or, half glazed and sometimes burnished by the sun, has printed
across it in dingy gilt letters:

BLIZZARD--MFR. HATS

Once the door with the faded gilt letters had closed, with him inside,
the legless man, who was none other than Blizzard, the manufacturer of
hats, put off those airs of helplessness and humility by which so many
coins were attracted into the little tin cup upon the top of his
hand-organ, and assumed the attitude of one accustomed to command and to
be served, to reward and to punish. He was no longer a beggar, but a
magnate. He swelled with power, and twenty girls of almost as many
nationalities, plaiting straw hats by the gas-light, cringed in their
hearts, and redoubled the speed of their hands. About the twenty girls
who slaved for Blizzard there were two peculiarities which at once
distinguished them from any other collection of female factory-hands on
the East Side. They were all strong and healthy looking, and they were
all pretty. He had collected them much as rich men in a higher station
of life collect paintings or pearls. If some of them bore the marks of
blows and pinchings, it was not upon any part of them which showed. If
some of them suffered from the fear of torture or even sudden death, it
did not prevent them from showing the master rows of even white teeth
between ingratiatingly parted lips whenever he deigned to speak to them.
If any girl among them thought to escape him, to find work elsewhere, to
betray what she knew of him, even, and vanish into the slums of some far
city, she was deterred by the memory of certain anecdotes constantly
related by her companions. The most terrible of these anecdotes was that
related of a certain Florence Magrue. She had fled with her story to the
nearest policeman, who had quietly returned her to the shop,
reluctantly, it was admitted, but with the determination of a man whose
very existence depends upon the favor of another. The master had
welcomed her and smiled upon her as upon an erring child. He had sent
her upon an errand into the cellar under the shop, himself unlocking
the door. And that was the last that any one had ever seen of
Florence Magrue.

In addition to fear, the master supplied certain creature comforts, not
lightly to be thrown away. If a girl could make up her mind to accept
shame, bodily injury if she displeased, and a life of toil, she fared
better under Blizzard's direction than her sister who worked for Ecbaum,
let us