The job's done; the millwrights pick up their tools, and the stove gang moves off leisurely to their cleaning. I hear the superintendent talking with a blower near the sample box. "They did that in pretty good time," he says. I used to eat my lunch and kept my clothes in a little brick shanty near Number 4, sharing it with the Italians of the stove gang. Although by the bosses' arrangement it was a mixed gang, Italian and Slav, the mixture did not extend to shanty arrangements, and race lines prevailed. I felt that I should learn low Italian in a few weeks if I continued with this group; the flow of it against my ear drums was incessant and some of it had already forced an entrance. Besides I was learning a great deal about: how to live, what to wear on your head, on your feet, and next your skin; where to get it--good material to resist the blast-furnace, and cheap as well; wisdom in eating and drinking, and saving money, in resting, in working, in getting a job and keeping it. There was a whole store of industrial _mores_. In some respects the ways of living of these workmen seemed as rooted and traditional as the manners of monarchs, and as wise. I won considerable merit, when I brought in a kersey cap that I got for seventy-five cents, and lost much when I reluctantly admitted the price of my brown suit. Everyone on the gang performed the washing up after work with the greatest thoroughness and success. They devoted minute attention to the appearance of clothes worn home. Rips and holes got a neat patch at once, and shoes were tapped at the proper period--before holes appeared. I have seen only one or two men in the mill who were not clean in their going-home clothes. I talked to John one day on the subject of neatness. He asked, "You have to clean up good in the army?" I dilated on the necessity of policing when wearing khaki. He said: "Man that no look neat, no good. I no like him, girls no look at him. Bah!" I was almost always offered some food from the bursting dinner buckets of my friends: a tomato, some sausage, a green pepper, some lettuce and cucumbers. I accepted gladly for it was always superior to my restaurant provender. Tony told me one day that Jimmy had come over "too late from old country, to learn speak English and be American." He was thirty-one years old. He was going back this Christmas. And Tony was going too, but just for a visit. They were going to Rome. We had talked it over a good many times, all Italy in fact, people, women, farms. Tony turned to me: "You come Italy with Jimmy and me this Christmas? We go see Rome." I assented quickly, wishing I somehow could, and was extraordinarily proud of that invitation.