I have many memories of painful endurance connected with glass, but one stands out prominently from all the rest. It was on a Friday, and I had rather a large order in hand which if I got in that night I might reasonably hope to get the money for on Saturday, and so be ready for that rapidly recurring bug-bear, Saturday night. I had three original sheets of glass left in the case, ample to fill the order I had in hand, even with a little more than my average allowance of accidents. I was singing blithely at my work when the tell-tale bell over the shop door announced a customer. With a sigh I laid down my tools, for in the midst of a job like that at nine o'clock at night I dreaded interruption, the more that I usually found it profitless, trivial, and annoying. I found a man in the shop twiddling a piece of string in his fingers, and my heart sank, for I knew that meant glass cutting, my customers for glass nearly always bringing their dimensions on pieces of string. He asked me quietly for a strip of glass "that size" throwing the string on the counter, _that_ size being four feet long, by four and a half inches wide. For one moment I meditated telling him to go elsewhere, but an infernal spasm of pride came to me for my undoing, and assuming an air of nonchalance to hide my smouldering rage I drew out the first of my three sheets and laid it on the operating table. I laid the cutting laths on it and drew my diamond along its surface for about a foot when click! it cracked diagonally across. There was a cry of sympathy from my enemy, but without a word I removed the pieces and drew out another sheet. That literally fell to fragments as I was lifting it on the table. Now my nerves were fretted to fiddle strings, but with the calmness of despair I laid hold on the third and last sheet taking absolutely no heed of some remarks which the man was making behind me. I got that on the table all right and cut the strip off, but as I was handing it to him it fell in three pieces. I went on to cut another strip and the remainder cracked in two lines making it almost useless for any purpose. Then almost blind and deaf with suppressed rage and misery I turned to my customer saying in a queer sounding voice, "I've got no more glass to break, you'll have to go somewhere else." And then he said something, _I_ don't know what it was, but I suddenly lost control of myself and poured forth my sentiments.