family came to Seattle to live. There she worked in a
factory--long hours, you know, and all the rest, deadly work.
And after a year of that she became waitress in a cheap
restaurant--hash-slinger, she called it. "She said to me once,
'Romance I guess was what I wanted. But there wan't no romance
floating around in dishpans and washtubs, or in factories and
hash-joints.'

"When she was eighteen she married--a man who was going up to
Juneau to start a restaurant. He had a few dollars saved, and
appeared prosperous. She didn't love him--she was emphatic
about that, but she was all tired out, and she wanted to get
away from the unending drudgery. Besides, Juneau was in Alaska,
and her yearning took the form of a desire to see that
wonderland. But little she saw of it. He started the
restaurant, a little cheap one, and she quickly learned what he
had married her for..... to save paying wages. She came pretty
close to running the joint and doing all the work from waiting
to dishwashing. She cooked most of the time as well. And she
had four years of it.

"Can't you picture her, this wild woods creature, quick with
every old primitive instinct, yearning for the free open, and
mowed up in a vile little hash-joint and toiling and moiling
for four mortal years?

"'There was no meaning in anything,' she said. 'What was it all
about! Why was I born! Was that all the meaning of life--just
to work and work and be always tired!--to go to bed tired and
to wake up tired, with every day like every other day unless it