Noise! Thundering, reverberating noise. Noise that never ceases, noise that deadens the brain and makes the hand jerk in response to the jarred nerves; always, day and night, throughout the length of the city streets, the clamor of inanimate things.

In the morning when Hertha slipped to her seat, the last but one in the fourth line, she started her own thundering whir. The forty machines, all going at once, sounded like nothing so much as the great beetles that flew about her southern home in the summer evenings. But the beetles came but rarely and went with the withdrawal of the lamp, while here in the workroom the drumming was incessant. Always it was hurrying her, calling upon her to make better speed, to push the white fabric more quickly that the needle might make a greater number of punctures to the minute; to hasten, though her hands trembled, and though the tension drew her mouth into a narrow line and brought her brows together in a frown.

When noon came and the whirring stopped, Hertha would look down the long line of beetle-beasts, for so she called them to herself. At length they were quiet. Surely they had had enough. For hours they had been devouring, eating up the muslin fed to them. No, rather they had disgorged; for the muslin was left, and with it thousands of yards of cotton thread that they had doled out through their small needle jaws. But their rest would be short and they would soon thunder tirelessly on again.

Usually she went out to her luncheon. The nearby restaurant furnished appetizing and inexpensive things to eat, but they were accompanied by a new and disturbing clamor. As she took her seat at one of the many long tables, she was enveloped in a sound of falling plates. Heavy china cup struck heavy china saucer and both struck the marble table. Knives, forks and spoons fell on platters, and platters fell on trays and slipped and rattled one against another. Little plates dropped on big plates and all went with a terrific smash into the dumb waiter; while from some inexhaustible source new knives and forks and plates came clattering up to take the places of the old.

"Butter cakes, please."

Hertha's voice was scarcely audible. As she ate, she listened attentively, hoping that for a moment the noise would cease; but it only varied in intensity, rising now to such a height that it seemed as if an avalanche of white pottery was falling into space; again dropping to a steady, clanging sound of utensils taking their appointed places. But no one but herself seemed to notice, and the men and women about her ate on diligently, silent for the most part, concerned only with securing needed nourishment in a short period of time.

The noises on the avenue down which she walked to and from her home were not wearying like those in the shop and the restaurant, for they came and went. The silent moving motors had their horns that gave warning with a silly, childish squeak or with a deep note as hoarse as a frog's. At the corner where she turned east to go home a policeman was stationed, and she enjoyed waiting for the sound of his shrill whistle. But the avenue left behind, the way was less pleasant. Three busy thoroughfares must be crossed without the policeman's aid, the last a dirty boulevard where heavy trains crashed overhead and surface cars clanged swiftly by. She would stand waiting on the sidewalk until a friendly cart from a side street opened up a path of safety that brought her a little breathless to the opposite walk.

Now she was almost home—the second door, three flights up, and then restful quiet. Kathleen, her new friend, with whom she had come to live, was away, and with windows closed she would sit in the front room, quite by herself, her hands in her lap, enjoying the silence. Later, dinner over, she would take up a novel, one of the books she had always wanted to read, but could not afford to buy, that here in New York any one might have at the library for the asking. Immersed in Lorna Doone, she forgot the pounding machines and the clattering dishes and was very happy; but when the book was put away and she lay down to sleep, through the open window the world of tumult came back again.

"Why do men invent so many things that make a noise?" she would ask herself. She had heard city people when they came to the Merryvales' complain bitterly to her of being wakened in the morning by the cock's crowing; but she had not made the cocks, and, moreover, they did not crow all night. Here in her room, however, near the ugly boulevard of the East Side, the man-made cocks never ceased to crow. The trolley cars were the most aggressive; their wheels ground on their axles and jarred upon the rails; they stopped with a loud jolt, and with another jar and jolt were off again. They were always jerking, Hertha felt. Overhead the elevated road vibrated to the heavy cars that moved over its rails day and night. You heard the coming train a long way off. First, a gentle, rumbling noise that you might imagine to be the sea; then a louder and louder roar, and, finally, a crash as the long line of cars rushed past. Sometimes she was sure they would sway too far and fall thundering into the street. And hardly had their sound died away when a second rumbling would be heard and another train come tearing after its fellow, or a third dash by from the opposite side.

After a time the clamor ceased to be incessant. Trains followed at longer intervals, and would-be street car passengers waited for some minutes at the corner. But in these intervals there was always upon the street the sound of footsteps. And long after midnight, if Hertha awoke from her troubled sleep, she heard the tread of feet. Sometimes they were slow and hesitating, sometimes swift and hurried, oftenest a steady, quiet step. Where do all these footsteps lead, she thought. What were the people doing who thronged the elevated railroad, crowding one upon another so that it was difficult to breathe if one pushed one's way among them? And the surface cars were filled with a hurrying crowd, while underneath the city the subways carried their millions of women and men. Was there any need of moving about so much? It might be necessary to travel to and from your work, but why go on and on? Supposing all these cars should stop suddenly, should cease their jar and clang? There would still be the footsteps in the street, for man was always moving, some way, somewhere. Had not Tom moved? And now she, too, was moving, to the whir of the machine, to the crash of the advancing train, moving through the new, clamorous world.

"And you didn't sleep well last night, darling," Kathleen said to her as she came in to breakfast. "Your eyes are looking tired this lovely morning. I'm thinking the trains kept you awake. Don't notice them. They'll go on and never once jump the tracks, but make big profits for their owners and a fine place to hang on the strap for you and me. You'll soon be used to the clatter. Once I heard it, but now I don't mind it any more than I do the sparrows. Take a help of the oatmeal, and tell me what you'll like for dinner, for I'm staying home to-night."