The alarm-clock went off, jerking Martin out of sleep with a
suddenness that would have given headache to one with less splendid
constitution. Though he slept soundly, he awoke instantly, like a
cat, and he awoke eagerly, glad that the five hours of
unconsciousness were gone. He hated the oblivion of sleep. There
was too much to do, too much of life to live. He grudged every
moment of life sleep robbed him of, and before the clock had ceased
its clattering he was head and ears in the washbasin and thrilling
to the cold bite of the water.

But he did not follow his regular programme. There was no
unfinished story waiting his hand, no new story demanding
articulation. He had studied late, and it was nearly time for
breakfast. He tried to read a chapter in Fiske, but his brain was
restless and he closed the book. To-day witnessed the beginning of
the new battle, wherein for some time there would be no writing.
He was aware of a sadness akin to that with which one leaves home
and family. He looked at the manuscripts in the corner. That was
it. He was going away from them, his pitiful, dishonored children
that were welcome nowhere. He went over and began to rummage among
them, reading snatches here and there, his favorite portions. "The
Pot" he honored with reading aloud, as he did "Adventure." "Joy,"
his latest-born, completed the day before and tossed into the
corner for lack of stamps, won his keenest approbation.

"I can't understand," he murmured. "Or maybe it's the editors who
can't understand. There's nothing wrong with that. They publish
worse every month. Everything they publish is worse - nearly
everything, anyway."

After breakfast he put the type-writer in its case and carried it
down into Oakland.

"I owe a month on it," he told the clerk in the store. "But you
tell the manager I'm going to work and that I'll be in in a month
or so and straighten up."

He crossed on the ferry to San Francisco and made his way to an
employment office. "Any kind of work, no trade," he told the
agent; and was interrupted by a new-comer, dressed rather
foppishly, as some workingmen dress who have instincts for finer
things. The agent shook his head despondently.

"Nothin' doin' eh?" said the other. "Well, I got to get somebody
to-day."

He turned and stared at Martin, and Martin, staring back, noted the
puffed and discolored face, handsome and weak, and knew that he had
been making a night of it.

"Lookin' for a job?" the other queried. "What can you do?"

"Hard labor, sailorizing, run a type-writer, no shorthand, can sit
on a horse, willing to do anything and tackle anything," was the
answer.

The other nodded.

"Sounds good to me. My name's Dawson, Joe Dawson, an' I'm tryin'
to scare up a laundryman."

"Too much for me." Martin caught an amusing glimpse of himself
ironing fluffy white things that women wear. But he had taken a
liking to the other, and he added: "I might do the plain washing.
I learned that much at sea." Joe Dawson thought visibly for a
moment.

"Look here, let's get together an' frame it up. Willin' to
listen?"

Martin nodded.

"This is a small laundry, up country, belongs to Shelly Hot
Springs, - hotel, you know. Two men do the work, boss and
assistant. I'm the boss. You don't work for me, but you work
under me. Think you'd be willin' to learn?"

Martin paused to think. The prospect was alluring. A few months
of it, and he would have time to himself for study. He could work
hard and study hard.

"Good grub an' a room to yourself," Joe said.

That settled it. A room to himself where he could burn the
midnight oil unmolested.

"But work like hell," the other added.

Martin caressed his swelling shoulder-muscles significantly. "That
came from hard work."

"Then let's get to it." Joe held his hand to his head for a
moment. "Gee, but it's a stem-winder. Can hardly see. I went
down the line last night - everything - everything. Here's the
frame-up. The wages for two is a hundred and board. I've ben
drawin' down sixty, the second man forty. But he knew the biz.
You're green. If I break you in, I'll be doing plenty of your work
at first. Suppose you begin at thirty, an' work up to the forty.
I'll play fair. Just as soon as you can do your share you get the
forty."

"I'll go you," Martin announced, stretching out his hand, which the
other shook. "Any advance? - for rail-road ticket and extras?"

"I blew it in," was Joe's sad answer, with another reach at his
aching head. "All I got is a return ticket."

"And I'm broke - when I pay my board."

"Jump it," Joe advised.

"Can't. Owe it to my sister."

Joe whistled a long, perplexed whistle, and racked his brains to
little purpose.

"I've got the price of the drinks," he said desperately. "Come on,
an' mebbe we'll cook up something."

Martin declined.

"Water-wagon?"

This time Martin nodded, and Joe lamented, "Wish I was."

"But I somehow just can't," he said in extenuation. "After I've
ben workin' like hell all week I just got to booze up. If I
didn't, I'd cut my throat or burn up the premises. But I'm glad
you're on the wagon. Stay with it."

