We nodded to each other as he took up his stand in another out-of-the-way quarter of the hall and joined me in waiting for a summons. Among the passing clerks there presently appeared the one who had met us on the day before. He was not in bantering mood now, so he asserted his superiority by ignoring us. The one who had already spoken to me lost no opportunity as he passed of saying an encouraging word, assuring us that Mr. ---- would certainly see us before long. It was a little after twelve when I was finally called into the private office of Mr. ----. I was rather faint from hunger and stiff from standing still so long after a long walk. Mr. ---- sat with his back to a window, in whose full light I stood, hat in hand. “You’re after this job I advertised, I understand,” he began. “Yes.” “Well, it ain’t no great job; it’s just doin’ chores round the house, and I can’t afford to pay much for it. Have you ever done work like that?” “I have been a porter at a hotel.” “Have you any recommends?” he asked, sharply. I handed to him the two already mentioned, and as he read them I watched him with close interest. Young, alert, intensely energetic, at the head, or near it, of a prominent house, the controller, in part at least, of an enormous enterprise, and a considerable personage, no doubt, in his own social circle, yet his wholesale butchery of swine could scarcely be a ghastlier slaughter than was his treatment of his mother-tongue. He looked up at me. “Say, young fellow, is them all the recommends you have? You was a very short time at both of them places.” This fatal defect in my references had never occurred to me, and I began to stammer explanations which only served to get me into deeper water. Mr. ---- interrupted me, and handing back my letters, he said: “You’ll have to bring me something more satisfactory than them,” and went on with his work. The young Swede followed me out of the passage. “Did you get the job?” he asked, in good English. “No,” I said, “not yet. You have a good chance; you would better wait until the boss sends for you.” “I guess not to-day,” he answered, and he stolidly refused my advice, and I saw him disappear by another way from the Stock-yards. CHAPTER IV A HAND-TRUCKMAN IN A FACTORY No. -- BLUE ISLAND AVENUE, CHICAGO, Wednesday, February 3, 1892. At half-past five this afternoon I completed seven weeks of service as a hand-truckman in a factory. Mrs. Schultz, my landlady, tells me that she is sorry that I am going away; and now that the long-looked-for end is come, I am not in the least elated, as I thought that I should be. But the days are lengthening markedly with the promise of the coming spring, and I am forcefully reminded that the time grows short for the study at close range of much that still awaits me in this great working city before I can well set out again upon my westward journey.