her palm, had another interview with the forelady.

Meantime Teta Elzbieta had taken Stanislovas to the priest and gotten a
certificate to the effect that he was two years older than he was; and
with it the little boy now sallied forth to make his fortune in the
world. It chanced that Durham had just put in a wonderful new lard
machine, and when the special policeman in front of the time station
saw Stanislovas and his document, he smiled to himself and told him to
go--"Czia! Czia!" pointing. And so Stanislovas went down a long stone
corridor, and up a flight of stairs, which took him into a room lighted
by electricity, with the new machines for filling lard cans at work
in it. The lard was finished on the floor above, and it came in little
jets, like beautiful, wriggling, snow-white snakes of unpleasant odor.
There were several kinds and sizes of jets, and after a certain precise
quantity had come out, each stopped automatically, and the wonderful
machine made a turn, and took the can under another jet, and so on,
until it was filled neatly to the brim, and pressed tightly, and
smoothed off. To attend to all this and fill several hundred cans of
lard per hour, there were necessary two human creatures, one of whom
knew how to place an empty lard can on a certain spot every few seconds,
and the other of whom knew how to take a full lard can off a certain
spot every few seconds and set it upon a tray.

And so, after little Stanislovas had stood gazing timidly about him for
a few minutes, a man approached him, and asked what he wanted, to which
Stanislovas said, "Job." Then the man said "How old?" and Stanislovas
answered, "Sixtin." Once or twice every year a state inspector would
come wandering through the packing plants, asking a child here and there
how old he was; and so the packers were very careful to comply with the
law, which cost them as much trouble as was now involved in the boss's