plenty enough. It nearly always is so. The question was not how
to get a job, but how to live by such jobs as I could get. The low wages
offered to green hands--two and a half to three dollars a week--might do
for the girl who lived at home; but I had to pay room-rent and car-fare
and to buy food. So, as long as my small capital could be made to hold
out I continued my search for something that would pay at least five
dollars a week to begin with.

On Monday night I was no nearer to being a bread-winner than when I had
started out for the first time from Miss Jamison's boarding-house. I
climbed the bare stairs at nightfall, and as I fumbled at the keyhole I
could hear the click of a typewriter in the room next to mine. My room
was quite dark, but there was a patch of dim white on the floor that
sent a thrill of gladness all over me. I lighted the lamp and tore open
the precious envelop before taking off my gloves or hat. It was a note
from Minnie Plympton, saying she had got employment as demonstrator for
a cereal-food company, and was making a tour of the small New England
cities. The letter was dated at Bangor, Maine, and she asked me to write
her at Portland, where she expected to be all week; and which I did, at
considerable length, after I had cooked and eaten my supper.

Bread and butter and black coffee for breakfast, and potato-soup and
bread and butter for supper, with plain bread and butter done up in a
piece of paper and carried with me for luncheon--this was my daily menu
for the weeks that followed, varied on two occasions by the purchase of
a half-pint of New Orleans molasses.

The advertisements for cigar and cigarette workers were very numerous;
and as that sounded like humble work, I thought I might stand a better
chance in that line than any other. Accordingly I applied to the foreman
of a factory in Avenue A, who wanted "bunch-makers." He heard my
petition in a drafty hallway through which a small army of boys and
girls were pouring, each one stopping to insert a key in a
time-register. They were just coming to work, for I was very early. The
foreman, a young German, cut me off unceremoniously by asking to see my
working-card; and when I looked at him blankly, for I hadn't a ghost of
an idea what he meant, he strode away in disgust, leaving me to
conjecture as to his meaning.

Nothing daunted, however, for I meant to be very energetic and brave
that morning, I went to the next factory. Here they