The few minutes during which we had to wait before the call to supper were spent in the front room, which was the sitting-room for the boarders and answered to the lobby in the logging-camp. Two windows looked out upon the street and commanded a farther view of the factory yard and buildings. The room was heated by a cylindrical iron stove, standing near the inner wall upon a disc of zinc, that served to protect a well-worn carpet with which the floor was covered. From a square wooden table in the centre a large oil-lamp flooded the room with light and brought out in startling vividness the pink rose-buds which in monotonous identity of design streaked the walls in long diagonal lines, broken only by an occasional chromo or a picture cut from an illustrated print. There was an abundant supply of wooden chairs, on which the men were seated, for the most part about the stove, and there was one large arm-chair on rockers, where sat Mr. Schulz with the next to the youngest child in his arms, an infant of between two and three. A girl of perhaps seven years, and a boy of nearly five, were playing together on the floor, and there was yet another child, for while we were washing in the kitchen I had heard the fretful cry of a baby from a dark chamber opening from that room. Two of the men were intent upon the girl who lay in her father’s lap. They were rivals for her favor, and both were trying to coax her away. When she at last put out her arms to one of them, he tossed her toward the ceiling with a shout of glee at his triumph over the other man. After supper we all regathered in the sitting-room. None of the men, so far as I could see, went out for the evening. Some of them read the newspapers of the day, and four had presently started a game of “High, Low, Jack,” at the table, with the result that most of the others were soon gathered about the players in excited interest, watching the varying fortunes of the game and giving vent to their feelings in boisterous outbursts. I sat beside the fire talking to Mr. Schulz. There was inexpressible satisfaction in the feeling of _raison d’être_ which one had in being a worker with a steady job once more and a decent place in which to live. A boarding-house is not a synonym for home, and yet it may stir the domestic instincts deeply in the contrasts which it offers with the homeless life of the streets. The unquestioning hospitality with which I had been accepted as a guest was in keeping with the best of my experience so far. There was no suggestion of my paying anything in advance, though I had no security to offer beyond the fact that I was regularly employed in the factory and my promise to pay promptly out of the first instalment of my wages.