opened a door on the third floor
into a small office.

I was before a lank Yankee manufacturer. Leaning against his desk,
twisting from side to side in his mouth a toothpick, he nodded to me as
I entered. His wife, a grim, spectacled New Englander, sat in the
revolving desk-chair.

"I want work. Got any?"

"Waal, thet's jist what we hev got! Ain't we, Mary?"

(I felt a flashing sensation of triumph.)

"Take your tippet off, set right down, ef you're in earnest."

"Oh, I am in earnest; but what sort of work is it?"

"It's gluein' suspender straps."

"Suspenders! I want to work in a shoe-shop!"

He smiled, indulgent of this whim.

"They all does! Don't they, Mary?" (She acquiesced.)

"Then they get sick of the shop, and they come back to me. You will!"

"Let me try the shoe-shop first; then if I can't get a job I'll come
back."

He was anxious to close with me, however, and took up a pile of the
suspender straps, tempting me with them.

"What you ever done?"

"Nothing. I'm green!"

"That don't make no difference; they're all green, ain't they, Mary?"

"Yes," Mary said; "I have to learn them all."

"Now, to Preston's you can get in all right, but you won't make over
four dollars a week, and here if you're smart you'll make six dollars in
no time." ...

Preston's!

That was the first name I had heard, and to Preston's I was asking my
way, stimulated by the fact, though I had been in Lynn not an hour and a
half, a job was mine did I care to glue suspender straps!

I afterward learned that Preston's, a little factory on the town's
outskirts, is a model shoe-shop in its way. I did not work there, and
neither of the factories in which I was employed was "model" to my
judgment.

A preamble at the office, where they suggested taking me in as office
help:

"But I am green; I can't do office work."

Then Mr. Preston himself, working-director in drilling-coat, sat before
me in his private office. I told him: "I want work badly--"

He had nothing--was, indeed, turning away hands; my evident
disappointment had apparently impressed a man who was in the habit of
refusing applicants for work.

"Look here"--he mitigated his refusal--"come to-morrow at nine. I'm
getting in a whole bale of cloth for cutting linings."

"You'll give me a chance, then?"

"Yes, I will!"

It was then proven that I could not starve in Lynn, nor wander
houseless.

With these evidences of success, pride stirred. I determin