knitted tidies and portieres that exude an odour of cooking. Before the
fire a workingman sits in a blue shirt and overalls. Fresh from the
barber's hands, he has a clean mask marked by the razor's edge. Already
I feel at home.

"Want board, do you?" the woman asks. "Well, we ain't got no place;
we're always right full up."

My disappointment is keen. Regretfully I leave the fire and start on
again.

"I guess you'll have some trouble in finding what you want," the woman
calls to me on her way back to the kitchen, as I go out.

The answer is everywhere the same, with slight variations. Some take
"mealers" only, some only "roomers," some "only gentlemen." I begin to
understand it. Among the thousands of families who live in the city on
account of the work provided by the mills, there are girls enough to
fill the factories. There is no influx such as creates in a small town
the necessity for working-girl boarding-houses. There is an ample supply
of hands from the existing homes. There is the same difference between
city and country factory life that there is between university life in
a capital and in a country town.

A sign on a neat-looking corner house attracts me. I rap and continue to
rap; the door is opened at length by a tall good-looking young woman.
Her hair curls prettily, catching the light; her eyes are stupid and
beautiful. She has on a black skirt and a bright purple waist.

"Do you take boarders?"

"Why, yes. I don't generally like to take ladies, they give so much
trouble. You can come in if you like. Here's the room," she continues,
opening a door near the vestibule. She brushes her hand over her
forehead and stares at me; and then, as though she can no longer silence
the knell that is ringing in her heart, she says to me, always staring:

"My husband was killed on the railroad last week. He lived three hours.
They took him to the hospital--a boy come running down and told me. I
went up as fast as I could, but it was too late; he never spoke again. I
guess he didn't know what struck him; his head was all smashed. He was
awful good to me--so easy-going. I ain't got my mind down to work yet.
If you don't like this here room," she goes on listlessly, "maybe you
could get suited across the way."

Thompson Seton tells us in his book on wild animals that not one among
them ever dies a natural death. As the opposite extreme of vital
persistence we have the man whose life, in spite of acute disease, is