There is a world of people, Auntie Sue, whose lives have been broken and spoiled by one thing or another, and who have more or less cut themselves loose from everything, and are just drifting, they don't care a hang where, because they think they have failed so completely that there is nothing more in life for them.

People like me,--I don't mean thieves and criminals necessarily,--who have had that which they know to be the best and biggest and truest part of themselves tortured and warped and twisted and denied and smashed and beaten and betrayed and killed; and who, because they feel that their real selves are dead within them, don't care what happens to that part which is left." He was walking the floor again now, and speaking with a depth of feeling which he had never before revealed to his gentle companion.
"It is not so much the love of wrong-doing that makes people turn bad,"-- he continued,--"it is having their real selves misunderstood and doubted and smothered and their realest loves and dreams and aspirations never recognized, or else distorted and twisted and made to appear as something they hate.

I want to make the people--and there are many thousands of them--who are suffering in the living hell that tormented me, feel that I know and understand.

And then, Auntie Sue, then I want to tell them about you and your river.
"I would teach them the things you have taught me.

I would say to every one that I could persuade to listen: 'It doesn't in the least matter what your experience is, the old river is still going on to the sea.
No matter if every woman you ever knew has proved untrue, virtuous womanhood still IS.