The situation was a little difficult. I had no money and no knowledge of any neighboring boarding-house. On the avenue, immediately opposite the wide entrance of the factory, was a line of cheap three-storied wooden tenements, the ground-floors occupied by saloons or shops, and the upper ones used evidently as the homes of factory-hands, for I could see the men entering the dark passages where narrow staircases connected the dwelling-rooms with the street. Quite at random I walked into a barber-shop. “Can you direct me to a boarding-house near by?” I asked the barber, who, dressed in soiled white, sat reading a newspaper beside the stove. “Sure,” he said, obligingly, as he rose to his feet and came to the door and opened it. “You just go up them steps,” he added, pointing to the entry next door, “and you’ll find a lady that keeps boarders. Her name’s Mrs. Schulz. You tell her that I sent you.” At the head of the landing I stood irresolute for a moment. It was dark after the unclouded mid-day. The light that entered came through the narrow opening of a door at the end of the passage, which stood ajar and which communicated with a front room, where there seemed to be a flood of sunlight. The prospect in the other direction was not so bright. I was beginning to see faintly, and could eventually make out the figures of a dozen or more workingmen, who sat about a table in a dim dining-room, eating hurriedly their dinner, with a noise of much clatter, and with bursts of loud talk and of hearty laughter. In a deeper recess, and through a short, dark, communicating passage, was a kitchen full of steam and the vapors of cooking food, through which came the light from the rear windows with the effect of shining vaguely through a fog. Summoned, I know not how, Mrs. Schulz stepped out into the passage. I knew instantly that I should be provided for. I could not see her clearly, but her quiet, self-respecting manner was reassuring from the start. “I’ve just got a job in the factory,” I explained at once. “Can you take me as a boarder?” “I guess I can,” she answered, cordially. “Do you want your dinner?” “Yes,” I said, and tried not to say it too eagerly. “Then come right in. You haven’t any too much time,” she added, considerately. At the vacant place which she indicated for me at the table I sat down between a workman of my own age and a hunchback operative who was probably ten years our senior. “How are you?” said the first man, in the midst of the momentary lull which fell upon the room, while I passed my first inspection.