to save
cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue
of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a
tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became
furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite,
was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought,
tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise,
to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.
The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the only
evidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all. On
Tuesday nights the Owl Club danced; then there was a little stir in
the streets, and here and there one could see a lighted window until
midnight. But the next night all was dark again.

After I refused to join 'the Owls,' as they were called, I made a bold
resolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hall. I knew it
would be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfather
didn't approve of dancing, anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to
dance I could go to the Masonic Hall, among 'the people we knew.' It was
just my point that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew.

My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as I studied there, I had a
stove in it. I used to retire to my room early on Saturday night, change
my shirt and collar and put on my Sunday coat. I waited until all was
quiet and the old people were asleep, then raised my window, climbed
out, and went softly through the yard. The first time I deceived my
grandparents I felt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time, but I
soon ceased to think about it.

The dance at the Firemen's Hall was the one thing I looked forward to
all the week. There I met the same people I used to see at the Vannis'
tent. Sometimes there were Bohemians from Wilber, or German boys who
came down on the afternoon freight from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tiny
were always there, and the three Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundry
girls.

The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in their
house behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hung
out to dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid his
girls well, looked out for them, and gave them a good home. He told me
once that his own daughter died just as she was getting old enough to
help her mother, and that he had been 'try