Thus there are plenty of sincere folk in the world but few who are simple.
Well, the longer he talked, the less interested I was in what he said and the more fascinated I became in what he was.

I felt a wistful interest in him: and I wanted to know what way he took to purge himself of himself.

I think if I had been in that group nineteen hundred years ago, which surrounded the beggar who was born blind, but whose anointed eyes now looked out upon glories of the world, I should have been among the questioners: "What did he to thee?
How opened he thine eyes ?" I tried ineffectually several times to break the swift current of his oratory and finally succeeded (when he paused a moment to finish off a bit of pie crust).
"You must have seen some hard experiences in your life," I said.
"That I have," responded Bill Hahn, "the capitalistic system--" "Did you ever work in the mills yourself ?" I interrupted hastily.
"Boy and man," said Bill Hahn, "I worked in that hell for thirty-two years--The class-conscious proletariat have only to exert themselves--" "And your wife, did she work too--and your sons and daughters ?" A spasm of pain crossed his face.
"My daughter ?" he said.

"They killed her in the mills." It was appalling--the dead level of the tone in which he uttered those words--the monotone of an emotion long ago burned out, and yet leaving frightful scars.
"My friend!" I exclaimed, and I could not help laying my hand on his arm.
I had the feeling I often have with troubled children--an indescribable pity that they have had to pass through the valley of the shadow, and I not there to take them by the hand.
"And was this--your daughter--what brought you to your present belief ?" "No," said he, "oh, no.

I was a Socialist, as you might say, from youth up.