ickly to the address mentioned in order to get
the place at the head of the line, thus getting the first consideration
as an applicant. He learned that some other men, such as waiters, cooks,
hotel employees and so on, frequently stayed up all night in order to
buy a paper at two in the morning, winter or summer, rain or snow, heat
or cold, and hurry to the promising addresses they might find. He
learned that the crowds of applicants were apt to become surly or
sarcastic or contentious as their individual chances were jeopardized by
ever-increasing numbers. And all this was going on all the time, in
winter or summer, heat or cold, rain or snow. Pretending interest as a
spectator, he would sometimes stand and watch, hearing the ribald jests,
the slurs cast upon life, fortune, individuals in particular and in
general by those who were wearily or hopelessly waiting. It was a
horrible picture to him in his present condition. It was like the
grinding of the millstones, upper and nether. These were the chaff. He
was a part of the chaff at present, or in danger of becoming so. Life
was winnowing him out. He might go down, down, and there might never be
an opportunity for him to rise any more.

Few, if any of us, understand thoroughly the nature of the unconscious
stratification which takes place in life, the layers and types and
classes into which it assorts itself and the barriers which these offer
to a free migration of individuals from one class to another. We take on
so naturally the material habiliments of our temperaments, necessities
and opportunities. Priests, doctors, lawyers, merchants, appear to be
born with their particular mental attitude and likewise the clerk, the
ditch-digger, the janitor. They have their codes, their guilds and their
class feelings. And while they may be spiritually closely related, they
are physically far apart. Eugene, after hunting for a place for a month,
knew a great deal more about this stratification than he had ever
dreamed of knowing. He found that he was naturally barred by temperament
from some things, from others by strength and weight, or rather the lack
of them; from others, by inexperience; from others, by age; and so on.
And those who were different from him in any or all of these respects
were inclined to look at him askance. "You are not as we are," their
eyes seemed to say; "why do you come here?"

One day he approached a gang of men who were waiting outside a car barn
and