To express his determination to continue being Sue's companion and
partner, Sam during one winter taught a class of young men at a settlement
house in the factory district of the west side. The class in his hands was
unsuccessful. He found the young men heavy and stupid with fatigue after
the day of labour in the shops and more inclined to fall asleep in their
chairs, or wander away, one at a time, to loaf and smoke on a nearby
corner, than to stay in the room listening to the man reading or talking
before them.
When one of the young women workers came into the room, they sat up and
seemed for the moment interested. Once Sam heard a group of them talking
of these women workers on a landing in a darkened stairway. The experience
startled Sam and he dropped the class, admitting to Sue his failure and
his lack of interest and bowing his head before her accusation of a lack
of the love of men.
Later by the fire in his own room he tried to draw for himself a moral
from the experience.
"Why should I love these men?" he asked himself. "They are what I might
have been. Few of the men I have known have loved me and some of the best
and cleanest of them have worked vigorously for my defeat.
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