The Interpreter, smiling, caught up the unfinished sentence. "But you
do not see how an old, poverty-stricken and crippled maker of baskets
can be of any use to you."
McIver spoke as one measuring his words. "They tell me you help people
who are in trouble."
"Are you then in trouble?" asked the Interpreter, kindly.
The other did not answer, and the man in the wheel chair continued,
still kindly, "What trouble can the great and powerful McIver have? You
have never been hungry--you have never felt the cold--you have no
children to starve--no son to be killed."
"I suppose you hold me personally responsible for the strike and for
all the hardships that the strikers have brought upon themselves and
their families?" said McIver. "You fellows who teach this
brotherhood-of-man rot and never have more than one meal ahead
yourselves always blame men like me for all the suffering in the
world."
The Interpreter replied with a dignity that impressed even McIver. "Who
am I that I should assume to blame any one? Who are you, sir, that
assume the power implied by either your acceptance or your denial of
the responsibility? You are only a part of the whole, as I am a part.
You, in your life place, are no less a creature of circumstances--an
accident--than I, here in my wheel chair--than Jake Vodell.
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