If it were only the human element that counted, everyone would stay at the brassworks forever. I feel like a snake in the grass, walking off “on them” when they all were so nice. Nor was it for a moment the “dearie” kind of niceness that made you feel it was orders from above. From our floor boss down, they were people who were born to treat a body square. All the handicaps against them—the work itself, the surroundings, the low pay—had so long been part of their lives, these “higher ups” seemed insensible to the fact that such things were handicaps. To-day was sunny and the factory not so dark—in fact, part of the time we worked with no electric lights. The crisp early morning air those four blocks from the Subway to the factory—it sent the spring fever through the blood. In the gutter of that dirty East Side street a dirty East Side man was burning garbage. The smoke curled up lazily. The sun just peeping up over the hospital at the end of the street made slanting shafts through the smoke. As I passed by it suddenly was no longer the East Side of New York City.... Now the Four Way Lodge is open, Now the hunting winds are loose, Now the smokes of spring go up to clear the brain.... Breakfast in a cañon by the side of a stream—the odor of pines.... The little bobbing doors went to behind me and there I stood in floor three, the stale gas and metal smell ... the whirs of the belts ... the jarring of the presses.... Next to me this glorious morning sat a snip of a little thing all in black—so pretty she was, so very pretty. I heard the boss tell her it's not the sort of work she's been used to, she'll find it hard. Is she sure she wants to try it? And in the course of the morning I heard the story of Mame's life. Mame's husband died three weeks ago. They had been married one month and two days—after waiting three years. Shall I write a story of Mame on the sob-sister order to bring the tears to your eyes? It could easily be done. But not honestly. Little Mame—how could her foot ever reach the press? And when she walked off after a drink, I saw that she was quite lame. A widow only three weeks. She'd never worked before, but there was no money. She lived all alone, wandered out for her meals—no mother, no father, no sisters or brothers. She cried every night. Her husband had been a traveling salesman—sometimes he made eighty-five dollars a week. They had a six-room apartment and a servant! She'd met him at a dance hall. A girl she was with had dared her to wink at him. Sure she'd do anything anybody dared her to. He came over and asked her what she was after, anyhow. That night he left the girl he'd taken to the dance hall to pilot her own way back to home and mother, and he saw Mame to her room. He was swell and tall. She showed me his picture in a locket around her neck. Meanwhile Mame kicked the foot press about twice every five minutes.