XIII

I hate to think of those nightmare days that followed. It seemed to me

that a hundred thousand girls answered every advertisement. I stood

in line with hundreds of them outside offices and shops and factories

and all sorts of places. I stood or sat (when I could get a seat) in

crowded outer offices with scores of other girls, all hungrily hoping

for the "job" which only one of us could have.

Then I began to go from office to office, selecting a building, and

going through it from the top to the bottom floor. Sometimes I got

beyond the appraising office boys and clerks of outer offices, and

sometimes I was turned away at the door.

I have known what it is to be pitied, chaffed, insulted, "jollied"; I

have had coarse or delicate compliments paid me; I have been cursed at

and ordered to "clear out--" oh, all the crucifying experiences that

only a girl who looks hard for work knows!

I've had a fat broker tell me that a girl like me didn't need to work;

I've had a pious-looking hypocrite chuck me under the chin, out of

sight of his clerks in the outer offices. I've had a man make me a

cold business proposition of ten dollars a week for my services as

stenographer and type-writer, and ten dollars a week for my services

as something else. I've had men brutally touch me, and when I have

resented it, I have seen them spit across the room in my direction, and

some have cursed me.

And I have had men slip into my hand the price of a meal, and then

apologize when they saw they had merely hurt me.

When the day was done, I've wearily climbed aboard crowded cars and

taken my stand, packed between a score of men and women, or clung to

straps or doors, and I have envied those other people on the car,

because I felt that most of them were returning from work, while I was

looking for it.

And then I've gone back to my room in the Y. W. C. A., hurrying to get

there before the chattering, questioning Estelle, and counted over my

ever-diminishing hundred dollars, and lain down upon my bed, feverishly

to think ever and only of _him_! Oh, how far, far away now he always

seemed from me!

Sometimes, if I came in early enough, and if I were not too desperately

tired, I would write things. Odds and ends--what did I not write? Wisps

of thoughts, passionate little poems that could not bear analysis; and

then one day I wrote a little story of my mother's land. I had never

been there, and yet I wrote easily of that quaint, far country, and of

that wandering troupe of jugglers and tight-rope dancers of which my

own mother had been one.

A week passed away, and still I had found no work. What was worse, I

had no way of learning type-writing, even with the machine before me;

for Estelle, despite her promises, went out every night with Albert.

She had merely shown me one morning how to put the paper on and move

the carriage back and forth. I used to sit before that type-writer and

peck at the type, but my words ran into one another, and sometimes the

letters were jumbled together.

I now knew a few of the girls in the house to speak to slightly, but I

hesitated to ask any of them to show me something that perhaps I ought

to pay to learn; for I did not want to spend the money for that. So I

waited for Estelle to keep her promise.

Sometimes I would approach a group of girls, with the intention of

asking one of them to come with me up to my room, and then when she was

there, ask her about the type-writer; but the girls at the Y. W. C. A.

were always occupied in one way or another in the evening, and a great

many of them, like myself, were looking for work.

They used to cluster together in the lower halls and reading-room and

talk over their experiences. Snorts of indignation, peals of laughter,

strenuous words of advice--all these came in a stream from the girls.

You'd hear one girl tell an experience, and another would say, "I tell

you what _I'd_ have done: I'd have slapped him in the face!" Or again,

a girl would say, "I just gave him one look that petrified him." From

all of which I gathered that my own experiences while looking for

work were common ones. Alas! most of us had passed the stage where we

"smacked" or "slapped" a man in the face or "petrified" him with a

stare when he insulted us. What was the use? I had got so that I would

take a nasty proposition from a man with a shrug and a smile, and walk

out gamely.

I dare say there are people who cannot believe men are so base. Well,

we girls who work see them at their worst, remember, and sometimes we

see them at their best. There are men so fine and great in the business

world that they compensate for all the contemptible wolves who prey

upon creatures weaker and poorer than they are.

I did not have time in those days to notice much that happened in

the house, and yet small riots and strikes were on all sides of us.

Girls were protesting about this or that. I remember one of the chief

grievances was having to attend certain amateur theatrical performances

given by patronesses of the association. We poor girls were obliged

to sit through these abortive efforts at amusing us. Most of us, as

Estelle said, could have "put it all over" these alleged actors.

Then, not all of the girls cared to attend the religious services and

prayer meetings. It was a real hardship to be obliged to sit through

these when one would have much preferred to remain in one's room. The

ten-o'clock rule was the hardest of all. At that hour all lights went

out. We were supposed to be in bed unless we had permission to remain

out later. Vehement protests against this rule were daily hurled at the

powers that were, but in vain. The girls asserted that as there were no

private parlors in which to see their company, they were obliged to go

out, and it was cruel to make it obligatory to be in so early.

So, you see, pleasant as in many ways the association was, it had its

drawbacks. Even I, who was charmed with the place, and grateful for the

immediate shelter it gave me, revolted after I had been working some

time.

