“Don’t mind this suit of mine,” said Carl. “I have a much dirtier one at home and I’ll be only too glad to wear it here. You see, I always feel more peaceful in dirty clothes, but someone played a joke on me and made me wear this suit.” “Well, you ought to come ready for work, if you’re lookin’ for it”--the man peered again at Carl. “Nope. Nope. You ain’t got the build for heavy work. We’re after big, husky men. Sorry, Jack, but there’s nothin’ doin’.” “Say, be reasonable,” said Carl. “I’ve done hard work off and on for the last four years and I’m much stronger than I look. Come on, give me a chance.” The man shook his head as his eyes received Carl’s slender arms and narrow shoulders, and he did not know that this weak aspect concealed an inhuman amount of endurance. After another useless expostulation Carl walked out, grinning forlornly as he strode down the street. Cheated out of the phantom opiate of a beautiful box-piling job because of a deceptive physical appearance and a twenty-dollar suit, reduced to nineteen through the expert pleading of his mother! He looked down with delicate aversion at the grey, neatly-pressed cloth which concealed his material humility with lines of dreamless confidence, and felt a sudden impulse to tear it off and go nakedly cavorting down the street, taking the cries of onlookers as a suitable reward, but that sleek caution born from rough faces and rougher hands chided him back to sanity. After calling at another factory and receiving the same refusal, he decided to wait until the morrow, when he could don his old, dirty clothes and avert suspicion. The city turmoil was slackening, like a huge, human top beginning to spin weakly. The warm hardness of a summer evening between city streets tried a little laughter in an unpracticed voice, and revolving streams of men and women hid the pavements--a satiated army returning from an unsettled conflict. The scene was a mixed metaphor trying to straighten itself out. Feeling forlornly alert and useless in the midst of all this important exhaustion, Carl made his way home.