There is nothing more wonderful in the world than the minute when all that you have always been seeing begins to look like something else. It happened to me when I sat down at our table at the Ritz-Carlton, a table which had been reserved for us and was set with orchids and had four waiters, like moons.

I sat between Gerald and Mr. Baddy Dudley.

I looked up at Gerald, and I thought, "You're very kind. I owe you a great deal. But is this the way you are? Were you like this all the time?"

Then I looked up at Mr. Baddy Dudley. I wanted to say to him: "Ugh! You're all locked up in your body, and you can't drop it away. Why didn't you tell me?"

Across the table was Mrs. Dudley, in flesh-pink and pearls. I thought of her dancing, in the leopard skin and the pointed crown; and it seemed to me that she was dead, a long time ago, and here she was, and she didn't dream it herself.

Here and there were the others; they seemed to fill the table with their high voices and their tip-top speech and their strong, big white shoulders. They were so kind—but I wondered if otherwise they had ever been born at all, and what made them think that they had?

Of them all, Antoinette was the best, because she was just sketched—yet. She could rub herself out and do it nearly all over again; and something about her looked anxious and hopeful, and as if it was waiting to see if that wasn't what she would do.

Then I tried to look myself in the face. And it seemed to me as if I didn't find any of me there at all.

I ate what they brought me; I answered what they said to me. But all the time they were all as far off as the other tables of folk, and the waiters, whom I didn't know at all. And all the while I looked around the big white room, and up at the oval of the ceiling, and—"This whole thing, and us with it, is sitting on the chests of the rest of them," I thought. I wondered about Rose. If she walked, she must have got home about the time I got to the opera. Rose! She was real, and she was awake. She had come all that way to get me to help her to wake the rest. Was that what he meant by digging like a devil?

When we left the hotel, toward two o'clock, there was nothing to do but to motor on with the rest. When we reached the Massys', the time was already still, because it expected morning. The Dudleys and Mr. Baddy Dudley had come up with us. When at last I got the window open in my room, I was in time to see a little lift of gray in the sky beyond the line of trees on the terrace.

"The new day," I said. "The new day. Cosma Wakely, have you got enough backbone in you to stand up to it?"

It was surprising how little backbone it took the next afternoon. What I had to do was what I wanted to do. All the forenoon, no one was stirring. It was eleven before coffee came to our rooms. I had heard Mr. Dudley calling a dog somewhere about, so I had kept to my room for fear of meeting him. At one o'clock there were guests for luncheon. When they started back to town I told Antoinette that I wanted to go with them. I meant to get to Rose's meeting.

"Nonsense!" she said. "Have you forgotten dinner? And the dancing?"

I said that I was worried about my examinations, and that I wanted to get back. When I first came to the Massys' I would have told them the truth.

The long ride down was like a still hand laid on something beating. I liked being alone as much as once I had dreaded it.

We had been late in setting off. It was almost six o'clock when I reached the school. When I had eaten and dressed and was on my way to the hall, it was already long past the time that Rose had named for the meeting.

All the girls were in their seats. There were only Rose and one or two more on the platform. The hall was low and smoky. The girls were nervous about the doors, and questioned everybody that came in. The girl at the door began to question me when I went in, but Rose saw me.

"Let her come in," she called out. "She's our next speaker!"

And when I heard the ring in her voice, and saw her face and felt her hand close on mine, and knew how glad she was that I had come, I was happy. Happier than I had ever once been at the Massys'.

I went right up on the platform. And my head and my heart had never been so full of things to say. And the girls listened.

Did you ever face a roomful of girls who work in a factory? Any factory? But especially in a factory where, instead of treating them like one side of the business, the owners treat them like necessary evils? You wouldn't ever have supposed that the heads of the Carney factory were dependent the least bit on the girls who did the work for them. You'd have thought that it was just money and machinery and the buildings that did the work, and that the girls were being let work for a kindness. I never could understand it. When the business needed more money, the owners gave it to it. When the machinery needed oil or repairs or new parts, it got them. When the buildings had to have improvements, they got them. But when the girls needed more light or air or wages or shorter hours or a cleaner place to be, or better safety, they just got laughed at and rowed at and told to learn their places, or not told anything at all. And more girls come, younger, fresher, that didn't need things.

"If I was only my machine," I had heard Rose say that night, "I'd have plenty of oil and wool and the right shuttles. But I'm nothing but the operator, and the machine has the best care. And if there comes a fire—the machinery is insured. But we ain't."

I have not much remembrance of what I said to the girls that night. There must have been a hundred of them in the hall. And I know that as I stood there, looking into their faces, knowing them as I knew them, with their striving for a life like other folks, there—suddenly ringed round them—I saw the double tier of boxes of the night before, and I heard his voice:

" ... This whole place here, and we with them, are on the chests of the others."

