They were nearly all young Americans. Clarence and Albert were representative of the lot. Ned, the hunchback operative, was older than most of us, but he, too, was a native, of public-school education and decent antecedents, and he made a very good wage as a piece-worker in some department of the factory. Nothing that I saw among the men charmed me more than their treatment of Ned. He had an ungovernable temper and a crabbed, sullen disposition, which had been fostered by much suffering and an intense mortification due to his deformity, which he rarely forgot, apparently. At times he was as exasperating as a spoiled, petulant child, but the men endured him always with an evenness of buoyant good-humor so genuine that it never chafed him, and it sometimes transported him, in spite of himself, to a mood in sympathy with their own, in which he could be one of the best fellows of the lot. It was not long before I knew that the man who was held in highest regard by the others was Dennis. The reasons for this did not appear at first. Dennis was of about the average age among us, a man of between twenty-five and thirty, an Irish-American of good appearance and a gentlemanlike reserve. The men looked up to him and paid a certain deference to his views in a way which puzzled me, for he never played the rôle of leader, being far less outspoken than some of the others, and moving among them always in a quiet, unassuming manner which laid no claim to distinction. By chance I learned that he was the best-paid operative in the house, having a position of some importance in a machine-shop of the factory, and I noticed that he spent much of his leisure in the study of mechanical problems. He did not hold himself aloof from the evening game of cards, but he would quit it early and would soon be absorbed in his book in one corner of the room, where the noise seemed never to disturb him. Moreover, I came to realize that in certain important social matters Dennis was an authority. He would leave his work as black as the blackest man from the shops, but on Saturday afternoon, when we got off at five o’clock, half an hour earlier than usual, he would come out after supper ready for the evening’s gayety, dressed in what was unhesitatingly accepted as the height of the fashion. Saturday evenings were always devoted to pleasure, and none of the men was better informed than was Dennis as to the public balls which were available and which performance at the theatres (always spoken of as a “show”) was best worth a visit. As a workman of high grade and as a man of fashion and a social mentor with much occult knowledge of social form, he was yielded the first place. There was, moreover, a certain punctiliousness about him which only served to heighten his standing. It mattered not how late he had been out on Saturday night, I always found Dennis at his place for a seven o’clock breakfast on Sunday morning, and saw him start promptly for mass.