The Nine-Tenths

es of sandwiches and cakes. They frisked hilariously before the wind, with flying hair and sparkling eyes, and crowded into the narrow entrance with the grimy pre

irls chattered and flirted with th

oticed, the pressmen took it for granted, and Joe, in his slipshod manner, gave it no thought. Later that very afternoon as the opening of the hall door rang a bell sharply and Joe came in, the men swiftly and guiltily flung their lighted cigarettes to the floor and stepped them out or crumpled them with stinging fingers in their pockets.

human-they see me smokin

, under whose radiance the greasy, grimy men came and went, pulling out heaps of paper, sliding in sheets, tinkering at the machinery. Overhead whirled and traveled a complex system of w

thers Jewish, a few American. They gave to the gaunt, smoky building a touch as of a wild rose on a gray rock-heap-a touch of color and of melody. Joe, at noon, would purposely linger near the open doorwa

tremulously homelike and elemental. Even that afternoon as Joe stood at the high wall-desk near the door, under a golden bulb of light, figuring on contracts with Marty Briggs, he felt his singular happiness of belonging. Here he had spent the

overridden the less imperious will of the soldier and married him, and they had settled down in the city. Henry Blaine learned to write with his left hand and became a clerk. It was the only work he could do. Then, as his health became worse and worse, he was ordered to live in the country (that was in 1868), and as the young couple had scarcely any mon

en" home together and go out and do such work as she could. This consisted largely in reading to old ladies in the neighborhood, though sometimes she

boy entered the public school on Seventy-ninth Street, and grew amazingly, his mind keeping pace. He was a splen

and, lusting for life, took a clerk's job with one of the big express companies. He held this for two years, and learned an interesting fact-namely, that a clerk's life began at 5 P.M. and ended at 8.30 A.M. In between the clerk was a dead but skilled machine that did the work

sful business man and could count himself worth nearly a hundred thousand dollars. He made little use of this money; his was a simple, serious, fun-loving nature, and all his early training had made for plain living and economy. And so for years he and his mother had boarded in a brownstone boarding-house in the quiet block west of Lexington

direction. There stood the city, a great fact, and even that afternoon as the wild autumn wind blew from the west and rapid, ragged cloud masses passed huge shadows over the ship-swept Hudson, darkened briefly the hurrying streets, extinguished for a moment the glitter of a skyscraper and went gray-footed over the flats of Long Island, even at that moment terrific forces, fierce aggregations of man-power, gigantic blasts of t

e else. He was rather shy, and he was too busy. But during the last few months a teacher-Myra Craig-had been coming to the printery to have some work done for the school. She had strangely affected Joe-sprung an electricity on him that troubled him profoundly. He could not forget h

ded, satisfying present, and Joe stood there musing, a tall, gaunt man, the upstart tufts of his tousled hair glistening in the light overhead. His face was the homeliest that ever happened. The mouth was big and big-lipped, the eyes large, dark, melancholy and slightly sunken, and the mask was a network of

t she loved him; yes, he was quite sure. Then what hindrance? There, at quarter to five that strange afternoon, Joe felt that he had reached the heights of success, and he saw no obstacle to lon

ess of night, its haunting and hidden beauties, its women calling from afar. It all seemed wild and impossible romance. It smote his heart-strings and set them trembling with music. He wondered why

ling that communicated itself to his hands and down his legs, a throbbing joy dashed with a strange tr

his impression. It was long and oval, with a narrow woman-forehead cut off by a curve of dark hair; the mouth was small and sweet; the nose narrow; the eyes large, clear gray, penetrating. Under the gracefully modeled

s a whirl of fire in his heart. She had come to him; he wanted to gather her close and bear her off through the

zen!" he said, w

er bag under her arm and took off her gloves.

cheek, almost losing himself

school

ed to speak lightly, but h

nding of the Pilgrims,' and every blessed litt

her bag and handed him some loose

Blaine," she said, sev

e job to som

ghed st

any co

thous

e as if

cents t

lau

t the school

rd silence she began pitifully to button

nly he spo

o, Miss

t ..." s

ed very

ke a walk wit

e with men and women, that awful gravitation, that passion of creat

he was wh

was almost

ped over his head a queer gray s

ck to-night, M

ll as if it must surely be there when he returned. He was proud at that moment to be Joe Blaine, with his name i

down, down past eight floors, to the street level. The e

y. It's gittin' on to

ht, Mr.

ht, Tom,"