d alertly and chattered like a flock of sparrows. Ellen
moved with this rank and file of the army of labor, and all at once
a sense of comradeship seized her. She began to feel humanity as she
had never felt it before. The sense of her own littleness aroused
her to a power of comprehension of the grandeur of the mass of which
she was a part. She began to lose herself and sense humanity.

When the people reached the factories, two on one side of the road,
one, Lloyd's, on the other, they began streaming up the outside
stairs and disappearing like swarms of bees in hives. Two flights of
stairs, one on each side, led to a platform in front of the entrance
of Lloyd's.

When Ellen set her foot on one of these stairs the seven-o'clock
steam-whistle blew, and a mighty thrill shot through the vast
building. Ellen caught her breath. Abby came close to her.

"Don't get scared," said she, with ungracious tenderness; "there's
nothing to be scared at."

Ellen laughed. "I'm not scared," said she. Then they entered the
factory, humming with machinery, and a sensation which she had not
anticipated was over her. Scared she was not; she was fairly
exultant. All at once she entered a vast room in which eager men
were already at the machines with frantic zeal, as if they were
driving labor herself. When she felt the vibration of the floor
under her feet, when she saw people spring to their stations of
toil, as if springing to guns in a battle, she realized the might
and grandeur of it all. Suddenly it seemed to her that the greatest
thing in the whole world was work and that this was one of the
greatest forms of work--to cover the feet of progress of the
travellers of the earth from the cradle to the grave. She saw that
these great factories, and the strength of this army of the sons and
daughters of toil, made possible the advance of civilization itself,
which cannot go barefoot. She realized all at once and forever the
dignity of labor, this girl of the people, with a brain which
enabled her to overlook the heads of the rank and file of which she
herself formed a part. She never again, whatever her regret might
have been for another life for which she was better fitted, which
her taste preferred, had any sense of ignominy in this. She never
again felt that she was too good for her labor, for labor had
revealed itself to her like a goddess behind a sordid veil. Abby and
Maria looked at her wonderingly. No other girl had ever entered