here were some days and weeks in which she was given as much as
she could possibly finish, but there were others--alack! many
others--when nothing came. There was a winter when she wore old clothes,
a winter through which other young women in the great hive of a business
block were blooming in gowns and garments that were of latest mode and
material. It was, so far as work was concerned, either a feast or a
famine with her, and she longed for just such a position as that held by
an older scholar, who was stenographer and typewriter on salary in the
office of a great law firm and yet was enabled to take frequent
transcribing or copying from outside; but for a billet of this kind she
looked in vain. Then came another winter. How it affected Miss Wallen
can best be told through this simple fact, that she was no longer able
to ride home even in the dark wet evenings. Mart had again been turned
out of house and home, and came with his ailing wife and wailing babies
to the doting mother's door, and again was Jenny burdened with their
maintenance. Mart had struck. There had been a scaling down of wages for
all hands. Most of them, realizing that these were hard times and that
other and better were coming, stood by the company. Mart was a leader at
the meetings of the employees, and a brilliant orator. With all the
eloquence of which he was capable he urged his fellows to stand together
and strike. He was one of a committee of five sent to see the local
manager. The manager showed the facts, and the other men were satisfied
that things were about as he showed. They had been long in his employ,
and Mart but a short time. The manager addressed himself to the old men,
rather ignoring the new, and Mart's tongue and temper got away with him.
He said he'd strike anyhow, and he did. He struck his own name off the
company's books.

And so during these dark, dreary winter evenings, sometimes wet and raw,
sometimes bitterly cold, quitting when she could her desk at five
o'clock, yet often kept pegging away until later, Miss Jeannette Wallen
walked those crowded blocks below the State Street bridge and all the
many, many squares that interposed between her and her little home. As
the days began to lengthen and the cold to strengthen, she sometimes
reached there well-nigh frozen and exhausted, to be welcomed and
regaled not so much with hot tea and loving words as by wailing infants
and complaining women,--Mart being, as usual, away at some