was too ill to
notice it--how the people in the car began to gasp and sputter, to
put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious
glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up
and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on each
side of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly
empty--those passengers who could not get room on the platform having
gotten out to walk.

Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute
after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin--his whole
system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of
scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was, he
could be compared with nothing known to men, save that newest discovery
of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an unlimited time,
without being itself in the least diminished in power. He smelled so
that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole family
to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he could keep anything
upon his stomach--he might wash his hands, and use a knife and fork, but
were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?

And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would
stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to
shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he
was a fertilizer man for life--he was able to eat again, and though
his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not
work.

So there passed another summer. It was a summer of prosperity, all over
the country, and the country ate generously of packing house products,
and there was plenty of work for all the family, in spite of the
packers' efforts to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able to
pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but there were one or
two sacrifices they considered too heavy to be made for long--it was
too bad that the boys should have to sell papers at their age. It was
utterly useless to caution them and plead with them; quite without
knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new environment. They
were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick up
cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with
pennies and dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the location
of all the houses of