t in the labor
world in our fair land--all nationalities feel friendly because they
think you are a countryman. But a Turk--that stretched boundaries a
bit.

For every question Schmitz asked me I asked him one back. His wife and
daughter, sixteen, were in France for three months, visiting the
wife's parents. As Schmitz's pernicketyness became during the next
days more and more impossible to ignore, I solaced my harassed
feelings with the thought of how much it must mean to Mrs. Schmitz to
be away from Mr. Schmitz and his temperament and disposition for three
blessed months. Perhaps the daughter, sixteen, had spoken of that
phase of the trip to Mrs. Schmitz. Mrs. Schmitz, being a dutiful wife
who has stood Mr. Schmitz at least, we surmise, some seventeen years,
replied to such comments of her sixteen-year-old daughter, "Hush,
Freda!"

At five minutes to five Schmitz graciously told me I might go up to my
supper, though the law in the statute books stood five. Everybody
upstairs in the main kitchen, as I made my way to the service
elevator, spoke kindly and asked in the accents of at least ten
different nationalities how I liked my job. Hotel folk, male and
female, are indeed a friendly lot.

The dining room for the help is on the ballroom floor, which is a
short flight of steps above the third. It is the third floor which is
called the service floor, where our lockers are, and the chambermaids'
sleeping quarters, and the recreation room.

There are, it seems, class distinctions among hotel help. The chefs
eat in a dining room of their own. Then, apparently next in line, came
our dining room. I, as pantry girl, ranked a "second officer." We had
round tables seating from eight to ten at a table, table cloths and
cafeteria style of getting one's food. The chefs were waited upon. In
our dining room ate the bell boys, parlor maids, laundry workers,
seamstresses, housekeepers, hotel guards and police, the employment
man, pantry girls--a bit of everything. To reach our dining room we
had to pass through the large room where the chambermaids ate. They
had long bare tables, no cloths, and sat at benches without backs.

As to food, our dining room but reflected the state of mind any and
every hotel dining room reflects, from the most begilded and
bemirrored down. Some thought the food good, some thought it awful,
some thought nothing about it at all, but just sat and ate. One thing
at least was certain--there was enough. Fo