There had been people at the Home, who exchanged a stilted, perfunctory kindness for their salaries.

The visitors who called on receiving days he had divided into three classes: the psalm-singing kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy in every feature of their faces; the kind who dressed in silks and jewels, and handed to those poor little mother-hungry souls worn toys that their children no longer cared for, in exactly the same spirit in which they pitched biscuits to the monkeys at the zoo, and for the same reason--to see how they would take them and be amused by what they would do; and the third class, whom he considered real people.

They made him feel they cared that he was there, and that they would have been glad to see him elsewhere.
Now here was another class, that had all they needed of the world's best and were engaged in doing work that counted.

They had things worth while to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother.

With them he could, for the only time in his life, forget the lost hand that every day tortured him with a new pang.