Martin knew of the enormous gulf between him and this man - the
gulf the books had made; but he found no difficulty in crossing
back over that gulf. He had lived all his life in the working-
class world, and the CAMARADERIE of labor was second nature with
him. He solved the difficulty of transportation that was too much
for the other's aching head. He would send his trunk up to Shelly
Hot Springs on Joe's ticket. As for himself, there was his wheel.
It was seventy miles, and he could ride it on Sunday and be ready
for work Monday morning. In the meantime he would go home and pack
up. There was no one to say good-by to. Ruth and her whole family
were spending the long summer in the Sierras, at Lake Tahoe.

He arrived at Shelly Hot Springs, tired and dusty, on Sunday night.
Joe greeted him exuberantly. With a wet towel bound about his
aching brow, he had been at work all day.

"Part of last week's washin' mounted up, me bein' away to get you,"
he explained. "Your box arrived all right. It's in your room.
But it's a hell of a thing to call a trunk. An' what's in it?
Gold bricks?"

Joe sat on the bed while Martin unpacked. The box was a packing-
case for breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half
a dollar for it. Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had
technically transformed it into a trunk eligible for the baggage-
car. Joe watched, with bulging eyes, a few shirts and several
changes of underclothes come out of the box, followed by books, and
more books.

"Books clean to the bottom?" he asked.

Martin nodded, and went on arranging the books on a kitchen table
which served in the room in place of a wash-stand.

"Gee!" Joe exploded, then waited in silence for the deduction to
arise in his brain. At last it came.

"Say, you don't care for the girls - much?" he queried.

"No," was the answer. "I used to chase a lot before I tackled the
books. But since then there's no time."

"And there won't be any time here. All you can do is work an'
sleep."

Martin thought of his five hours' sleep a night, and smiled. The
room was situated over the laundry and was in the same building
with the engine that pumped water, made electricity, and ran the
laundry machinery. The engineer, who occupied the adjoining room,
dropped in to meet the new hand and helped Martin rig up an
electric bulb, on an extension wire, so that it travelled along a
stretched cord from over the table to the bed.

The next morning, at quarter-past six, Martin was routed out for a
quarter-to-seven breakfast. There happened to be a bath-tub for
the servants in the laundry building, and he electrified Joe by
taking a cold bath.

"Gee, but you're a hummer!" Joe announced, as they sat down to
breakfast in a corner of the hotel kitchen.

With them was the engineer, the gardener, and the assistant
gardener, and two or three men from the stable. They ate hurriedly
and gloomily, with but little conversation, and as Martin ate and
listened he realized how far he had travelled from their status.
Their small mental caliber was depressing to him, and he was
anxious to get away from them. So he bolted his breakfast, a
sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly as they, and heaved a sigh of
relief when he passed out through the kitchen door.

It was a perfectly appointed, small steam laundry, wherein the most
modern machinery did everything that was possible for machinery to
do. Martin, after a few instructions, sorted the great heaps of
soiled clothes, while Joe started the masher and made up fresh
supplies of soft-soap, compounded of biting chemicals that
compelled him to swathe his mouth and nostrils and eyes in bath-
towels till he resembled a mummy. Finished the sorting, Martin
lent a hand in wringing the clothes. This was done by dumping them
into a spinning receptacle that went at a rate of a few thousand
revolutions a minute, tearing the matter from the clothes by
centrifugal force. Then Martin began to alternate between the
dryer and the wringer, between times "shaking out" socks and
stockings. By the afternoon, one feeding and one, stacking up,
they were running socks and stockings through the mangle while the
irons were heating. Then it was hot irons and underclothes till
six o'clock, at which time Joe shook his head dubiously.

"Way behind," he said. "Got to work after supper." And after
supper they worked until ten o'clock, under the blazing electric
lights, until the last piece of under-clothing was ironed and
folded away in the distributing room. It was a hot California
night, and though the windows were thrown wide, the room, with its
red-hot ironing-stove, was a furnace. Martin and Joe, down to
undershirts, bare armed, sweated and panted for air.

"Like trimming cargo in the tropics," Martin said, when they went
upstairs.

"You'll do," Joe answered. "You take hold like a good fellow. If
you keep up the pace, you'll be on thirty dollars only one month.
The second month you'll be gettin' your forty. But don't tell me
you never ironed before. I know better."

"Never ironed a rag in my life, honestly, until to-day," Martin
protested.

He was surprised at his weariness when he act into his room,
forgetful of the fact that he had been on his feet and working
without let up for fourteen hours. He set the alarm clock at six,
and measured back five hours to one o'clock. He could read until
then. Slipping off his shoes, to ease his swollen feet, he sat
down at the table with his books. He opened Fiske, where he had
left off to read. But he found trouble began to read it through a
second time. Then he awoke, in pain from his stiffened muscles and
chilled by the mountain wind that had begun to blow in through the
window. He looked at the clock. It marked two. He had been
asleep four hours. He pulled off his clothes and crawled into bed,
where he was asleep the moment after his head touched the pillow.

