after consulting her friend; and then there was an anxious
conference at home. The work was done in one of the
cellars, and Jurgis did not want Ona to work in such a
place; but then it was easy work, and one could not have
everything. So in the end Ona, with a ten-dollar bill
burning a hole in 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, ask~
ing a child here and there how old he was; and so the

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p083 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p084w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p085

v?