Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/143

 cept when she first got sick. Then I took her pay to her house. But I had nothing else to do with her, and when my wife went out to the hospital to see her and asked for the maternity ward, that was the last straw."

"Your wife told me about that too." Reynolds stared at the social worker in surprise. "And I think she really feels badly about it and is ashamed."

The man was amazed and appeased by this, too much so to reply, and the social worker continued:

"A good deal of your wife's trouble is caused by her nervousness. People are just like the machines you run at the steel works. Some of them are more complicated and harder to understand than others. If you don't handle them properly, they break and do a lot of damage. When you have a machine you don't understand, don't you try one way and then another until you find the one that works? Think how much time and patience you take over a machine of steel. And how much more complicated human beings are!"

"That's true,' the man admitted. "That's true. She is nervous and I guess she does have a hard time. Well, she seems to know what's what