nd twists of the express in front of a person
with a Vandyke beard reading _The Gospel According to St. John_, I
long with all the energy left in me (I still have some in my arms) to
grab that book out of his hands, fling it in his face, and hiss,
"Hypocrite!" at him. I do not believe I ever knew what it was really
and honestly to hate a person before. If it had been the _Police
Gazette_ I could have borne up under it. But _The Gospel According to
St. John_--my Gawd!

Thus ends my first factory day. It is small comfort to calculate I
stepped on more chocolates in those nine hours than I usually eat in a
year. To be sure, it was something new on the line of life's
experiences. If that man in front of me were only a chocolate with
soft insides and I could squash him flat! Yes, there was enough energy
in my feet for that. To get my heel square above him and then
_stamp_--ugh! the sinner! He continues reading _The Gospel According
to St. John_, nor so much as looks up to receive my last departing
glare as I drag myself off at 116th Street.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, the next morning my feet feel as if they
had never been stood on before. What if we do have to stand up in the
Subway all the way down? Who minds standing in the Subway? And then
stand in the jammed and elbowing cross-town car. Who cares? And how we
do walk up those factory steps as if we owned the world! The
chestiness of us as we take our key off left-hand hook 1075, ring up
under the clock (twenty minutes early we are) and hang up on No. 1075
right; but it seems you are late if you are not ten minutes early. It
is the little tricks like that you get wise about.

I saunter over to the elevator with a jam of colored girls--the
majority of the girls in that factory were colored. I call out,
"Third, please." Oh, glory be! Why were we ever born? That elevator
man turns around and pierces me with his eye as though I were the man
with the Vandyke beard in the Subway, and he, the elevator man, were
I. "_Third_ floor did ya say? And since when does the elevator lift
ya to the _third_ floor? If ya want the sixth floor ya can ride.
_Third_ floor! My Gawd! _Third_ floor!" And on and on he mutters and
up and up I go, all the proud feelings of owning the world stripped
from me--exposed before the multitudes as an ignoramus who didn't know
any better than to ride in the elevator when she was bound only for
the third floor. "_Third_ floor," continues muttering the elevat