ual advertisement in
the papers and changing hands every few days.

The workroom on our floor was fifty or sixty feet long, with windows on
the street at one end and on a court at the other. The middle of the
room was lighted by gas. The air was foul and the dirt lay in heaps at
every corner and was piled up under the centre tables. It was less like
a workshop than an old attic. There was the long-accumulated disorder of
hasty preparation for the vanities of life. It had not at all the aspect
of a factory which makes a steady provision of practical things. There
were odds and ends of fancy costumes hanging about--swords, crowns,
belts and badges. Under the sewing machines' swift needles flew the
scarlet coats of a regiment; gold and silver braid lay unfurled on the
table; the hand-workers bent over an armful of khaki; a row of young
girls were fitting military caps to imaginary soldier's heads; the
ensigns of glory slipped through the fingers of the humble; chevrons and
epaulets were caressed never so closely by toil-worn hands. In the midst
of us sits a man on a headless hobby horse, making small gray trunks
bound in red leather, such boxes as might contain jewels for Marguerite,
a game of lotto, or a collection of jack-straws and mother-of-pearl
counters brought home from a first trip abroad. The trunk maker wears a
sombrero and smokes a corn-cob pipe. He is very handsome with dark eyes
and fine features, and he has the "average figure," so that he serves as
manikin for the atelier; and I find him alternately a workman in
overalls and a Turkish magnate with turban and flowing robes. It is into
this atmosphere of toil and unreality that I am initiated as a hand
sewer. Something of the dramatic and theatrical possesses the very
managers themselves. Below, a regiment waits impatient for new brass
buttons; we sew against time and break all our promises. Messengers
arrive every few minutes with fresh reports of rising ire on the part of
disappointed customers. Down the stairs pell-mell comes an elderly
partner of the firm with a gold-and-purple crown on his head and after
him follows the kindly Mr. F. in an usher's jacket. "If you don't start
now," he calls, "that order'll be left on our hands."

Amid such confusion the regular rhythm of the needle as it carries its
train of thread across the yards of coloured cloth is peaceful,
consoling. I have on one side of me a tailor who speaks only Polish, on
the other side a seams