“If they only had a little common sense,” the Doctor grumbled, “there
wouldn’t be any dilemma.”
“Which?” I asked. “Your poor family or the charities?”
“Both,” was the answer. “If the Ebsteins had any common sense, they
would not be in this plight; and if the charities had any, the family
would have been helped long ago. The rarest thing in the world is common
sense.”
“How did you find them?” I asked; I always liked to ask this. The Doctor
was continually taking care of people in trouble, and as continually
trying to conceal the fact. “It is simply for practice,” she always
said. “My visits among the poor are only a kind of clinic. If it weren’t
for the interests of science, I’d never set foot in the slums again.”
“Did you ever find among them any of the valuable abnormal cases you are
looking for?” I asked once.
“No,” she answered, “but I might. I am always expecting to.”
“How did you discover the Ebsteins?” I asked. It was a new charity
“case,” and I took a professional interest in it.
“I had a patient in Snow Street, in a basement,—an old woman with
rheumatism.”
“What interesting scientific discoveries you must be making there,” I
murmured. “Chronic rheumatism is no doubt very instructive.”
The Doctor looked severe.
“A woman came down from the second floor, and said that there were some
people on the fifth that needed help. She asked me if I came from the
Charity Building,” said the Doctor, in disgust. “I can stand a great
deal, but I cannot stand being mistaken for a philanthropist.”
“You ought to be more on your guard,” I suggested. “You really put
yourself into positions where it is difficult to discriminate.”
“I climbed the stairs to the very top of the house, and knocked at the
only door I saw. ‘Herein!’ called somebody. Then I found myself in a
room full of children. No, they are not Mrs. Ebstein’s. She rents a
little hole in the wall from the woman, a German, who lives in this
room. The only passage to the inner apartment is through the outer one.
“They opened Mrs. Ebstein’s door, and there sat two children—”
“How old,” I asked.
“About twenty. Oh, they are grown up and married. They looked like Babes
in the Wood, but they are man and wife. The woman is a little thing with
her hair in two braids down her back. The man was sitting with his arms
on the table. He had been resting his head on his hands; he looked up
when I entered, and was dazed at first, then embarrassed. He is a nice,
honest German boy who ought to be at home in the _Vaterland_ with his
grandmother.”
“What did they come here for?” I interrupted.
“To starve,” said the Doctor. “America is like a great almshouse with no
endowment. She opens her arms to the poor of all nations, and says:
‘Come here and die.’ Luckily we have room enough to bury them all in.”
“How did you begin to talk with them?” I asked. “What is the best way of
beginning? Do you suppose these people resent being intruded upon as we
should?”
“I simply held out my hand,” answered the Doctor, and said: ‘Is this
Mrs. Ebstein?’ I spoke in German. The little woman burst out crying. She
had been crying before. Then I said: ‘Somebody told me that you are in
trouble. What can I do for you?’ She only pulled her husband’s sleeve
and said: ‘Heinrich, Heinrich! Komm mal, sprich!’
“I found out that they are German Jews, ‘aus Berlin.’ They came here
more than a year ago, just after their marriage. The man is a
brass-finisher. He had a job when he first came, and worked for six
months, I believe. Then the work shut down. Since then they have lived
on little or nothing.
“They have really almost starved. I glanced at a roll lying on the
table, and one of them told me that for weeks they have lived on bread.
Their landlady is too poor to help them. They have both tried to get
work of any kind, and have failed.
“‘They said we could make gran’ fortune in America,’ said Mrs. Ebstein.
‘Look! this is my fortune!’ and she took two pennies out of her
apron-pocket and shook them. ‘We eat these! After that we starve!’
“She is a vivacious little thing. When she talked she was inimitable.
Her eyes—she has bright brown eyes—twinkled, and she forgot that she was
hungry. She was telling me about her experiences in trying to get work.”
“Give me their address,” I said, “and I will report them to the Good
Samaritans.”
“No,” said the Doctor, quietly, “I want to take care of them myself.
Will you help?”
“Certainly,” I answered. “They are very interesting. Only you should
have found them in a garret. Something is lacking in your background. It
isn’t artistic.”
“There was altogether too much background,” said the Doctor. “Nearly all
the inhabitants of the tenement-house swarmed up while I was there, and
all of the landlady’s children came as far into that tiny room as was
possible. No, the lonely garret exists only in story-books. Its
seclusion is too good to be true. The worst feature in the lives of the
poor is that they have to be born and to die in public.
“Now that I think of it,” added the Doctor, rising and looking at her
list of calls, “do you think that you could get a baby’s wardrobe
together for Mrs. Ebstein?”