Yet somewhere, God, drenched roses bloom by fountains draped with mist
In old, lost gardens of the earth made lyrical with rain;
Why is it here a million brows by hungry Death are kissed,
And here is packed, one Summer night, a whole world's fiery pain!
A Department-Store Clerk
(From "The House of Bondage")
By Reginald Wright Kauffman
(American novelist, born 1877)
Katie Flanagan arrived at the Lennox department store every morning at a quarter to eight o'clock. She passed through the employees' dark entrance, a unit in a horde of other workers, and registered the instant of her arrival on a time-machine that could in no wise be suborned to perjury. She hung up her wraps in a subterranean cloak-room, and, hurrying to the counter to which she was assigned, first helped in "laying out the stock," and then stood behind her wares, exhibiting, cajoling, selling, until an hour before noon. At that time she was permitted to run away for exactly forty-five minutes for the glass of milk and two pieces of bread and jam that composed her luncheon. This repast disposed of, she returned to the counter and remained behind it, standing like a war-worn watcher on the ramparts of a beleaguered city, till the store closed at six, when there remained to her at least fifteen minutes more of work before her sales-book was balanced and the wares covered up for the night. There were
