It was to me an entirely new way of looking at life; and though I couldn't in the least explain it to myself, it seemed, to my unsophisticated way of looking at such matters, that the propensity to break the seventh commandment was much exaggerated, and that songs about other subjects would have been much more interesting and not nearly so trying to the feelings. For the sweet voices of the singers could not but make the tears come to my eyes, in spite of the fact that the burden of the song seemed so unworthy. "You all sing so beautifully!" I cried, in honest admiration, at the close of one particularly melodious and extremely silly ditty. "Where did you learn?" Phoebe was pleased at the compliment implied by the tears in my eyes, and even Mrs. Smith forgot to throw out her taunting "eye-ther" as she stood still and regarded my very frank and unconcealed emotion. "I guess we sort of learn from the Ginney girls," explained Phoebe. "Them Ginneys is all nice singers, and everybody in the shop kind of gets into the way of singing good, too, from being with them. You ought to hear them sing Dago songs, oughtn't she, Gwendolyn?" "Yep," answered Gwendolyn; "I could just die hearing Angela and Celie Polatta singing that--what-d'ye-call-it, that always makes a body bu'st out crying?" "You mean 'Punchinello.' Yep, that's a corker; but, Lord! the one what makes me have all kinds of funny cold feelings run up my back is that 'Ave Maria.' Therese Nicora taught them--what she says she learned in the old country. I wouldn't want anything to eat if I could hear songs like that all the time." The clock-hands over Annie Kinzer's desk had now crept close to the hour of six, and Angela had only begun the first stanza of-- "Papa, tell me where is mama," cried a little girl one day; "I'm so lonesome here without her, tell me why she went away. You don't know how much I'm longing for her loving good-night kiss!" Papa placed his arms around her as he softly whispered this: "Down in the City of Sighs and Tears, under the white light's glare, Down in the City of Wasted Years, you'll find your mama there, Wandering along where each smiling face hides its story of lost careers; And perhaps she is dreaming of you to-night, in the City of Sighs and Tears." The machinery gave a ponderous throb, the great black belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the soft crescendo refrain: "Wandering along where each smiling face hides its story of lost careers; And perhaps she is dreaming of you to-night, in the City of Sighs and Tears-- In the City of Sighs and Tears." VII IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A STORY-BOOK NAME AND MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MISS HENRIETTA MANNERS