and that if I succeeded in getting some music pupils, I could teach
a couple of them every night, and so make a living until something
better turned up. He went on to say that it would not be a bad thing
for me to stay at the factory and learn my trade as a cigar maker, and
impressed on me that, for a young man knocking about the country, a
trade was a handy thing to have. I determined to accept his offer and
thanked him heartily. In fact, I became enthusiastic, not only because
I saw a way out of my financial troubles, but also because I was eager
and curious over the new experience I was about to enter. I wanted
to know all about the cigar making business. This narrowed the
conversation down to the husband and myself, so the wife went in and
left us talking.

He was what is called a _regalia_ workman, and earned from thirty-five
to forty dollars a week. He generally worked a sixty-dollar job; that
is, he made cigars for which he was paid at the rate of sixty dollars
per thousand. It was impossible for him to make a thousand in a week
because he had to work very carefully and slowly. Each cigar was made
entirely by hand. Each piece of filler and each wrapper had to be
selected with care. He was able to make a bundle of one hundred cigars
in a day, not one of which could be told from the others by any
difference in size or shape, or even by any appreciable difference in
weight. This was the acme of artistic skill in cigar making. Workmen
of this class were rare, never more than three or four in one factory,
and it was never necessary for them to remain out of work. There were
men who made two, three, and four hundred cigars of the cheaper grades
in a day; they had to be very fast in order to make a decent week's
wages. Cigar making was a rather independent trade; the men went to
work when they pleased and knocked off when they felt like doing so.
As a class the workmen were careless and improvident; some very rapid