and fact, he was saving fifty dollars a month operating expenses
to the company.

But I didn't know I was displacing two men. Nobody told me. On
the contrary, the superintendent warned everybody not to tell me.
How valiantly I went at it that first day. I worked at top speed,
filling the iron wheelbarrow with coal, running it on the scales
and weighing the load, then trundling it into the fire-room and
dumping it on the plates before the fires.

Work! I did more than the two men whom I had displaced. They had
merely wheeled in the coal and dumped it on the plates. But while
I did this for the day coal, the night coal I had to pile against
the wall of the fire-room. Now the fire-room was small. It had
been planned for a night coal-passer. So I had to pile the night
coal higher and higher, buttressing up the heap with stout planks.
Toward the top of the heap I had to handle the coal a second time,
tossing it up with a shovel.

I dripped with sweat, but I never ceased from my stride, though I
could feel exhaustion coming on. By ten o'clock in the morning,
so much of my body's energy had I consumed, I felt hungry and
snatched a thick double-slice of bread and butter from my dinner
pail. This I devoured, standing, grimed with coal-dust, my knees
trembling under me. By eleven o'clock, in this fashion I had
consumed my whole lunch. But what of it? I realised that it would
enable me to continue working through the noon hour. And I worked
all the afternoon. Darkness came on, and I worked under the
electric lights. The day fireman went off and the night fireman
came on. I plugged away.