lly follow the trend of the talk during
this, the most genial, homely, soul-cheering hour of the day. The
trifling events of the last twelve hours in schoolroom, in store, in
office, in street, in kitchen loom up large as they are rehearsed in
that magic, animated, cozy moment just before ma says, with a sigh:

"Well, folks, go on into the sitting-room. Me and Nellie've got to
clear away."

Just silhouettes as the train flashed by--these small-town people--but
very human, very enviable to Emma McChesney.

"They're real," she would say. "They're regular, three-meals-a-day
people. I've been peeking in at their windows for ten years, and I've
learned that it is in these towns that folks really live. The
difference between life here and life in New York is the difference
between area and depth. D'you see what I mean? In New York, they live
by the mile, and here they live by the cubic foot. Well, I'd rather
have one juicy, thick club-steak than a whole platterful of
quarter-inch. It's the same idea."

To those of her business colleagues whose habit it was to lounge in the
hotel window with sneering comment upon the small-town procession as it
went by, Emma McChesney had been wont to say:

"Don't sneer at Main Street. When you come to think of it, isn't it
true that Fifth Avenue, any bright winter afternoon between four and
six, is only Main Street on a busy day multiplied by one thousand?"

Emma McChesney was not the sort of woman to rail at a fate that had
placed her in the harness instead of in the carriage. But during all
the long years of up-hill pull, from the time she started with a humble
salary in the office of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company,
through the years spent on the road, up to the very time when the crown
of success came to her in the form of the secretaryship of the
prosperous firm of T. A. Buck, there was a minor but fixed ambition in
her heart. That same ambition is to be found deep down in the heart of
every woman whose morning costume is a tailor suit, whose newspaper
must be read in hurried snatches on the way downtown in crowded train
or car, and to whom nine A.M. spells "Business."

"In fifteen years," Emma McChesney used to say, "I've never known what
it is to loll in leisure. I've never had a chance to luxuriate.
Sunday? To a working woman, Sunday is for the purpose of repairing the
ravages of the other six days. By the time you've washed your brushes,
mended you