I was working in the mule-room again and this time I was advanced to the post of “doffer.” I had to strip the spindles of the cops of yarn and put new tubes on them for another set of cops. But this work involved the carrying of boxes of yarn on my shoulders, the lifting of a heavy truck, and often unusual speed to keep the mules in my section running. The farm work did not appear to have strengthened me very decidedly. I had to stagger under my loads the same as ever. I wondered how long I should last at that sort of work, for if I could not do that work the overseer would never promote me to a spinner, where I could earn a skilled worker’s wage. I was now near my nineteenth birthday, and I had to be thinking about my future. I wanted to do a man’s work now, in a man’s way, for a man’s wage. I learned with alarm, too, that I was getting past the age when young men enter college, and there I was, without even a _common school education_! Once more the gloom of the mill settled down on me. The old despair gripped me. I did find companionship in my ambitions, now that I had left the gang. Pat Carroll, an Irishman, wanted to go to college also. He was far past me in the amount of schooling he had enjoyed, for by patient application to night-school in the winter, he had entered upon High School studies. There was Harry Lea, an Englishman, who was even further advanced than was Pat Carroll. Harry liked big words, and had tongue-tiring sentences of them, which created rare fun whenever he cared to sputter them for us. Harry had a very original mind, did not care much for society, and lived quite a thoughtful life. These two aided me with knotty problems in arithmetic and grammar. But it was not often that I had time to spend with them now that my work was more strenuous and wearing than before. Harry was attending a private evening school and invited me to the annual graduation. I asked him if there would be any “style” to it, thereby meaning fancy dress and well-educated, society people. “Oh,” said Harry, “there will be men in evening dress, swallow tails, you know, and some women who talk nice. If they talk to you, just talk up the weather. Society people are always doing that!” The graduation was held in one of the lecture halls of the Y. M. C. A. I sat in my place, watching with rapt eyes the speakers, the fluent speakers who had such an education! The principal was a college man. Him I watched with veritable worship. He had reached the goal I craved so eagerly, so vainly to reach. I wondered at the time if he felt bigger than other people because he had a college degree! When the program neared its end, a young man was announced to read an essay, the principal stating that the young man had been _studying English but five months_, and saying it so emphatically that I thought the reader must be a green Swede, so I marvelled greatly when the fluent diction sounded on my ears, for I did not hear a single sound with a Swedish accent to it!