Here in the furnace City, in the humid air they faint, God's pallid poor, His people, with scarcely space for breath; So foul their teeming houses, so full of shame and taint, They cannot crowd within them for the frightful fear of Death. Yet somewhere, Lord, Thine open seas are singing with the rain, And somewhere underneath Thy stars the cool waves crash and beat; Why is it here, and only here, are huddled Death and Pain, And here the form of Horror stalks, a menace in the street! The burning flagstones gleam like glass at morning and at noon, The giant walls shut out the breeze--if any breeze should blow; And high above the smothering town at midnight hangs the moon, A red medallion in the sky, a monster cameo. Yet somewhere, God, drenched roses bloom by fountains draped with mist In old, lost gardens of the earth made lyrical with rain; Why is it here a million brows by hungry Death are kissed, And here is packed, one Summer night, a whole world's fiery pain! A Department-Store Clerk (_From "The House of Bondage"_) BY REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN (American novelist, born 1877) Katie Flanagan arrived at the Lennox department store every morning at a quarter to eight o'clock. She passed through the employees' dark entrance, a unit in a horde of other workers, and registered the instant of her arrival on a time-machine that could in no wise be suborned to perjury. She hung up her wraps in a subterranean cloak-room, and, hurrying to the counter to which she was assigned, first helped in "laying out the stock," and then stood behind her wares, exhibiting, cajoling, selling, until an hour before noon. At that time she was permitted to run away for exactly forty-five minutes for the glass of milk and two pieces of bread and jam that composed her luncheon. This repast disposed of, she returned to the counter and remained behind it, standing like a war-worn watcher on the ramparts of a beleaguered city, till the store closed at six, when there remained to her at least fifteen minutes more of work before her sales-book was balanced and the wares covered up for the night. There were times, indeed, when she did not leave the store until seven o'clock, but those times were caused rather by customers than by the management of the store, which could prevent new shoppers from entering the doors after six, but could hardly turn out those already inside. The automatic time-machine and a score of more annoying, and equally automatic, human beings kept watch upon all that she did. The former, in addition to the floor-walker in her section of the store, recorded her every going and coming, the latter reported every movement not prescribed by the regulations of the establishment; and the result upon Katie and her fellow-workers was much the result observable upon condemned assassins under the unwinking surveillance of the Death Watch.