who owns that factory, and his orders and his profits and his obligations, never enter my or any other packer's head. I will not pack so many boxes that Tessie gets left too far behind.

Then a strange thing happens. All of a sudden I get more interested in packing chocolates than anything else on earth. A little knack or twist comes to me—my fingers fly (for me). I forget Tessie. I forget the time. I forget my feet. How many boxes can I pack to-day? That is all I can think of. I don't want to hear the noon bell. I can't wait to get back after lunch. I fly out after the big boxes to pack the little boxes in. In my haste and ignorance I bring back covers by mistake and pack dozens of little boxes in covers. It must all be done over again. Six hundred boxes I pack this day. I've not stopped for breath. I'm not a bit tired when 6 o'clock comes round. I ask Ida when she will put me on piecework—it seems the great ambition of my life is to feel I am on piecework. “When you can pack about two thousand boxes a day,” says Ida. Two thousand! I was panting and proud over six hundred! “Never mind,” says Ida, “you're makin' out fine.” Oh, the thrill of those words! I asked her to show me again about separating the paper cups. I didn't have it just right, I was sure. “My Gawd!” sighed Ida, “what ambition!” Yes, but the ambition did not last more than a few days at that pitch.

Tessie wanted to tell me something about her Mann to-day so badly, but could not find the English words. Her joy when I said, “Tell me in German”! How came I to speak German? I'd spent three years in Germany with an American family, taking care of the children. Honest for once.

“That was luck for you,” says Tessie.

“That was sure luck for me,” says I—honest again.

Wherever Lena works there floats conversation for a radius of three tables. The subject matter is ever the same—“dopes.” “Is he big?... Gee! I say!... More like a sister to him.... He never sees the letters.” “Lena” (from Ida), “shut up and get to work!” ... “I picked him up Sunday.... Where's them waxing papers?... Third she vamped in two days.... Sure treats a girl swell.... Them ain't pineapples....” “Lee-na! get to work or I'll knock the hell out a ya!” And pretty Lena giggles on: “He says.... She says to him.... Sure my father says if he comes 'round again....”

And Tessie and I; I bend over to hear Tessie's soft, low German as she tells me how good her Mann is to her; how he never, never scolds, no matter if she buys a new hat or what; how he brings home all his pay every week and gives it to her. He is such a good Mann. They are saving all their money. In two years they will go back near München and buy a little farm.

Tessie and her poor Mann, with his broken elbow and his swollen arm all black and blue, couldn't sleep last night. Oh dear! this New York! One man at one corner he talk about Harding, one man other corner he talk about Cox; one man under their window he talk MacSwiney—New York talk, talk, talk!

Looked like rain to-day, but how can a body buy an umbrella appropriate to chocolate packing at thirteen dollars a week when the stores are all closed before work and closed after? I told Lillian my troubles. I asked Lillian if a cheap umbrella could be purchased in the neighborhood.

“Cheap,” sniffs Lillian. “I don't know. I got me a nice one—sample though—at Macy's for twelve-fifty.” Lillian may take to her bed after supper, but while she is awake she is going to be every inch to the manner born.

By the time I pack the two thousandth box of “assorteds” my soul turns in revolt. “If you give me another 'assorted' to pack,” says I to Ida, “I'll lie down here on the floor and die.”

“The hell you will,” says Ida. But she gets me fancy pound boxes with a top and bottom layer, scarce two candies alike, and Tessie beams on me like a mother with an only child. “That takes the brains!” says Tessie. “Not for me! It gives me the ache in my head to think of it.”

Indeed it near gives me the ache in mine. Before the next to the last row is packed the bottom looks completely filled. Where can four fat chocolates in cups find themselves? I push the last row over gently to make room,—three chocolates in the middle rear up and stand on end. Press them gently down and two more on the first row get out of hand. At last the last row is in—only to discover four candies here and there have all sprung their moorings. For each one I press down gently, another some place else acts up. How long can my patience hold out? Firmly, desperately I press that last obstreperous chocolate down in its place. My finger goes squash through the crusty brown, and pink goo oozes up and out. A fresh strawberry heart must be found. “Ain't no more,” announces Fannie. Might just as well tell an artist there is only enough paint for one eye on his beautiful portrait. Of course another chocolate can be substituted. But a strawberry heart was what belonged there!

At last the long rows of boxes are packed, wax paper laid over each—to blow off every time Louie goes by. Then come covers with lovely ladies in low-neck dresses on the tops—and the room so cold, anyhow. Why are all the pictures on all the boxes smiling ladies in scanty attire, instead of wrapped to the ears in fur coats so that a body might find comfort in gazing on them in such a temperature?

Ida comes along and peers in one box. “You can consider yourself a fancy packer now—see?” Harding the night of the election felt less joyous than do I at her words.

This night there is a lecture at the New School for Social Research to be attended. If some of those educated foreigners in our room can go to night school, I guess I can keep up my school. They are all foreigners but Lillian and Sadie and I. Sadie is about the same Indian-summer stage as Lillian and uses even better English. Her eyebrows are also unduly black; her face looks a bit as if she had been trying to get the ring out of the flour with her teeth Halloween. Her lips are very red. Sadie has the air of having just missed being a Vanderbilt. Her boudoir cap is lacy. Her smile is conscious kindness to all as inferiors. One wonders, indeed, what brought Sadie to packing chocolates in the autumn of life—a very wrinkly, powdered autumn. So Lillian, Sadie, and I are the representatives of what the nation produces—not what she gets presented with. As for the rest, there are a Hungarian, two Germans, four Italians, two Spaniards, a Swede, an Englishwoman, and numerous colored folk. Louie is an Italian. Fannie (bless her dear heart! I love Fannie) is colored, with freckles. She is Indian summer too—with a heart of gold. Fannie trudges on her feet all day. Years and years she has been there. At noon she sits alone in the lunch room, and after eating puts her head on her arms and, bending over the cold marble-topped table, gets what rest she can. She was operated on not so long ago, and every so often still has to go to the hospital for a day or so. Everything is at sixes and sevens when Fannie is away.