romises
to let me know if he has a vacancy for an unskilled hand. Another boss
printer, after much urging on my part, consents to give me a trial the
following Monday at three dollars a week. A kindly forelady in a large
printing establishment on Wabash Avenue sends me away because she wants
only trained workers. "I'm real sorry," she says. "You're from the East,
aren't you? I notice you speak with an accent."

By this time it is after three in the afternoon; my chances are
diminishing as the day goes on and others apply before me. There is one
more possibility at a box and label company which has advertised for a
girl to feed a Gordon press. I have never heard of a Gordon press, but I
make up my mind not to leave the label company without the promise of a
job for the very next day. The stairway is dingy and irregular. My
spirits are not buoyant as I open a swinging door and enter a room with
a cage in the middle, where a lady cashier, dressed in a red silk waist,
sits on a high stool overlooking the office. Three portly men, fat, well
nourished, evidently of one family, are installed behind yellow ash
desks, each with a lady typewriter at his right hand. I go timidly up to
the fattest of the three. He is in shirt sleeves, evidently feeling the
heat painfully. He pretends to be very busy and hardly looks up when I
say:

"I seen your ad. in the paper this morning."

"You're rather late," is his answer. "I've got two girls engaged
already."

"Too late!" I say with an intonation which interrupts his work for a
minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from
tragedy to a good-humoured smile, I ask:

"Say, are you sure those girls'll come? You can't always count on us,
you know."

He laughs at this. "Have you ever run a Gordon press?"

"No, sir; but I'm awful handy."

"Where have you been working?"

"At J.'s in Lake Street."

"What did you make?"

"A dollar a day."

"Well, you come in to-morrow about eleven and I'll tell you then whether
I can give you anything to do."

"Can't you be sure now?"

Truly disappointed, my voice expresses the eagerness I feel.

"Well," the fat man says indulgently, "you come in to-morrow morning at
eight and I'll give you a job."

The following day I begin my last and by far my most trying
apprenticeship.

The noise of a single press is deafening. In the room where I work
there are ten presses on my row, eight back of us and four printing
machines