girl wants somethin'. I can't understand her...."

Those two sit on the sofa. The moon shines on the nightingale singing
in the sycamore tree. Nor do they ever glimpse a vision of little
Italian Pauline's swift fingers dancing over the boxes, nor do they
ever guess of wan Louisa's sobs.

II

_286 On Brass_

Sweetness and Light.

So now appears the candy factory in retrospect.

Shall we stumble upon a job yet that will make brass seem as a haven
of refuge? Allah forbid!

After all, factory work, more than anything so far, has brought out
the fact that life from beginning to end is a matter of comparisons.
The factory girl, from my short experience, is not fussing over what
her job looks like compared to tea at the Biltmore. She is comparing
it with the last job or with home. And it is either slightly better or
slightly worse than the last job or home. Any way round, nothing to
get excited over. An outsider, soul-filled college graduate with a
mission, investigates a factory and calls aloud to Heaven: "Can such
things be? Why do women _stay_ in such a place?"

The factory girl, if she heard those anguished cries, would as like as
not shrug her shoulders and remark: "Ugh! she sh'u'dda seen ----'s
factory where I worked a year ago." Or, "Gawd! what does she think a
person's goin' to do--sit home all day and scrub the kitchen?"

And yet the fact remains that some things get too much on even a
philosophical factory girl's nerves. Whereat she merely walks out--if
she has gumption enough. The labor turnover, from the point of view of
production and efficiency, can well be a vital industrial concern. To
the factory girl, it saves her life, like as not. Praise be the labor
turnover!

If it were not for that same turnover, I, like the soul-filled college
graduate, might feel like calling aloud, not to Heaven, but to the
President of the United States and Congress and the Church and Women's
clubs: "Come quick and rescue females from the brassworks!" As it is,
the females rescue themselves. If there's any concern it's "the boss
he should worry." He must know how every night girls depart never to
cross those portals again, so help them Gawd. Every morning a new
handful is broken in, to stay there a week or two, if that long, and
take to their heels. Praise be the labor turnover, as long as we have
such brassworks.

Before eight o'clock of a cold Monda