Dec. 15. I am not up to date with my clothes, and I have no money to make myself so. I find it is for this reason I am "turned down" at so many places where I apply. I read it in men's eyes, in the women's hard stare. Dec. 17. A man offered to clothe me for a position in a shop, if I would-- I know I looked at him; I think I saw him, or perhaps the beast that was in him. Then I saw queer lights before me, red and yellow--if I had been a man I would have taken him by the throat. When, at last, I could see again, the man was gone. Good riddance! There is such a thing as day nightmare. Dec. 19. I am beginning to understand how it is done; how the fifteen dollar waists, the diamond rings, the theatre, and the suppers after, can be had without work. Dec. 20. The strike is on. I should have to do without coals, strike or no strike, for I have nothing to buy them with. Mrs. Turtelot offered to let me heat my food on her stove--my food! I 've lived on one loaf of bread and a can of baked beans for seven days--and to-day I 've been down to the Washington Market just to smell the evergreens that, for all I have no home, give me a homesick longing for the country. But I will not go back; I 'll starve here first. Afterwards I walked up to Twenty-third Street, and lost myself there in the holiday crowds. What throngs!--jostled, pushed, beset by vendors, loaded with bundles, yet so good natured! No one looked hungry. I stood on the kerb to watch the men selling toys and birds; to listen to the strange cries, the shrilling of the wooden canaries and the trill of the real ones; to peep into the rabbit hutch, and the basket of kittens; to stroke an armful of sleeping puppies; to smell the fragrance of roses and violets and carnations; to smile a little at the slow-moving turtles, the leaping frogs, the Jack-in-the-box, the mechanical toys of all kinds that performed on the sidewalk, each the centre of a small crowd. Then, at twilight, the flare from the chestnut vendor's stand, the little electric lights of the Punch and Judy sidewalk show, the electric torches that the children were carrying, the brilliant whirligigs for advertisements, gave to the whole scene a strange unreal appearance. Men, women, children, Christmas trees, dogs, birds, electric cars, rabbits, kittens, a goat, cabs, automobiles, express carts, surged into the flare and glare, first of one light then of another, till what was shadow and what was substance I failed to make out. Dec. 21. At last, oh, at last, there is work for me,--for me, too, among all these millions! But it makes me sick to know there must be some who are trying and never find.