To-day came the Finn woman and cleaned my blue-and-white bedroom.
She comes now and again and cleans excellently.
I would like to clean my room myself but lack the strength and skill
to do it well.
But I stay with the Finn woman and show her how and I watch her work
and muse upon her. She would be called in England a charwoman, but in
this America of the vast mongrel heterogenesis she is an unclassified
laborer.
I like to watch her and talk with her a bit and dwell on her mixed
potentialities. She contrasts fascinatingly with me.
She is a human being and so am I, and beyond and with that there are
odd parallels and similarities and distinctions between her and me.
Her name is Josephina and she looks as if it might be.
Mine is Mary MacLane but I don’t look entirely like it.
She lives a lonely life and so do I, differing in sort and
circumstance.
I am middle-class and American of Canadian reminiscence, and
early-thirty.
Josephina is Finn and lower-class with a ‘foreign’ look, and she is
forty-five and looks sixty and is twelve years out of Finland.