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These officials were exceedingly jealous of the health of the place. In fact, it was often thought they were unnecessarily strict in enforcing their hygienic rules. Everything had to be thoroughly clean. Cleanliness was compulsory. A laundry machine was furnished, and a kind of laundrying was accomplished. Blankets were required to be dusted and sunned regularly.

So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular tension, though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he listened sympathetically to the other's blasphemies as he toiled and suffered over the beautiful things that women wear when they do not have to do their own laundrying. "Fancy starch" was Martin's nightmare, and it was Joe's, too.

As his companions were dancing about and yelling madly, I left the laundrying of the small sea-devils and splashed two hundred yards through the lagoon to the scene of excitement. Four of the crew had attacked a giant devil-fish, which was hidden in a cave in the rocks. From the gloom it darted out its long arms and tried to seize the strange creatures that menaced it.

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.

I often thought how much wiser it would have been to give these girls the same amount of maternal training and I favour any kind of training, whether in the languages or mathematics, that gives strength and culture to the mind but at the same time to give them the most thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundrying and other kindred occupations.

All native women understood something of cultivation and the raising of small stock, and their efforts could be chiefly engaged in that direction, as well as in washing and laundrying, baking, basket-making, weaving, shoemaking, and so forth. Machinery of a simple character run by water-power could be added when necessary.

In Washington I saw girls whose mothers were earning their living by laundrying. These girls were taught by their mothers, in rather a crude way it is true, the industry of laundrying. Later, these girls entered the public schools and remained there perhaps six or eight years. When the public school course was finally finished, they wanted more costly dresses, more costly hats and shoes.

Most, if not all of them, we may confidently assert, were brought into requisition on that Monday "wash-day" at Cape Cod, the first week-day after their arrival, when the women went ashore to do their long- neglected laundrying, in the comparatively fresh water of the beach pond at Cape Cod harbor. They are frequently named in the earliest inventories.

After that, when I had caught my breath, I might think about my future. Unskilled labour is the first to feel the slackness of hard times, and I had no trades save those of sailor and laundryman. With my new responsibilities I didn't dare go to sea, and I failed to find a job at laundrying. I failed to find a job at anything. I had my name down in five employment bureaux.