XV

My type-writing was practised under difficulties, for girls kept coming

in and out of my room, and Lolly, who was there nearly every evening,

taught me. By this time I was getting acquainted with a great many of

the girls in the house, and for some reason or other I was popular.

The "good" girls wanted me to join this or that Christian Society or

Endeavor Club, and the "bad" girls--alleged by the good ones to be

bad--were always urging me to "come on out and have a good time."

In those days Lolly was my chum. We were always together, much to

Estelle's disgust. Every evening Lolly would come into my room unless

she had an engagement, and, heavens! men came after Lolly like flies to

the honey-pot. With a box of cigarettes and a magazine, or one of my

own stories, all of which she was revising for me, she would curl up on

my bed while I worked. Sometimes I practised till ten o'clock, when the

lights would go out.

After a long, if not hard, day in the yards--and even if one did not

work at all, the incessant movement and buzz of the great work factory

was exhausting--and two or three hours of type-writing practice at

night, you may be sure I was pretty tired when finally I crept into bed.

Then for some time thereafter I would lie wide awake. Like a

kaleidoscopic panorama, the scenes of my day's work would slide in and

out of my mind, then slowly pass away, as the figures in a strange

dance. Visions would then come to me--the wavering, quaint persons and

plots of the stories I would write. Dreams, too, came of the days when

I would be famous and rich, and all my dear people would be lifted

up from want. My poems would be on every one's tongue, my books in

every home. And I saw myself facing a great audience, and bowing in

acknowledgment of their praise of my successful play.

A few years later, when the name of a play of mine flashed in electric

letters on Broadway, and the city was papered with great posters

of the play, I went up and down before that electric sign, just to

see if I could call up even one of the fine thrills I had felt in

anticipation. Alas! I was aware only of a sad excitement, a sense of

disappointment and despair. I realized that what as an ignorant little

girl I had thought was fame was something very different. What then I

ardently believed to be the divine sparks of genius, I now perceived

to be nothing but a mediocre talent that could never carry me far. My

success was founded upon a cheap and popular device, and that jumble

of sentimental moonshine that they called my play seemed to me the

pathetic stamp of my inefficiency. Oh, I had sold my birthright for a

mess of potage!

We arrive at a stage of philosophic despair when we calmly recognize

our limitations; but long before we know them, what wild dreams are

those that thrill, enthrall, and torment us! Well, the dreams at least

were well worth while.

I was now part of a vast, moving world of work, and, strangely enough,

I was, in a way, contented. It takes very little to make the average

normal girl contented. Take the girls who worked as I did. Given fair

salaries and tolerable conditions under which to work, they were for

the most part light-hearted and happy. You had only to look at groups

of them about the Y. W. C. A. to realize that. Not that most of us did

not have some little burden to carry; a few of us cherished wistful

ambitions beyond our sphere, and all of us, I think, had our romances.

In the yards there was probably one girl to every three or four hundred

men. They were obliged to pay good salaries, moreover, as many girls

hesitated to go away out there to work, and the aristocrats of our

profession balked at the sights and smells of the yards. Anyhow, the

firm for which I worked treated us well. Special busses brought us to

and from the yards. Excellent dressing-rooms and luncheon-rooms were

assigned to us, and we were always treated with courtesy.

We girls were all appraised when we entered, and soon afterwards were

assigned certain places in the estimation of the men of the yards.

That is to say, a girl was "good," "bad," a "worker," a "frost," or a

"peach."

The "good" girls were treated with respect; the "bad" girls made

"dates" for dinners with the various "bosses," had fine clothes,

jewels, were loud, and had privileges; the "frosts" were given a wide

berth. They were the girls who were always on the defensive with the

men, expecting and looking for insults and taking umbrage on the

slightest provocation. The "workers" were of course the backbone of our

profession. They received high salaries and rose to positions almost as

good as the men's. Boys and men stepped lively for them, and took their

orders unblinkingly. Finally, the title of "peach" was bestowed upon

the girls whom the men decided were pretty and approved of in other

ways. If one was in the "peach" class, she was persistently courted by

all well-meaning or bad-meaning men who could get near her. She was a

belle of the yards.

Under which head I came, I never knew. I think I was the strange

gosling that had sprung up somehow in this nest, and no one knew quite

where I should be assigned. There was a wavering disposition at first

to put me in the "peach" class, but I rather think I degenerated within

a few weeks to the "worker" class, for Fred O'Brien early acquired the

habit of leaving most of the details of our department entirely to me.

Twenty-four men asked me to "go out" with them the first week I was

there. I kept a note of this, just to amuse myself and O'Brien, who

was vastly interested in the sensation he fatuously believed I was

creating. He took a comical pride in my "success"! Ah, dear Fred! No

one, not even I, was ever prouder of my later "success" than he. Every

day he would ask me, "Well, who's asking you out to-night?" and I

would show him my "mash" notes, most of which he confiscated, later, I

suspect, to torment their authors.

The men out here did not ask if they could call upon a girl. Their way

of becoming better acquainted, or "going after" a girl, as they called

it, was to invite her to "go out" with them, meaning for a ride, to the

theaters, the parks, restaurants, or other places of amusement. I never

"went out" with any of the men of the yards except O'Brien and Hermann,

who had been acting like a clown for my special benefit by coming over

to our department every day, and talking a lot of nonsense, telling

jokes, and sending me countless foolish notes, until at last O'Brien

took pity on him, and said they would call upon me one night.

That was an illuminating occasion. "Fellows" were few and far between

who called at the Y. W. C. A., and every girl who possessed a "steady"

was marked. Whenever a new "fellow" appeared there, he was the object

of the united curiosity of a score of girls, who hung about the halls

and the parlors to get a look at him.