One day a statue of General Logan was to be unveiled opposite our

place, and a great parade was to mark the occasion. Naturally the

windows of our house that faced the avenue were desirable and admirable

places from which not only to see the parade, but to watch the

unveiling exercises. Promptly the patrons and patronesses descended

upon us, and our windows were demanded. We girls were told we would

have to give up our rooms for that afternoon and go to the roof.

I'll tell you what one girl did. When the fine party that was to occupy

her room knocked upon her door, she called, "Come in!" and when they

entered, they found the young person in bed. She declined to get up.

Threats, coaxings, the titterings and explosive laughter of the

association's "honored guests" (they were of both sexes) fell upon deaf

ears. She declined to get up, and dared any one of them to force her

up. She said she had paid for that room, and she, and no one else, was

going to occupy it that day. That girl was I. I suppose I would have

been put out of the place for that piece of unheard-of defiance but for

the fact that one of the patronesses undertook to champion me. She said

I was perfectly right, and as she was a most important patroness, I was

not disturbed, though I received a severe lecture from Miss Secretary.

Taken on the whole, however, it was a good place. We had a fine

gymnasium and even a room for dancing. There were always lectures of

one kind or another, and if a girl desired, she could acquire a fair

education.

At the end of my second week, and while I was still looking for a

place, I made my first real girl friend and chum. I had noticed her in

the dining-room, and she, so she said, had specially selected me for

consideration. She called upon me one evening in my room. Of course she

was pretty, else I am afraid I should not have been attracted to her.

Pretty things hypnotize me. She was several years older than I, and was

what men call a "stunning-looking" girl. She was tall, with a beautiful

figure, which she always showed to advantage in handsome tailor-made

suits. Her complexion was fair, and she had laughing blue eyes. She was

the wittiest and prettiest and most distinguished-looking girl in the

house. I forgot to describe her hair. It was lovely, shining, rippling

hair, the color of "Kansas corn," as one of her admirers once phrased

it.

Estelle was out that evening, and while I was forlornly picking at my

type-writer, some one tapped at my door, and then Lolly--her name was

Laura, but I always called her Lolly--put her head in.

She said:

"Anybody but yourself at home?" and when I said no, she came in, and

locked the door behind her. She was in a pink dressing-gown so pretty

that I could not take my eyes from it. I had never had a dressing-gown.

Lolly stretched herself out on my bed, brought forth a package of

cigarettes, a thing absolutely forbidden in the place, offered me

one, and lit and began to smoke one herself. To be polite, I took her

cigarette and tried to smoke it; but she burst into merry laughter at

my effort, because I blew out instead of drawing in. However, I did my

best.

Of course, like girls, we chatted away about ourselves, and after I had

told her all about myself, Lolly in turn told me her history.

It seems she was the daughter of a prominent Texas politician whose

marriage to a stepmother of whom Lolly heartily disapproved had induced

her to leave home. She was trying to make a "sort of a livelihood," she

called it, as a reporter for the newspapers.

When she said this carelessly, I was so surprised and delighted that

I jumped on the bed beside her, and in a breath I told her that that

was the work I had done, and now wanted to do. She said that there

"wasn't much to it," and that if she were I, she'd try to get something

more practical and dependable. She said she had a job one day and

none the next. At the present time she was on the _Inter Ocean_, and

she had been assigned to "cover" the Y. W. C. A. (she called it "The

Young Women's Cussed Association") and dig up some stories about the

"inmates" and certain abuses of the officials. She said she'd have a

fine "story" when she got through.

How I envied her for her work! Hoping she might help me secure a

similar position, I read to her my latest story. She said it was "not

bad," but still advised me to get a stenographer's place in preference.

She said there were five thousand and ninety-nine positions for

stenographers to one for women reporters, and that if I got a good

place, I would find time to write a bit, anyway. In that way I'd get

ahead even better than if I had some precarious post on a newspaper, as

the space rates were excessively low. She said that she herself did not

make enough to keep body and soul together, but that she had a small

income from home. She said her present place was not worth that, and

she blew out a puff of smoke from her pretty lips. Any day she expected

that her "head would roll off," as she had been "falling down" badly on

stories lately.

In her way Lolly was as slangy as Estelle, but there was a subtle

difference between their slangs. Lolly was a lady. I do not care for

the word, but gentlewoman somehow sounds affected here. Estelle was

not. Yet Lolly was a cigarette fiend, and, according to her own wild

tales, had had a most extraordinary career.

Lolly had the most charming smile. It was as sunny as a child's, and

showed a row of the prettiest of teeth. She was impulsive, and yet at

times exceedingly moody.

I told her I thought she was quite the prettiest girl in the place,

whereupon she gave me a squeeze and said:

"What about yourself?"

Then she wanted to know what I did with myself all the time. I said:

"Why, I look for work all day."

"But at night?"

Oh, I just stayed in my room and tried to write or to practise on the

type-writer.

"Pooh!" said Lolly, "you'll die of loneliness that way. Why don't you

get a sweetheart?"