g-pens, the likes of us white people wouldn't have to work nights."

"Well I made ninety-six cents' overtime last week," spoke up the silent
fat woman in the under-petticoat, "and I was thankful to the Lord to get
it."

Of the two hours or more that followed I have only a hazy recollection
of colored men bending over the pungent foam, of straining, sweating
women dragging their trucks round and round the great steaming-room. I
remembered nothing whatever of the moment when the agony was ended and
we were released for the day. Up to a certain dim borderland I remember
that my back ached and that my feet dragged heavily over the burning
floor, two pieces of boiling flesh. I do remember distinctly, however,
suddenly waking up on Third Avenue as I was walking past a delicatessen
store, and looking straight into the countenance of a pleasant-faced
woman. I must have walked right into her, for she seemed amused, and
went on her way laughing at something--probably my look of surprise as
the impact brought me suddenly to full consciousness. A clock was
hanging in the delicatessen-store window, and the hour-hand stood at
nine. A cooling sea-breeze was blowing up from the south, and as I
continued my walk home I realized that I had just passed out of a sort
of trance,--a trance superinduced by physical misery,--a merciful
subconscious condition of apathy, in which my soul as well as my body
had taken refuge when torture grew unbearable.

XVI

IN WHICH IT IS PROVED TO ME THAT THE DARKEST HOUR COMES JUST BEFORE THE
DAWN

The next morning I asked Mrs. Mooney what time it was when we left the
laundry the evening before, and she said half-past eight. Then I
recounted the strange experience of the trance, which did not arouse the
interest I had expected.

"That's nothing. That's the way we all get sometimes," she declared. "If
we didn't get into them trance-spells there'd be none of us workin' here
at all, at all."

"Yes, indeed," said a prayerful voice. "Praise God, it's one of his
blessid pervisions to help us bear our crosses."

"I don't think the Lord's got much to do with our breaking backs or
feet, do you?" asked the one-eyed girl, as we turned to unload a truck.
"Now I'm not an unbeliever, and I believe in God and Jesus Christ, all
right; but I sometimes think they don't do all these things that the
Methodists and Salvation Army says they do. Somehow, I don't believe God
knows anything about my eye or that one-