Tuesday was a day of similar unremitting toil. The speed with
which Joe worked won Martin's admiration. Joe was a dozen of
demons for work. He was keyed up to concert pitch, and there was
never a moment in the long day when he was not fighting for
moments. He concentrated himself upon his work and upon how to
save time, pointing out to Martin where he did in five motions what
could be done in three, or in three motions what could be done in
two. "Elimination of waste motion," Martin phrased it as he
watched and patterned after. He was a good workman himself, quick
and deft, and it had always been a point of pride with him that no
man should do any of his work for him or outwork him. As a result,
he concentrated with a similar singleness of purpose, greedily
snapping up the hints and suggestions thrown out by his working
mate. He "rubbed out' collars and cuffs, rubbing the starch out
from between the double thicknesses of linen so that there would be
no blisters when it came to the ironing, and doing it at a pace
that elicited Joe's praise.

There was never an interval when something was not at hand to be
done. Joe waited for nothing, waited on nothing, and went on the
jump from task to task. They starched two hundred white shirts,
with a single gathering movement seizing a shirt so that the
wristbands, neckband, yoke, and bosom protruded beyond the circling
right hand. At the same moment the left hand held up the body of
the shirt so that it would not enter the starch, and at the moment
the right hand dipped into the starch - starch so hot that, in
order to wring it out, their hands had to thrust, and thrust
continually, into a bucket of cold water. And that night they
worked till half-past ten, dipping "fancy starch" - all the
frilled and airy, delicate wear of ladies.

"Me for the tropics and no clothes," Martin laughed.

"And me out of a job," Joe answered seriously. "I don't know
nothin' but laundrying."

"And you know it well."

"I ought to. Began in the Contra Costa in Oakland when I was
eleven, shakin' out for the mangle. That was eighteen years ago,
an' I've never done a tap of anything else. But this job is the
fiercest I ever had. Ought to be one more man on it at least. We
work to-morrow night. Always run the mangle Wednesday nights -
collars an' cuffs."

Martin set his alarm, drew up to the table, and opened Fiske. He
did not finish the first paragraph. The lines blurred and ran
together and his head nodded. He walked up and down, batting his
head savagely with his fists, but he could not conquer the numbness
of sleep. He propped the book before him, and propped his eyelids
with his fingers, and fell asleep with his eyes wide open. Then he
surrendered, and, scarcely conscious of what he did, got off his
clothes and into bed. He slept seven hours of heavy, animal-like
sleep, and awoke by the alarm, feeling that he had not had enough.

"Doin' much readin'?" Joe asked.

Martin shook his head.

"Never mind. We got to run the mangle to-night, but Thursday we'll
knock off at six. That'll give you a chance."

Martin washed woollens that day, by hand, in a large barrel, with
strong soft-soap, by means of a hub from a wagon wheel, mounted on
a plunger-pole that was attached to a spring-pole overhead.

"My invention," Joe said proudly. "Beats a washboard an' your
knuckles, and, besides, it saves at least fifteen minutes in the
week, an' fifteen minutes ain't to be sneezed at in this shebang."

Running the collars and cuffs through the mangle was also Joe's
idea. That night, while they toiled on under the electric lights,
he explained it.

"Something no laundry ever does, except this one. An' I got to do
it if I'm goin' to get done Saturday afternoon at three o'clock.
But I know how, an' that's the difference. Got to have right heat,
right pressure, and run 'em through three times. Look at that!"
He held a cuff aloft. "Couldn't do it better by hand or on a
tiler."

Thursday, Joe was in a rage. A bundle of extra "fancy starch" had
come in.

"I'm goin' to quit," he announced. "I won't stand for it. I'm
goin' to quit it cold. What's the good of me workin' like a slave
all week, a-savin' minutes, an' them a-comin' an' ringin' in fancy-
starch extras on me? This is a free country, an' I'm to tell that
fat Dutchman what I think of him. An' I won't tell 'm in French.
Plain United States is good enough for me. Him a-ringin' in fancy
starch extras!"

"We got to work to-night," he said the next moment, reversing his
judgment and surrendering to fate.

And Martin did no reading that night. He had seen no daily paper
all week, and, strangely to him, felt no desire to see one. He was
not interested in the news. He was too tired and jaded to be
interested in anything, though he planned to leave Saturday
afternoon, if they finished at three, and ride on his wheel to
Oakland. It was seventy miles, and the same distance back on
Sunday afternoon would leave him anything but rested for the second
week's work. It would have been easier to go on the train, but the
round trip was two dollars and a half, and he was intent on saving
money.