Lizzy Glenn | Page 2

can endure prolonged application--few can bend ten, twelve, or fifteen hours daily over their tasks, without fearful inroads upon health.
In the present time, a strong interest has been awakened on this subject. The cry of the poor seamstress has been heard; and the questions "How shall we help her?" "How shall we widen the circle of remunerative employments for women?" passes anxiously from lip to lip. To answer this question is not our present purpose. Others are earnestly seeking to work out the problem, and we must leave the solution with them. What we now design is to quicken their generous impulses. How more effectively can this be done than by a life-picture of the poor needlewoman's trials and sufferings? And this we shall now proceed to give.
It was a cold, dark, drizzly day in the fall of 18--, that a young female entered a well-arranged clothing store in Boston, and passed with hesitating steps up to where a man was standing behind one of the counters.
"Have you any work, sir?" she asked, in a low, timid voice.
The individual to whom this was addressed, a short, rough-looking man, with a pair of large, black whiskers, eyed her for a moment with a bold stare, and then indicated, by half turning his head and nodding sideways toward the owner of the shop, who stood at a desk some distance back, that her application was to be made there. Turning quickly from the rude and too familiar gaze of the attendant, the young woman went on to the desk and stood, half frightened and trembling, beside the man from whom she had come to ask the privilege of toiling for little more than a crust of bread and a cup of cold water.
"Have you any work, sir?" was repeated in a still lower and more timid voice than that in which her request had at first been made.
"Yes, we have," was the gruff reply.
"Can I get some?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure that you'll ever bring it back again."
The applicant endeavored to make some reply to this, but the words choked her; she could not utter them.
"I've been tricked in my time out of more than a little by new-comers. But I don't know; you seem to have a simple, honest look. Are you particularly in want of work?"
"Oh yes, sir!" replied the applicant, in an earnest, half-imploring voice. "I desire work very much."
"What kind do you want?"
"Almost any thing you have to give out, sir?"
"Well, we have pants, coarse and fine roundabouts, shirts, drawers, and almost any article of men's wear you can mention."
"What do you give for shirts, sir?"
"Various prices; from six cents up to twenty-five, according to the quality of the article."
"Only twenty-five cents for fine shirts!" returned the young woman, in a surprised, disappointed, desponding tone.
"Only twenty-five cents? Only? Yes, only twenty-five cents! Pray how much did you expect to get, Miss?" retorted the clothier, in a half-sneering, half-offended voice.
"I don't know. But twenty-five cents is very little for a hard day's work."
"Is it, indeed? I know enough who are thankful even for that. Enough who are at it early and late, and do not even earn as much. Your ideas will have to come down a little, Miss, if you expect to work for this branch of business."
"What do you give for vests and pantaloons?" asked the young woman, without seeming to notice the man's rudeness.
"For common trowsers with pockets, twelve cents; and for finer ones, fifteen and twenty cents. Vests about the same rates."
"Have you any shirts ready?"
"Yes, a plenty. Will you have em coarse or fine?"
"Fine, if you please."
"How many will you take?"
"Let me have three to begin with."
"Here, Michael," cried the man to the attendant who had been first addressed by the stranger, "give this girl three fine shirts to make." Then turning to her, he said: "They are cotton shirts, with linen collars, bosoms, and wristbands. There must be two rows of stitches down the bosoms, and one row upon the wristband. Collars plain. And remember, they must be made very nice."
"Yes, sir," was the reply, made in a sad voice, as the young creature turned from her employer and went up to the shop-attendant to receive the three shirts.
"You've never worked for the clothing stores, I should think?" remarked this individual, looking her in the face with a steady gaze.
"Never," replied the applicant, in a low tone, half shrinking away, with an instinctive aversion for the man.
"Well, it's pretty good when one can't do any better. An industrious sewer can get along pretty well upon a pinch."
No reply was made to this. The shirts were now ready; but, before they were handed to her, the man bent over the counter, and, putting his face close to hers, said--
"What might your name be,