here."

Susan signed her name to what she saw at a glance was some sort
of contract. She knew it contained nothing to her advantage,
much to her disadvantage. But she did not care. She had to
have work--something, anything that would stop the waste of her
slender capital. And within fifteen minutes she was seated in
the midst of the sweating, almost nauseatingly odorous women of
all ages, was toiling away at the simple task of making an ugly
hat frame still more ugly by the addition of a bit of tawdry
cotton ribbon, a buckle, and a bunch of absurdly artificial
flowers. She was soon able to calculate roughly what she could
make in six days. She thought she could do two dozen of the
hats a day; and twelve dozen hats at forty cents the dozen
would mean four dollars and eighty cents a week!

Four dollars and eighty cents! Less than she had planned to
set aside for food alone, out of her ten dollars as a model.

Next her on the right sat a middle-aged woman, grossly fat,
repulsively shapeless, piteously homely--one of those luckless
human beings who are foredoomed from the outset never to know
any of the great joys of life the joys that come through our
power to attract our fellow-beings. As this woman stitched
away, squinting through the steel-framed spectacles set upon
her snub nose, Susan saw that she had not even good health to
mitigate her lot, for her color was pasty and on her dirty skin
lay blotches of dull red. Except a very young girl here and
there all the women had poor or bad skins. And Susan was not
made disdainful by the odor which is far worse than that of any
lower animal, however dirty, because the human animal must wear
clothing. She had lived in wretchedness in a tenement; she
knew that this odor was an inevitable part of tenement life
when one has neither the time nor the means to be clean. Poor
food, foul air, broken sleep--bad health, disease, unsightly
faces, repulsive bodies!

No wonder the common people looked almost like another race in
contrast with their brothers and sisters of the comfortable
classes. Another race! The race into which she would soon be
reborn under the black magic of poverty! As she glanced and
reflected on what she saw, viewed it in the light of her
experience, her fingers slackened, and she could speed them up
only in spurts.

"If I stay here," thought she, "in a few weeks I shall be like
these others. No matter how hard I may fight, I'll be dragged
d