gossip than in the middle of the week. Most of the girls have been to
dances on Saturday night, to church on Sunday evening with some young
man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the
language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the
abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other,
but in all they say there is not a word of value--nothing that would
interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the
sagaciousness of the low-born Italian, none of the wit and penetration
of the French _ouvriere_. The Old World generations ago divided itself
into classes; the lower class watched the upper and grew observant and
appreciative, wise and discriminating, through the study of a master's
will. Here in the land of freedom, where no class line is rigid, the
precious chance is not to serve but to live for oneself; not to watch a
superior, but to find out by experience. The ideal plays no part, stern
realities alone count, and thus we have a progressive, practical,
independent people, the expression of whose personality is interesting
not through their words but by their deeds.

When the Monday noon whistle blows I follow the hundreds down into the
dining-room. Each wears her cap in a way that speaks for her
temperament. There is the indifferent, the untidy, the prim, the vain,
the coquettish; and the faces under them, which all looked alike at
first, are becoming familiar. I have begun to make friends. I speak bad
English, but do not attempt to change my voice and inflection nor to
adopt the twang. No allusion is made to my pronunciation except by one
girl, who says:

"I knew you was from the East. My sister spent a year in Boston and when
she come back she talked just like you do, but she lost it all again.
I'd give anything if I could talk _aristocratic_."