I had false teeth," is the comment made upon this, "I wouldn't tell
anybody."

"I thought some," continues the implacable new girl, unruffled, "of
having a gold filling put in one of my front teeth. I think gold
fillings are so pretty," she concludes, looking toward me for a
response.

This primitive love of ornament I found manifest in the same
medico-barbaric fancy for wearing eye-glasses. The nicety of certain
operations in the mill, performed not always in the brightest of lights,
is a fatal strain upon the eyes. There are no oculists in Perry, but a
Buffalo member of the profession makes a monthly visit to treat a new
harvest of patients. Their daily effort toward the monthly finishing of
40,000 garments permanently diminishes their powers of vision. Every
thirty days a new set of girls appears with glasses. They wear them as
they would an ornament of some kind, a necklace, bracelet or a hoop
through the nose.

When the six o'clock whistle blew on the first night I had finished only
two dozen shirts. "You've got a good job," my teacher said, as we came
out together in the cool evening air. "You seem to be taking to it."
They size a girl up the minute she comes in. If she has quick motions
she'll get on all right. "I guess you'll make a good finisher."

Once more we assembled to eat and chat and relax. After a moment by the
kitchen pump we took our places at table. Our hostess waited upon us.
"It takes some grit," she explained, "and more grace to keep boarders."
Except on Sundays, when all men might be considered equals in the sight
of the Lord, she and her husband did not eat until we had finished. She
passed the dishes of our frugal evening meal--potatoes, bread and butter
and cake--and as we served ourselves she held her head in the opposite
direction, as if to say, "I'm not looking; take the biggest piece."

It was with my roommates I became the soonest acquainted. The butcher's
widow from Batavia was a grumbler. "How do you like your job?" I asked
her as we fumbled about in the dim light of our low-roofed room.

"Oh, Lordy," was the answer, "I didn't think it would be like this. I'd
rather do housework any day. I bet you won't stay two weeks." She was
ugly and stupid. She had been married young to a butcher. Left alone to
battle with the world, she might have shaken out some of her dullness,
but the butcher for many years had stood between her and reality,
casting a still deeper shadow on her ignorance.