th. As our souls develop with
the advantages of all that constitutes an ideal--an intellectual,
esthetic and moral ideal--their souls diminish under the oppression of a
constant physical effort to meet material demands. The fact that they
become physically callous to what we consider unbearable is used as an
argument for their emotional insensibility. I hold such an argument as
false. From all I saw I am convinced that, _given their relative
preparation_ for suffering and for pleasure, their griefs and their joys
are the same as ours in kind and in degree.

* * * * *

When one is accustomed to days begun at will by the summons of a tidy
maid, waking oneself at half-past five means to be guardian of the hours
until this time arrives. Once up, the toilet I made in the nocturnal
darkness of my room can best be described by the matron's remark to me
as I went to bed: "If you want to wash," she said, "you'd better wash
now; you can't have no water in your room, and there won't be nobody up
when you leave in the morning." My evening bath is supplemented by a
whisk of the sponge at five.

Without it is black--a more intense black than night's beginning, when
all is astir. The streets are silent, an occasional train whirls past,
groups of men hurry hither and thither swinging their arms, rubbing
their ears in the freezing air. Many of them have neither overcoats nor
gloves. Now and then a woman sweeps along. Her skirts have the same
swing as my own short ones; under her arm she carries a newspaper bundle
whose meaning I have grown to know. My own contains a midday meal: two
cold fried oysters, two dried preserve sandwiches, a pickle and an
orange. My way lies across a bridge. In the first gray of dawn the river
shows black under its burden of ice. Along its troubled banks
innumerable chimneys send forth their hot activity, clouds of seething
flames, waving arms of smoke and steam--a symbol of spent energy, of the
lives consumed and vanishing again, the sparks that shine an instant
against the dark sky and are spent forever.

As I draw nearer the factory I move with a stream of fellow workers
pouring toward the glass cage of the timekeeper. He greets me and starts
me on my upward journey with a wish that I shall not get discouraged, a
reminder that the earnest worker always makes a way for herself.

"What will you do about your name?" "What will you do with your hair and
your hands?" "How can