For a time the burden of these things rested upon my breast like a leaden weight; they all seemed so utterly wrong to me, so unnecessary; so unjust! I sometimes think of religion as only a high sense of good order; and it seemed to me that morning as though the very existence of this disorderly mill district was a challenge to religion, and an offence to the Orderer of an Orderly Universe.

I don't now how such conditions may affect other people, but for a time I felt a sharp sense of impatience--yes, anger--with it all.

I had an impulse to take off my coat then and there and go at the job of setting things to rights.

Oh, I never was more serious in my life: I was quite prepared to change the entire scheme of things to my way of thinking whether the people who lived there liked it or not.

It seemed to me for a few glorious moments that I had only to tell them of the wonders in our country, the pleasant, quiet roads, the comfortable farmhouses, the fertile fields, and the wooded hills--and, poof! all this crowded poverty would dissolve and disappear, and they would all come to the country and be as happy as I was.
I remember how, once in my life, I wasted untold energy trying to make over my dearest friends.