A single instance will serve to point the nature of this graceless speech. Two boys of ten or twelve are employed in carrying water to the men at their work. One carries his bucket through the building to those engaged in the upper stories; and the other, a flaxen-haired, delicate child whose thin legs bend under his burden, serves those of us who are at work on the heaps below. Through all the day, and especially in its greatest heat, the boys run busily from the works to a neighboring pump, and return with bucketfuls of water, which are at once surrounded by thirsty workmen and emptied in a few minutes. Regardless of the prevailing custom, I always thanked the little fellow for my drink. Soon I noticed that even this instinctive acknowledgment seemed to embarrass him. In an interval of rest he came up to me, after receiving my thanks. "You shouldn't thank me," he said. "And why not?" I begged to know. "Because, you see, I'm _paid_ to do this," was his conscientious answer. A mere child, naturally gentle, and yet so bred to rougher usage that a simple "Thank you" jarred upon his sense of right! A few minutes later I saw the two boys in a rough-and-ready fight, and their language lacked none of the horror of that of their elders. I shall be on the road again to-morrow morning, and I shall go as penniless as I came, but somewhat richer in experience. I have been through nearly a week of labor, and have survived it, and have honestly earned my living as a working-man. In the future I shall have the added confidence which comes of knowing that, if work offers, I shall probably be able to perform it. But this is not the only cause of my increased light-heartedness. I am frankly glad to get away from the job on the old Academic building. This is a selfish feeling, and is not without the cowardice of all selfishness. I hope for a job of another kind, for a time at least, because I wish to see some hopefuller side of the lot of common labor. When we draw too near to the hand of Fate, and begin to feel as though there were a wrong in the nature of things, it is best, perhaps, to change our point of view--if we can. This may account for some of the drifting restlessness among working-men of my class. The salient features of our condition are plain enough. We are unskilled laborers. We are grown men, and are without a trade. In the labor market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere muscular strength for so many hours each day. We are thus in the lowest grade of labor. We are here, and not higher in the scale, by reason of a variety of causes. Some of us were thrown upon our own resources in childhood, and have earned our living ever since, and by the line of least resistance we have simply grown to be unskilled workmen. Opportunities came to some of us of learning useful trades, and we neglected them, and now we have no developed skill to aid us in earning a living, and we must take the work that offers.