For a few long minutes I sat in the silent room wondering what would be the decision. I was optimistic enough to plan what I would do if I should enter the navy. I should--here the attendant came, offered me a tiny card, and without a word bowed me to the door. I knew then that I had been refused. I walked through the yard in a daze. When I reached the city, I took heart to read the card they had given me. I recall that it read thus simply: “REFUSED. Defective teeth. Cardia--” Uncle Sam did not want to give me a chance! _Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman_ _Chapter XXI. The Ichabod of Mule-rooms, some Drastic Musing, College at my Finger-tips, the Mill People wait to let me pass, and I am Waved into the World by a Blind Woman_ On my return from Newport I went to work in one of the oldest mills in the city. The “mules” were in a gloomy basement--a crowded, dim, and very dirty place to work in. It was the Ichabod of mule-rooms, with every trace of glory gone. The machinery was obsolete and had to be helped along with monkey-wrenches, new parts, and constant, nerve-wearing wearing watchfulness. The alleys were so narrow that the back-boys had to edge in between the frames; and expanded chest often meant a destructive rubbing on bobbins and a breaking of threads. It always seemed to me that this room was reserved by the corporation to work off its veteran spinners and its unreliable ones, its veteran machinery, and its bad-tempered, ineffective bosses. This mule-room was the byword among the spinners at that end of the city. A man hung his head when he had to tell another that he was working in it; for it generally was his testimony to his fellows that he was in the last ditch. Spinners graduated from that room into scrubbing or oiling. The personnel of this room was always changing; but its prevailing character remained the same: a dull-eyed, drunken set of men, a loafing, vicious set of young fellows who worked a week and loafed three. I chose to work in that place because it was my first opportunity for an advance from doffing to “joiner.” A “joiner” is one who shares with another the operation of a pair of mules--a semi-spinner. The pay is divided, and the work is portioned off between the two. I had been working toward this position for six years and a half, and now it had come, even in that miserable room, I was eager to see how I should manage.