"I think Mr. Carnegie would have done a deal nobler if he had paid his men a little more straight along. He wouldn't have had such a name for himself. But don't you believe it would have been better to have paid those men more for the work they were doing day by day than it is now to give pensions to their families? I know what I think about the matter." [Illustration: SUNDAY EVENING AT SILVER LAKE The mill girls' excursion resort. A special train and 'busses run on Sundays, and "everybody" goes.] I asked him how he liked city life. "Give me a farm every time," was his answer. "Once you've seen a town you know it all. It's the same over and over again. But the country's changing every day in the year. It's a terrible thing, being sick," he went on. "It seems sometimes as though the pain would tear me to pieces when I walk across the floor. I wasn't no good on the farm any more, so my wife took a notion we better come in town and take boarders." Thus it was with this happily balanced couple; as his side grew heavier she took on more ballast and swung even with him. She had the quick adaptability common to American women. During the years of farm life religious meetings and a few neighbours had kept her in touch with the outside world. The church and the kitchen were what she had on the farm; the church and the kitchen were what she had in town; family life supplemented by boarders, a social existence kept alive by a few faithful neighbours. She had retained her activity and sympathy because she was intelligent, because she lived with the _young_. The man could not make himself one of another generation, so he lived alone. He had lost his companions, the "cow kind and the sheep kind"; he had lost control over the earth that belonged to him; he was disused; he suffered; he pined. But as they sat together side by side at table, his look toward her was one of trust and comfort. His glance traveled back over a long vista of years seen to them as their eyes met, invisible to those about--years that had glorified confidence in this life as it passed and transfigured it into the promise of another life to come. * * * * * MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO * * * * * CHAPTER IV MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO On arriving in Chicago I addressed myself to the ladies of Hull House, asking for a tenement family who would take a factory girl to board. I intended starting out without money to see at least how far I could go before putting my hand into the depths where an emergency fund was pinned in a black silk bag.