Nevertheless, on the whole, I was sorry the next morning that Albert was not with me. There were moments when I did not regret it, but the sermon, for all its strange setting, was one which could scarcely have failed to impress him. After a seven o’clock breakfast, which seemed luxuriously late, and which Dennis and I shared alone on Sunday mornings, I set out as usual for the South Side. It was five miles to my destination in that section of the city, and I always walked both ways, for sometimes I had not the fare, and, in any case, ten cents saved was no mean item in a careful account of possible economy. The Sundays of my term of service in the factory were, for the most part, splendid winter days, and this was of the best. No snow lay on the ground, no winter wind stirred the dust in the long, quiet streets, and clear from out the cloudless sky came the glowing rays of the sun, tempering the cold air to the exquisite delicacy of reviving warmth wherein you catch your breath with wonder, so charged is it with the mystery of the coming spring. Walking, on such a day, is of the essence of delight. Some measure of bodily exercise is needed to keep one warm, and this forth-faring on a holiday, free from the necessity of labor, which begins almost with the dawn of consciousness after sleep and ends only as the night of sleep closes down upon one, is a form of pleasure which life does not often match. The spell of it bore me company through the factory region, and where there opened to my view mile after mile of lumber-yards, with unsightly piles of seasoning timber stretching away to where the vessels lie in the canals which are fed from the river, and there rise the gaunt bulks of towering elevators, and the tall chimneys that everywhere send forth their ceaseless volumes of black smoke. All this was eloquent of work, and wages, and the means of decent living, and it therefore had a beauty which will not be denied to it by one who knows something of the misery of the unemployed. Even the grotesque ugliness of the long lines of buildings, as I entered the closely built-up sections of the town, could not rob me of the comforting sense of shelter and much legitimate business among the well-paid working poor. But, before crossing thence to the South Side, there remains a belt through which even the stanchest optimism on its way to church on a bright Sunday morning could scarcely pass without misgivings. A varying foreign population, chiefly from southern and eastern Europe, thickens here to a point of incredible crowding, and sweat-shops abound, and cheap bakeries, and there is a marked increase in the number of pawn-shops and saloons. The crowds in the streets had been in Sunday dress thus far for the most part, and were evidently on the way to mass or just returning. Many children were among them, uniformly well-booted and dressed, and here and there appeared the white veil and crowning flowers of a first communion.