letting out the air with a knife stuck under the cork, capping the corks, sealing the caps, counting and distributing the bottles.  These operations are paid for at the rate of one-half a cent for the dozen bottles, which sum is divided among us.  My two companions are earning a living, so I must work in dead earnest or take bread out of their mouths.  At every blow of the hammer there is danger.  Again and again bottles fly to pieces in my hand.  The boy who runs the corking-machine smashes a glass to fragments.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, my own fingers crimson stained.

“That ain’t nothin’,” he answers.  “Cuts is common; my hands is full of ’em.”

The woman directs us; she is fussy and loses her head, the work accumulates, I am slow, the boy is clumsy.  There is a stimulus unsuspected in working to get a job done.  Before this I had worked to make the time pass.  Then no one took account of how much I did; the factory clock had a weighted pendulum; now ambition outdoes physical strength.  The hours and my purpose are running a race together.  But, hurry as I may, as we do, when twelve blows its signal we have corked only 210 dozen bottles!  This is no more than day-work at seventy cents.  With an ache in every muscle, I redouble my energy after lunch.  The girl with the goggles looks at me blindly and says: 

“Ain’t it just awful hard work?  You can make good money, but you’ve got to hustle.”

She is a forlorn specimen of humanity, ugly, old, dirty, condemned to the slow death of the overworked.  I am a green hand.  I make mistakes; I have no experience in the fierce sustained effort of the bread-winners.  Over and over I turn to her, over and over she is obliged to correct me.  During the ten hours we work side by side not one murmur of impatience escapes her.  When she sees that I am getting discouraged she calls out across the deafening din, “That’s all right; you can’t expect to learn in a day; just keep on steady.”

As I go about distributing bottles to the labelers I notice a strange little elf, not more than twelve years old, hauling loaded crates; her face and chest are depressed, she is pale to blueness, her eyes have indigo circles, her pupils are unnaturally dilated, her brows contracted; she has the appearance of a cave-bred creature.  She seems scarcely human.  When the time for cleaning up arrives toward five my boss sends me for a bucket of water to wash up the floor.  I go to the sink, turn on the cold water and with it the steam which takes the place of hot water.  The valve slips; in an instant I am enveloped in a scalding cloud.  Before it has cleared away the elf is by my side.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she asks.

Her inhuman form is the vehicle of a human heart, warm and tender.  She lifts her wide-pupiled eyes to mine; her expression does not change from that of habitual scrutiny cast early in a rigid mould, but her voice carries sympathy from its purest source.