I had no bitterness. But I had the extreme of consciousness that I had ever reached—not of myself, but of all of us, and of the need of helping on our common growth. They were to stand together, inviolably together, for the fostering of that growth, I told them. An injury to one was an injury to them all—because they were together. And the employers of whom they made their demands were no enemies, but victims, too, who must be helped to see, by us who happen to have had the good fortune to be able to see the need first.

I remember how I ended. I heard myself saying it as if it were some one else speaking:

"I'm with you. You must let me plan with you. But I can't plan with a few of you, when the rest don't care. I want you all."

When the evening was over, and I had found those I knew and met those whom I didn't know, and had set down my name with the list that grew before the door, made up of those who were willing "not to fight, but to help," I stood for a minute in the lower hallway with Rose.

"Oh, Cosma," she said, "I've got to tell you something. I done you dead wrong. I thought last night that you'd gone over—that you didn't care any more."

"I didn't," I said. "It had got me—the thing that gets folks."

Next day I rehearsed my oration for the Savage Prize contest. When I'd finished, Miss Spot told me that I needn't practise it any more before her—just to say it over in my room through the three days until the contest was to take place.

"You deliver it as well as I could myself, Cosma," she said.

So I walked back to my room, tore up my oration, and set to work to write another. My head and my heart were full of what that other was to be. I had been beating and pricking with it all night long after the meeting.

Savage Prize Day was a great day at the school. We were given engraved invitations to send out. I sent mine to Mrs. Bingy and Rose and the girls in the factory. I knew they couldn't come; but I knew, too, they'd like getting something engraved. Only it happened that not only Mrs. Bingy came—Rose and the girls came, too. Handed to them with their pay envelope had been the notice to quit. Somebody had told the superintendent about that meeting. Six of the leaders were let out. I saw them all sitting there when I got up on the platform. And they gave me strength, there in all that lot of well-dressed, soft-voiced folks. They were dear people, too. Only they were dear, different. And they didn't understand anything whatever about life, the way Mrs. Bingy and Rose and I did. And that wasn't those folks' fault either. But they seemed to take credit for it.

Antoinette had an oration. Hers was on "Our Boat Is Launched; But Where's the Shore?" It told about how to do. It said everybody should be successful with hard work. It said that industry is the best policy and bound to win. It said that America is the land where all who will only work hard enough may have any position they like. It said that everything is possible. Everybody enjoyed Antoinette's oration. She had some lovely roses and violets, and all her relatives sat looking so pleased. Her father had promised her a diamond pendant, if she got the prize.

There was another on "Evolution." She said we should be patient and not hurry things, because short-cuts wasn't evolution. I wondered what made her take it for granted God is so slow. But I liked the way her bracelets tinkled when she raised her arm, and I think she did, too.

Then it was my turn. I hadn't said anything to Miss Spot about changing my oration. I thought if I could do it once to please them, I could do it again. I worked hard on mine, because the prize was a hundred dollars; and if Mrs. Carney wouldn't take it, I wanted it for Rose and the girls. I thought Miss Spot would be pleased to think I did it without any rehearsing. I imagined how she would tell visitors about it, during ice-cream.

I didn't keep a copy of it, but some of it was like this:

I decided to write about "Growing," because I think that growing is the most important thing in the world. I believe that this is what we are for. But some ways to grow aren't so important as others.

For example, I was born on a farm near a little town. At first my body grew, but not my mind. Only through district school. Then it stopped and waited for something to happen—going away, getting married, et cetera. Soon I met somebody who showed me that my mind must keep on growing.

It seems queer, but nobody had ever said anything to me about growing. All that they said to me was about "behaving." And especially about doing as I was told.

Then I came to the city and I worked in a factory. Right away I found out that there the last thing they thought about was anybody growing. They thought chiefly about hurrying. Not a word was ever said about growing. And yet, I suppose, all the time that was our chief business.

One day I went to the Museum, and I saw a large white statue of Apollo Belvedere. The other people there seemed to know about him. I didn't know about him, or any of the rest of the things; and I went outside and cried. How was I to get to know, when nobody ever said anything to me about him? Or about any of the things I didn't know. I wasn't with people who knew things I didn't know. Or who knew anything about growing.

Then I came to this school. I've been here and I've learned a great deal. Countries and capitals and what is shipped and how high the mountains are, and how to act and speak and eat. I know that you have to have all these. But I am writing about some education that shows you how to be on account of what life is. And about how to arrange education so that every one can have it, and not some of us girls have it, and some of us not have anything but the machines....

I hadn't meant to say much about this. But all of a sudden,—while I stood there speaking to that dressed-up roomful, with all the girls down in front soft and white, and taken care of and promised diamond pendants, it come over me—the difference between them and Rose and the girls there on the back seats. And before I knew I was going to, I began to get outside my oration as I planned it, and to talk about those girls, and about where did their chance come in.... And I finished by begging these girls here, that had every chance to grow, to do something for the other girls that didn't have a chance to grow and never would have a chance.

