooms, steam
heat, and back yards full of trees and grass and flowers, just like
Monroe Park, only better.
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