Now, Hermann called upon me in great state. Much to my surprise and

Lolly's hilarious joy, he came in silk hat and frock coat, with a

gold-topped cane. I hardly knew him, when I descended in my own best, a

white polka-dotted Swiss dress, with a pink sash, and found him sitting

erect and with evident discomfort on the edge of a sofa in the parlor,

the admired target of a score of eyes, all feminine. He was making a

manful effort to appear at his ease, and unaware of the sensation he

had made. Men with silk hats, you must know, do not call every day

upon girls at the Y. W. C. A. It was plain to be seen that the poor

fellow was suffering a species of delicious torture. In the hall,

within direct sight of the sofa, Lolly was leaning against the wall,

and looking her wickedest and prettiest. She had already tormented and

teased me unmercifully about my "first beau."

Hermann rose gallantly as I entered, and he bowed, as I did not know

he could bow, over my hand, shaking it in the then approved and

fashionable high manner; but I could not resist a little giggle as I

heard Lolly chokingly cough in the hall, and I knew she was taking it

all in.

"O'Brien's waiting for us outside," said Hermann. "Wouldn't come in.

Acted just like a man with a sore tooth. Ever seen a man with a sore

tooth, Miss Ascough?"

No, I had never had that pleasure, I told him.

"Well," said Hermann, "the man with a sore tooth groans all day and

night, and makes every one about him suffer. Then first thing in the

A.M. he hikes off to the nearest dentist. He gives one look

at the sign on the dentist's door, and that's enough for him: he's

cured. Christian Science, you see. Now, that's how it is with O'Brien

to-night. He was dead stuck on coming along, but got stage-fright when

he saw the girls."

"_You_ weren't afraid of us, were you, Mr. Hermann?" said I, admiringly

and flatteringly.

"Me? What, me afraid of girls? Sa-ay, I like that!" and Hermann laughed

at the idea as if it amused him vastly. "Tell you what you do. Get

another girl; there's a peach looking in at us now--don't look up.

She's the blonde, with the teeth. What do you say to our all going over

to the S---- Gardens for a lobster supper, huh?"

Now, the peach, of course, was Lolly, who, with her dimples all abroad

and her fine white teeth showing, was plainly on view at the door, and

had already worked havoc in the breast of the sentimental Hermann.

O'Brien didn't like the idea of the S---- Gardens. He said it was "too

swift" for _me_, though he brutally averred it might do for Hermann

and Lolly. Lolly and he sparred all the time, just as did Lolly and

Estelle. He said, moreover, that it would not do at all for us to be

seen together, and we would be sure to run across some yards people at

the S---- Gardens. If he were seen out with his stenographer, every

tongue in the office would be wagging about it next day.

So he suggested that we take a long car ride, and get off at L----

Park, where there was a good restaurant, and we could get something

to eat and drink there. Fred and I paired off together, and Hermann,

who had been utterly won away from me by Lolly, who was flirting with

him and teasing him outrageously, brought up behind us as we started

for the cars. After he had explained to me why we should not be seen

together, O'Brien said, with an air of great carelessness:

"Now, look a-here, girl, I don't want you to get it into your head that

I'm stuck on you, for I'm not; but I like you, and if you don't pull my

leg too hard, I'll take you out with me all you want."

"Pull your leg!" I repeated, shocked. I had never heard that expression

before. American slang was still a source of mystification, delight,

and wonder to me. Lolly heard my horrified exclamation, and moved up,

laughing her merriest.

"Limb's the polite term," she corrected Fred.

"Eh?" said he. Then as he saw I did not really understand, he explained

to me what he meant.

"Oh," said I, "you needn't worry about me. If you don't believe that I

care nothing about money, look at this."

There were a few coins in my pocketbook. I poured them into my hand,

and deliberately and impulsively I tossed them out into the road. I am

sure I don't know why I did such a senseless thing as that. It was just

the impulse of a silly moment.

The subjects we two girls and boys discussed were varied and many, but

always by persistent degrees they seemed to swing back to the yards,

wherein of course the interests of our escorts naturally centered.

The boys entertained us with tales of the men and even cattle of this

"city," as they called it. There was a black sheep called "Judas

Iscariot" who led the other sheep to slaughter, and was always rewarded

with a special piece of meat. There was a big black pig that wandered

about the offices of a neighboring firm, and was the mascot of that

office.

There was a man who had been born in the yards, married in the yards,

and whose heir had recently been born there. And so forth.

I got into trouble at the Y. W. C. A. for the first time that night. We

had forgotten to ask permission to be out after ten, and it was after

eleven by the time we got back. The door girl let us in, but took our

names, and we were reported next day. I was let off with a reprimand

from the secretary, but Lolly had a stormy time of it with this

unpleasant personage, upon whom, I am happy to say, she never failed

to inflict deserved punishment. It seems Lolly was an old offender, and

she was accused of "leading Miss Ascough astray." I, by the way, was

now in high favor with the secretary, though I never liked her, and I

never forgave her for that first day. Also I had seen many girls turned

away, sometimes because they did not have the money to pay in advance,

and sometimes because they had no references. My heart used to go out

to them, as with drooping shoulders these forlorn little waifs who had

applied for shelter were turned from the very doors that should have

opened for them.

That night as we felt our way in the dark through the unlighted halls

to our rooms, Lolly, swearing audibly and picturesquely, said she was

"darned tired" of this "old pious prison," and as she now had all the

"dope" she wanted upon the place, she was going to get out, and she

asked me to go with her. I said that I would.