"I don't know why you have it and why they don't," I said. "Maybe when we grow up and get out in the world we'll understand that better. But it can't be right the way it is. And can't we help them?"

Some clapped their hands when I was done. There was another oration on "Success," and one on "Opportunity," and then came the judges' decision.

It was a big disappointment. I thought the other orations were so wishy-washy, it didn't seem possible mine could have been any more so. But it must have been, because only one of the judges voted for me. He said something about "not so much subject matter as originality of thought." The other two judges voted for Antoinette. That night, by special delivery, she got her diamond pendant.

Rose wrote a note on the back of her program. "Oh, Cosma, this is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to the girls. I never knew anybody else ever heard about us or cared about us. We'll never forget."

When I got back to the dormitory, somebody was waiting for me in the reception-room, and it was Gerald. He drew me over to a window, talking all the way.

"Cosma," he said, "by jove, I never heard anything like that. I say—how did you ever get them to let you do it?... They'd never seen it? Rich—rich! You sweet dove of an anarchist, you—"

"Don't Gerald," I said.

"Ripping," said he, "simply ripping! I never saw anything so beautiful as you before all that raft. You looked like the well-known angels, Cosma. And you ought to see my portrait of you now! You dear!"

"Don't, Gerald," I said.

He stared at me. "I say—you aren't taking to heart that miserable hundred dollars! Cosma dearest! Oh, I'm mad about you ... this June, ... this June—"

"Please, please, Gerald," I said. "Don't you see? Those girls there to-day. They're your sort and your people's sort. I'm not that...."

He set himself to explain something to me. I could see it in his sudden attitude. "Look here, Cosma," he said; "don't you understand the joy it would be for a man to have a hand in training the girl he wants to have for his wife?" At that, I looked at him with attention. "Let me be," he went on, "your teacher, lover, husband. Gad, think what it will be to have the shaping of the woman you will make! Can't you understand a man being mad about that?"

I answered him very carefully. "A man, maybe. But not the woman."

"What?" said Gerald blankly.

"I'll make myself," I said. "And then maybe I'll pick out a man who has made himself. And if we love each other, we'll marry."

"But," he said, "the sweetness of having you fit, day after day, into the dream that I have of what you are going to be—"

So then I told him. "Gerald," I said, "I wasn't meant to live your life. I've got to find my job in the world—whatever that is. I've got to get away from you—from you all—from everybody, Gerald!"

"Good heavens!" he said. "Cosma, you're tired—you're nervous—"

I looked at him quite calmly. "If," I said, "when I state some conviction of mine, any man ever tells me again that I'm nervous, I'll tell him he's—he's drunk. There's just as much sense in it."

I gave him both my hands. "Gerald," I said, "you dear man, your life isn't my life. I don't want it to be my life. That's all."

Afterward, when I went up-stairs, with that peculiar, heavy lonesomeness that comes from the withdrawal of this particular interest in this particular way, I wondered if the life I was planning was made up of such withdrawals, such hurts, such vacancies.

And then I remembered the way I had felt when I walked home from the meeting that Sunday night; and it seemed to me there are ways of happiness in the world beside which one can hardly count some of the ways of pleasure that one calls happiness now.

In my room that night I found a parcel. It was roughly wrapped in paper that had been used before. From it fell a white scarf and a paper.

"Dear Cossy (the letter was written in pencil) I am going to send you this whether you get the prize or whether you don't. If you didn't get it, I guess you need the present worse. It's the nubia I wore on my wedding trip. I sha'n't want it any more. I enclose one dollar and your Pa sends one dollar to get you something with for yourself. With love,

"Ma.

"P. S. My one dollar is egg money, so it's my own it ain't from him I raised them."

Suddenly, as I read, there came over me the first real longing that I had ever had in my life for Katytown, and for home.

One more incident belonged to Savage Prize Oration Day.

Neither Miss Manners nor Miss Spot said anything to me about my oration. But in commencement week Mrs. Carney came in to see me.

"Cosma," she said, "I have a letter here which I must show you."

I read the letter. It said:

"Dear Mrs. Carney:

"After due consideration we deem it advisable to inform you that in our judgment the spirit and attitude of Cosma Wakely are not in conformity with the spirit of our school.

"We have ever striven to maintain here an attitude of sweetness and light, and to exclude everything of a nature disturbing to young ladies of immature mind. Cosma is not only opinionated, but her knowledge and experience are out of harmony with the knowledge and experience of our clientÈle. We have regretfully concluded to suggest to you, therefore, that she be entered elsewhere to complete her course.

"Thanking you, my dear Mrs. Carney, we beg to remain,

"Respectfully yours,
"Matilda Manners,
"Emily Spot."