back to surge in his brain like waters cease-
lessly tossed in a wind-swept basin.

There was the office, bare and clean, where
the young stoop-shouldered clerks sat writ-
ing. In their faces was a strange resem-
blance, just as there was in the backs of the
ledgers, and in the endless bills on the
spindles. If one of them laughed, it was
not with gayety, but with gratification at
the discomfiture of another. None of them
ate well. None of them were rested after
sleep. All of them rode on the stuffy one-
horse cars to and from their work. Sun-
days they lay in bed very late, and ate more
dinner than they could digest. There was
a certain fellowship among them, -- such fel-
lowship as a band of captives among canni-
bals might feel, each of them waiting with
vital curiosity to see who was the next to be
eaten. But of that fellowship that plans in
unison, suffers in sympathy, enjoys vicari-
ously, strengthens into friendship and com-
munion of soul they knew nothing. Indeed,
such camaraderie would have been disap-
proved of by the Head Clerk. He would
have looked on an emotion with exactly the
same displeasure that he would on an error
in the footing of the year's accounts. It was
tacitly understood that one reached the