And struggling with such dim memories of Deborah in her twenties, called forth in his mind by the picture of the woman of thirty here, Roger grew still more confused.

What was to be the end of it?
She was still but a pioneer in a jungle, endlessly groping and trying new things.
"How many children are there in the public schools ?" he asked.
"About eight hundred thousand," Deborah said.
"Good Lord!" he groaned, and he felt within him a glow of indignation rise against these immigrant women for breeding so inconsiderately.

With the mad city growing so fast, and the people of the tenements breeding, breeding, breeding, and packing the schools to bursting, what could any teacher be but a mere cog in a machine, ponderous, impersonal, blind, grinding out future New Yorkers?
He reached home limp and battered from the storm of new impressions coming on top of his sleepless night.

He had thought of a school as a simple place, filled with little children, mischievous at times perhaps and some with dirty faces, but still with minds and spirits clean, unsoiled as yet by contact with the grim spirit of the town.

He had thought of childhood as something intimate and pure, inside his home, his family.