FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33  
34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   >>   >|  
ise, the sordidness, the witchlike matron annoy me. I have a sudden impulse to flee, to seek warmth and food and proper shelter--to snap my fingers at experience and be grateful I was born among the fortunate. Something within me calls _Courage_! I take a room at three dollars a week with board, put my things in it, and while my feet yet ache with cold I start to find a factory, a pickle factory, which, the matron tells me, is run by a Christian gentleman. I have felt timid and even overbold at different moments in my life, but never so audacious as on entering a factory door marked in gilt letters: "_Women Employees_." The Cerberus between me and the fulfilment of my purpose is a gray-haired timekeeper with kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a thousand. Each number means a workman--each tick of the clock a moment of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the window of the glass cage. It opens. "Do you need any girls?" I ask, trying not to show my emotion. "Ever worked in a factory?" "No, sir; but I'm very handy." "What have you done?" "Housework," I respond with conviction, beginning to believe it myself. "Well," he says, looking at me, "they need help up in the bottling department; but I don't know as it would pay you--they don't give more than sixty or seventy cents a day." "I am awfully anxious for work," I say. "Couldn't I begin and get raised, perhaps?" "Surely--there is always room for those who show the right spirit. You come in to-morrow morning at a quarter before seven. You can try it, and you mustn't get discouraged; there's plenty of work for good workers." The blood tingles through my cold hands. My heart is lighter. I have not come in vain. I have a place! When I get back to the boarding-house it is twilight. The voices I had heard and been annoyed by have materialized. Before the gas stove there are nine small individuals dressed in a strange combination of uniform checked aprons and patent leather boots worn out and discarded by the babies of the fortunate. The small feet they encase are crossed, and the freshly washed faces are demure, as the matron with the wig frowns down into a newspaper from which she now and then hisses a command to order. Three miniature members are rocking violently in tiny rocking chairs. "
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33  
34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

factory

 

matron

 

pickle

 
rocking
 

fortunate

 

morrow

 

morning

 

quarter

 

sordidness

 
witchlike

spirit

 

tingles

 

workers

 
discouraged
 

plenty

 

warmth

 

bottling

 

department

 

seventy

 

Couldn


sudden

 
raised
 
lighter
 

impulse

 
anxious
 

Surely

 

demure

 

frowns

 

washed

 

babies


discarded

 
encase
 

crossed

 

freshly

 
newspaper
 
members
 

violently

 

chairs

 
miniature
 
hisses

command

 

annoyed

 

materialized

 

voices

 
twilight
 
boarding
 
Before
 

aprons

 
checked
 

patent