the very room we occupy.
The landlady, Mrs. Jones, has arisen; she is making her fire. At a
quarter to four Mrs. Jones begins her frying; at four a deep, blue, ugly
smoke has ascended the stairway to us. This smoke is thick with
odours--the odour of bad grease and bad meat. Its cloud conceals the
beds from me and I can scarcely pierce its curtain to look through the
window. It settles down over the beds like a creature; it insinuates
itself into the clothes that hang upon the wall. So permeating is it
that the odour of fried food clings to everything I wear and haunts me
all day. I can hear the sputtering of the saucepan and the fall and flap
of the pieces of meat as she drops them in to fry. _I know what they
are_, for I have seen them the night before--great crimson bits of flesh
torn to pieces and arranged in rows by the fingers of a ragged Negro as
he crouched by the kitchen table.

This preparation continues for an hour: it takes an abnormally long time
to cook abnormally bad food! Long before five the clock of Excelsior
rings and the cry of the mill is heard waking whomsoever might be lucky
enough to be asleep. Mrs. Jones calls Molly. "Molly!" The girl murmurs
and turns. "Come, you-all git up; you take so powerful long to dress
yo'self!" Long to dress! It is difficult to see how that would be
possible. She rises reluctantly, yawning, sighing; lifts her scarcely
rested body, puts on her stockings and her shoes and the dirty wrapper.
Her hair is untouched, her face unwashed, but she is ready for the day!
Mrs. White has actually fallen asleep, the small roll, her baby, curled
up close to her back.

Molly's summons is mine as well. I am a mill-hand with her. I rise and
repeat my ablutions of the evening before. Unhooking the tin basin,
possessing myself of a bit of soap on the kitchen stairs, I wash my face
and hands. Although the water is dipped from the pail on which a scum
has formed, still it is so much more cool, refreshing and stimulating
than anything that has come in contact with me for hours that it is a
positive pleasure.

* * * * *

THE MILL

By this time the morning has found us all, and unlovely it seems as
regarded from this shanty environment. At 4:50 Excelsior has shrieked
every settler awake. At half-past five we have breakfasted and I pass
out of the house, one of the half-dozen who seek the mill from our
doors.

We fall in with the slowly moving, straggling f