Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/197



elderly gentleman was discovered by his relatives to be living a hermit's life on the top floor of a cheap and wretched rooming house. He was a university graduate, a person of taste and refinement, who had traveled widely and had been accustomed to wealth. Domestic troubles had left him without a home and he had drifted hither and thither as circumstance directed, until at last he had reached his present miserable quarters.

Here for three winters he had occupied two rooms which were without means of heating. He had furnished them—if it could be said that they were furnished—with the odds and ends that remained from the days when he had had a house of his own. The bed clothing consisted of a thin and ragged quilt. There were neither rugs nor carpet on the floor, and despite his retention