say? Had I not already broken the confining chains of "what's done," and "what isn't done?" I needed the work; it was respectable; Breck was in England; a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month; my trunk almost empty.
"Well," I said, "I need a position as badly as you seem to need a secretary, Mrs. Sewall. We might try each other anyway. I'll think it over. I won't decide now. I will let you know by five o'clock this afternoon."
I accepted the position. Mrs. Plummet shed real tears when I told her my good news at six o'clock that night; and more tears a fortnight later when I moved out of my little hall bedroom, and my feather-weight trunk, lightsomely balanced on the shoulders of one man, was conveyed to the express-wagon and thence to new lodgings in Irving Place.
It was in the new lodgings that my new life really began. Its birth had been difficult, the pains I had endured for its existence sharp and recurring, but here it was at last—a lovely, interesting thing. I could observe it almost as if it was something I could hold in my two hands. Here it was—mine, to watch grow and develop; mine to tend and nurture and persuade; my life at last, to do with as I pleased.
At the suffrage headquarters I had run across a drab-appearing girl by the name of Esther Claff, and it was with her that I shared the room in Irving Place.
She was writing a book, and used to sit up half the night. She was a college-educated girl, who had been
