The Unionist had caught me by the arm. “We’ll wait,” he said; and we stood together in the shadow of the open door. Returning finally to the side of the old sweater, the officer handed him a printed form. “You must make out this blank,” he said, “and have it ready for me when I call again.” And without another word he started for the stairs. But on the way some evidence of unsanitary condition more shocking than any met with yet--a heap of offal on the floor, or a fouler gust of poisoned air--checked him, and he turned, indignantly, to the nearest worker. “Look here,” I could hear him say, “you’ve got to clean up here, and right away. The first thing you know you’ll start a fever that will sweep the city before we can stop it.” The young Hebrew had stopped his work and turned half round in his chair until he faced the officer. There were deep lines in his haggard, beardless face, and his wolfish eyes were ablaze with the sense of sharp injustice. “You tell us we’ve got to keep clean,” he answered, in broken English, lifting his voice to a shout above the clatter of machines. “What time have we to keep clean when it’s all we can do to get bread? Don’t talk to us about disease; it’s _bread_ we’re after, _bread_!” And there sounded in the voice of the boy the cry of the hungry for food, which no man hears and can ever forget. [Illustration: “DON’T TALK TO US ABOUT DISEASE; IT’S _BREAD_ WE’RE AFTER, _BREAD_!”] The officer passed, speechless, up the steps, and we followed into the clean, pure air, under the boundless blue of smiling skies. CHAPTER VI A ROAD BUILDER ON THE WORLD’S FAIR GROUNDS COLUMBIAN ANNIVERSARY HOTEL--No. 1., CHICAGO, ILL., Wednesday, April 27, 1892. From the time that I began work on the Exposition grounds, early in this month, it has grown increasingly difficult to hark back in imagination to the unemployed _régime_ of the winter. The change is a revolution of condition. Hundreds of us live all together within this vast enclosure, and have rare occasion to go out except on Sundays, and then only if we choose. We get up in the morning to an eight-hour day of wholesome labor in the open air, and return in the late afternoon with healthy appetites to our temporary “hotel,” which is fragrant of clean, raw pine, and stands commandingly on the site of the future “court of honor” near the quiet waters of the lake. About four hundred of us are housed and fed in this one building; men of half a score of nationalities and of as many trades, ranging from expert carpenters and joiners and staff-moulders and steel-workers to the unskilled laborers who work in gangs, under the direction of the landscape-gardeners or, as in my case, on the temporary plank roads which are built for the heavy carting.