the familiar outline of any woman of the world.  With the aid of coarse woolen garments, a shabby felt sailor hat, a cheap piece of fur, a knitted shawl and gloves I am transformed into a working girl of the ordinary type.  I was born and bred and brought up in the world of the fortunate—­I am going over now into the world of the unfortunate.  I am to share their burdens, to lead their lives, to be present as one of them at the spectacle of their sufferings and joys, their ambitions and sorrows.

I get no farther than the depot when I observe that I am being treated as though I were ignorant and lacking in experience.  As a rule the gateman says a respectful “To the right” or “To the left,” and trusts to his well-dressed hearer’s intelligence.  A word is all that a moment’s hesitation calls forth.  To the working girl he explains as follows:  “Now you take your ticket, do you understand, and I’ll pick up your money for you; you don’t need to pay anything for your ferry—­just put those three cents back in your pocket-book and go down there to where that gentleman is standing and he’ll direct you to your train.”

This without my having asked a question.  I had divested myself of a certain authority along with my good clothes, and I had become one of a class which, as the gateman had found out, and as I find out later myself, are devoid of all knowledge of the world and, aside from their manual training, ignorant on all subjects.

My train is three hours late, which brings me at about noon to Pittsburg.  I have not a friend or an acquaintance within hundreds of miles.  With my bag in my hand I make my way through the dark, busy streets to the Young Women’s Christian Association.  It is down near a frozen river.  The wind blows sharp and biting over the icy water; the streets are covered with snow, and over the snow the soot falls softly like a mantle of perpetual mourning.  There is almost no traffic.  Innumerable tramways ring their way up and down wire-lined avenues; occasionally a train of freight cars announces itself with a warning bell in the city’s midst.  It is a black town of toil, one man in every three a labourer.  They have no need for vehicles of pleasure.  The trolleys take them to their work, the trains transport the products of the mills.

I hear all languages spoken:  this prodigious town is a Western bazaar where the nations assemble not to buy but to be employed.  The stagnant scum of other countries floats hither to be purified in the fierce bouillon of live opportunity.  It is a cosmopolitan procession that passes me:  the dusky Easterner with a fez of Astrakhan, the gentle-eyed Italian with a shawl of gay colours, the loose-lipped Hungarian, the pale, mystic Swede, the German with wife and children hanging on his arm.

[Illustration:  “THE STREETS ARE COVERED WITH SNOW, AND OVER THE SNOW THE SOOT FALLS SOFTLY LIKE A MANTLE OF PERPETUAL MOURNING”]

In this giant bureau of labour all nationalities gather, united by a common bond of hope, animated by a common chance of prosperity, kindred through a common effort, fellow-citizens in a new land of freedom.