ght is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and
not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and
cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week.

The conditions at J.'s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having
no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return
to get my apron or my wages. I shall be obliged to draw upon the
resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural
condition of life I wish to try one more place: a printing job. There
are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run
presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my
self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a
situation. On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find
policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best.
Other people of whom I inquire my way are sometimes curt, sometimes
compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not
nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person. Poor old women to whom
I speak often call me "dear" in answering.

Under the trellis of the elevated road the "cables" clang their way.
Trucks and automobiles, delivery wagons and private carriages plunge
over the rough pavements. The sidewalks are crowded with people who are
dressed for business, and who, whether men or women, are a business
type; the drones who taste not of the honey stored in the hives which
line the streets and tower against the blue sky, veiling it with smoke.
The orderly rush of busy people, among whom I move toward an address
given in the paper, is suddenly changed into confusion and excitement by
the bell of a fire-engine which is dragged clattering over the cobbles,
followed closely by another and another before the sound of the horses'
hoofs have died away. Excitement for a moment supersedes business. The
fire takes precedence before the office, and a crowd stands packed
against policemen's arms, gazing upward at a low brick building which
sends forth flames hotter than the brazen sun, smoke blacker than the
perpetual veil of soot.

I compare the dingy gold number over the burning door with the number in
print on the newspaper slip held between my thumb and forefinger.
Decidedly this is not one of my lucky days. The numbers correspond. But
there are other addresses and I collect a series of replies. The
employer in a box factory on the West Side takes my address and p