AFTER THE BIG STORE CLOSES
We all go to the Big Store to buy its bargains, and sometimes we wonder idly what the clerks are like when they are not behind the counter. This story deals with the lives of two people who punched the time-clock. When the store closes, it is like the striking of the clock in the fairy tales: the clerks are transformed into human beings, and become so much like ourselves that it is hard to tell the difference.
BITTER-SWEET
BY
Fannie Hurst
Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, and the statistical path to the heart is more figurative than literal.