Into the square marked out for it by steel guards the paper must be slipped with the right hand, while the machine is open; with the left hand the printed paper must be pulled out and a second fitted in its place before the machine closes again.  What a master to serve is this noisy iron mechanism animated by steam!  It gives not a moment’s respite to the worker, whose thoughts must never wander from her task.  The girls are pale.  Their complexions without exception are bad.

We are bossed by men.  My boss is kind, and, seeing that I am ambitious, he comes now and then and prints a few hundred bill-heads for me.  There is some complaining sotto voce of the other boss, who, it appears, is a hard taskmaster.  Both are very young, both chew tobacco and expectorate long, brown, wet lines of tobacco juice on to the floor.  While waiting for new type I get into conversation with the boss of ill-repute.  He has an honest, serious face; his eyes are evidently more accustomed to judging than to trusting his fellow beings.  He is communicative.

“Do you like your job?” he asks.

“Yes, first rate.”

“They don’t pay enough.  I give notice last week and got a raise.  I guess I’ll stay on here until about August.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Going home,” he answers.  “I’ve been away from home for seven years.  I run away when I was thirteen and I’ve been knocking around ever since, takin’ care of myself, makin’ a livin’ one way or another.  My folks lives in California.  I’ve been from coast to coast—­and I tell you I’ll be mighty glad to get back.”

“Ever been sick?”

“Yes, twice.  It’s no fun.  No matter how much licking a boy gets he ought never to leave home.  The first year or so you don’t mind it so much, but when you’ve been among strangers two years, three years, all alone, sick or well, you begin to feel you must get back to your own folks.”

“Are you saving up?” I ask.

He nods his head, not free to speak for tobacco juice.

“I’ll be able to leave here in August,” he explains, when he has finished spitting, “for Omaha.  In three months I can save up enough to get on as far as Salt Lake, and in another three months I can move on to San Francisco.  I tell you,” he adds, returning to his work, “a person ought never to leave home.”  He had nine months of work and privation before reaching the goal toward which he had been yearning for years.  With what patience he appears possessed compared to our fretfulness at the fast express trains, which seem to crawl when they carry us full speed homeward toward those we love!  Nine months, two hundred and seventy days, ten-hour working days, to wait.  He was manly.  He had the spirit of adventure; his experience was wide and his knowledge of men extended; he had managed to take care of himself in one way or another for seven years, the most trying and decisive in a boy’s life.  He had not gone to the bad, evidently, and to his credit he was homeward bound.  His history was something out of the ordinary; yet beyond the circle where he worked and was considered a hard taskmaster he was a nonentity—­a star in the milky way, a star whose faint rays, without individual brilliancy, added to the general luster.