tiny room with a skylight instead of uptown with her family, because her father wouldn't countenance his daughter's becoming a stenographer, making her beg spending money from him every month like a child. There was Anne DeBois who had left a tyrannical parent who didn't believe in educating girls, and worked her way through college. There was a settlement worker or two; there was poor, struggling Rosa who tried to paint; Sidney, an eager little sculptor; Elsie and Lorraine, two would-be journalists, who lived together, and who were so inseparable we called them Alsace and Lorraine; there was able Maria Brown, an investigator who used to spend a fortnight as an employee in various factories and stores and write up the experience afterwards.
There were few or no men in our life. Esther and I frequented our friends' queer little top-story studios in dark alleys for recreation, and got into deep discussions on life and reforms. Sometimes we celebrated to the extent of a sixty-cent table d'hôte dinner in tucked-away restaurants. We occupied fifty-cent seats at the theater occasionally, and often from dizzying heights at the opera would gaze down into the minaret boxes below, while I recalled with a little feeling of triumph that far-distant time when I had sat thus emblazoned and imprisoned.
I had cut loose at last. I was proud of myself. In the secret of my soul I strutted. I was like a boy in his first long trousers. I might not yet show myself off to the family. They would question the propriety
