The light is good, the air is good, the room where we work is large and not crowded, the foreman is kind and friendly, the girls are young and cheerful; one can make $7 to $8 a week.

The conditions at J.’s are too favourable to be interesting, and, having no excuse to leave, I disappear one day at lunch time and never return to get my apron or my wages.  I shall be obliged to draw upon the resources of the black silk bag, but before returning to my natural condition of life I wish to try one more place:  a printing job.  There are quantities of advertisements in the papers for girls needed to run presses of different sorts, so on the very afternoon of my self-dismissal I start through the hot summer streets in search of a situation.  On the day when my appearance is most forlorn I find policemen always as officially polite as when I am dressed in my best.  Other people of whom I inquire my way are sometimes curt, sometimes compassionate, seldom indifferent, and generally much nicer or not nearly as nice as they would be to a rich person.  Poor old women to whom I speak often call me “dear” in answering.

Under the trellis of the elevated road the “cables” clang their way.  Trucks and automobiles, delivery wagons and private carriages plunge over the rough pavements.  The sidewalks are crowded with people who are dressed for business, and who, whether men or women, are a business type; the drones who taste not of the honey stored in the hives which line the streets and tower against the blue sky, veiling it with smoke.  The orderly rush of busy people, among whom I move toward an address given in the paper, is suddenly changed into confusion and excitement by the bell of a fire-engine which is dragged clattering over the cobbles, followed closely by another and another before the sound of the horses’ hoofs have died away.  Excitement for a moment supersedes business.  The fire takes precedence before the office, and a crowd stands packed against policemen’s arms, gazing upward at a low brick building which sends forth flames hotter than the brazen sun, smoke blacker than the perpetual veil of soot.

I compare the dingy gold number over the burning door with the number in print on the newspaper slip held between my thumb and forefinger.  Decidedly this is not one of my lucky days.  The numbers correspond.  But there are other addresses and I collect a series of replies.  The employer in a box factory on the West Side takes my address and promises to let me know if he has a vacancy for an unskilled hand.  Another boss printer, after much urging on my part, consents to give me a trial the following Monday at three dollars a week.  A kindly forelady in a large printing establishment on Wabash Avenue sends me away because she wants only trained workers.  “I’m real sorry,” she says.  “You’re from the East, aren’t you?  I notice you speak with an accent.”