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to work in and I was just plain lucky that I didn't catch the flu all over again. I think the thing which impressed me most was the apparent crudity of the processes. There were also standard stories about men falling into vats of caustic soda and being eaten alive before they could be pulled out, and I guess some of them were true -- at any rate, I was profoundly impressed that this was no place to fool around. I used to sit outdoors on the bank of the Erie Canal that passed through the middle of the plant, and eat my lunch, and I must admit that I was usually feeling pretty lonesome because it was my first experience out on my own with no friends at all around. But I stuck it out this time to the end of the summer and I got a big satisfaction out of having gotten this job on my own. Incidentally, I never heard from Mr. Franklin. It was one of my first great disillusionments.

   Meanwhile Mother and I were getting settled at 205 Waverly Avenue. It was an ancient apartment with one lower and one upper flat, maybe about the vintage of the one we'd lived on on Delaware Street when I was born. It was owned by Dr. Clyde Barney, a surgeon, who lived with his wife in the lower flat; they were childless. Dr. Barney was a middle-aged man, tall and very thin with a little black moustache and a long, skinny neck -- he resembled very strongly Robert Louis Stevenson. His wife, Janie, was a slim, pretty woman. They were good landlords but nothing could make our apartment anything but what it was, a rather ancient flat with varnished woodwork. There were three bedrooms and a sleeping porch out back and I used the latter almost exclusively even in the dead of winter. The front bedroom had been rented to a pair of university students by the previous tenant so Mother decided to continue this and thereby improve the financial situation accordingly. The students, who moved back in when school started, were mature men, both of whom were veterans, having spent a couple of years in the army in Europe; their names were Hillegas and Holly and they were seniors. We saw little of them. Hillegas had a black wiry beard and a little pencil moustache and shaved with a straight razor which he used to leave in the bathroom -- so I tried shaving with it surreptitiously a couple of times and was amazed to find how easy it was to do without cutting yourself. Next door, on the corner of Waverly and Walnut Place, was the Sigma Phi Epsilon house, and next to it on Walnut Place was the Alpha Phi house, Alpha Phi being considered the plushest sorority on the Hill; I could look out upon both of these houses and their backyards from my sleeping porch and likewise, they could also look at me. There was an old barn behind the house where Dr. Barney kept his car as well as an incredible collection of junk accumulated over the years. The Barneys had a gray tiger cat named Pete which Mother became very attached to. The Barneys handled the heating from a big, single furnace, so that was a chore I was relieved of. It wasn't an impressive place but it