She packs as fast as she can, but her hands are
clumsy and she can't seem to get the difference between chocolates
very well. It is enough to drive a seer crazy. They change the
positions on the shelves every so often; the dipping-machine tenders
cut capers and mark the same kind of chocolates differently to-day
from yesterday. By three in the afternoon you're too sick of
chocolates to do any more investigating by sampling. Even Ida herself
has sometimes to poke a candy in the bottom--if it feels one way it's
"marsh"; another, it's peach; another, it's coconut. But my feeling is
not educated and I poke, and then end by having to bite, and then,
just as I discover it is peach, after all, some one has run off with
the last box and Ida has to be found and a substitute declared.

Tessie gives up in despair and hurls herself on me. So then Tessie is
nearest to me in the whole factory, and Tessie is slow. The faster I
pack the more it shows up Tessie's slowness. If Ida scolded Tessie it
would break my heart. The thought of the man who owns that factory,
and his orders and his profits and his obligations, never enter my or
any other packer's head. I will not pack so many boxes that Tessie
gets left too far behind.

Then a strange thing happens. All of a sudden I get more interested in
packing chocolates than anything else on earth. A little knack or
twist comes to me--my fingers fly (for me). I forget Tessie. I forget
the time. I forget my feet. How many boxes can I pack to-day? That is
all I can think of. I don't want to hear the noon bell. I can't wait
to get back after lunch. I fly out after the big boxes to pack the
little boxes in. In my haste and ignorance I bring back covers by
mistake and pack dozens of little boxes in covers. It must all be done
over again. Six hundred boxes I pack this day. I've not stopped for
breath. I'm not a bit tired when 6 o'clock comes round. I ask Ida when
she will put me on piecework--it seems the great ambition of my life
is to feel I am on piecework. "When you can pack about two thousand
boxes a day," says Ida. Two thousand! I was panting and proud over six
hundred! "Never mind," says Ida, "you're makin' out fine." Oh, the
thrill of those words! I asked her to show me again about separating
the paper cups. I didn't have it just right, I was sure. "My Gawd!"
sighed Ida, "what ambition!" Yes, but the ambition did not last more
than a few days at that pitch.

Tessie wanted to tell me somet