There they stretched--the same blackened wilderness of roofs sheltering the same horde of drinking, filthy, cursing, parasitical creatures; there flared the gin-palaces, more of them, more brilliantly lit, more gorgeously decorated.

Ten years of my life, and what had I done?
What could any one do?
The truth seemed suddenly written across the sky in letters of fire.

I, a poor human creature, had been fighting with a few other fanatics against the inviolable, the unconquerable laws of nature.

The hideous mistake of all individual effort was suddenly revealed to me.
'We were like a handful of children striving to dam a mighty torrent with a few handfuls of clay.

Better a thousand times that these people rotted--and died in their holes, that disease should stalk through their streets, and all the evil passions born of their misery and filth should be allowed to blaze forth that the whole world might see, so the laws of the world might intervene, the great natural laws by which alone these things could be changed.