noons
It compels men whom it has never seen to toil in distant factories and produce useless wares , which are never actually brought into the office , but which it nevertheless sells to the heathen in the Solomon Islands in exchange for commodities whose very names it does not know ; and in order to perform this miracle of transmutation it keeps stenographers so busy that they change from dewy girls into tight-lipped spinsters before they discover life . The reason for it all , nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you , except the bosses , who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air . Efficiency of production they have learned ; efficiency of life they still consider an effeminate hobby . An unreasonable world , sacrificing bird-song and tranquil dusk and high golden noons to selling junk -- yet it rules us . And life lives there . The office is filled with thrills of love and distrust and ambition . Each alley between desks quivers with secret romance as ceaselessly as a battle-trench , or a lane in Normandy .