and
dishonest what was really poetical. I wanted too, a position of greater
independence.

Of course, I had to learn the work. At first I was taught the leading
principles of button-removal. Then I went on to the rough-edging. This
consists in putting a rough edge on starched collars and cuffs with a
coarse file. Afterwards I was promoted to the mixing department. This is
where the completed articles are packed for delivery. It requires great
quickness and a nice sense of humour. For instance, you take up a pair
of socks and have to decide instantly whether you will send them both to
an elderly unmarried lady, or divide them impartially between two men.
Our skill in creating odd socks and stockings was gratefully recognized
by the Amalgamated Hosiers' Institution, who paid the laundry an annual
subsidy. A good memory was essential for the work. Every girl was
required to memorize what size in collars each male client took, so
that the fifteen-inch collars might be sent to the man with the
seventeen-inch neck and vice-versa. As the manager said to me once:
"What we are here for is to teach people self-control. The rest is
merely incidental."

I did not remain very long in the mixing department. My head for figures
soon earned me a place in the office. Much of it was routine work. Four
times every year we had to send out the notices that owing to the
increased cost of labour and materials we were reluctantly compelled to
increase our prices 22-1/2 per cent. We made it 22-1/2 per cent. with
the happy certainty that very few of our customers would be able to
calculate the amount of the increase, and still fewer would take the
trouble; this left a little room for the play of our fancy. As one of
our directors--a man with a fine, scholarly head--once said to me:
"Bring the larger vision into the addition of a customer's account. The
only natural limit to the charge for washing a garment is the cost of
the garment. Keep your eyes ever on the goal. Our present prices are but
milestones on the road." He had a beautiful, ecclesiastical voice.
Nobody would have guessed that he was an engineer and the inventor of
the Button-pulper and Hem-render which have done so much to make our
laundries what they are.

From the very first day that I took up my work in the office I became
conscious that Hector, the manager, had his eye upon me. He would
generally read a page or two of Keats or Shelley to us girls, before we
began to make ou