  I DON'T like those sewing-girls," remarked a friend to me. "Why don't they go into some respectable family as chamber-maids, or nurses, or cooks? If they are too proud to to do this, I have no pity for them." Now there is just where the speaker and myself differ. I pity them, because they are too proud to do this. Besides, I do not think it is altogether because the name or position of "servant" is so obnoxious to them. It is the confinement of their position. It is the duration of their hours of labor—extending into the evening, and often till late in the evening, week after week, to which they object; whereas the working-girl in most other departments of service is released at nightfall, and is her own mistress till another day of toil begins. Now, answer me: Were you, and you, similarly placed, would you not desire, even in the face of the drawbacks attending it, your evenings to yourself? I think so. It is true, from "these evenings to themselves," have dated the perdition of many of this class. Still, young eyes will never see with old spectacles. Young blood will never course so sluggishly that all work, and no respite, will be accepted without nature's strong Said a merry matron, apologetically, to me, who had passed life's meridian, "I never had any youth, and I am taking it now." That is just it! The heart demands its youth, and, some time or other, it must and will have it. God grant that to these poor girls, it may come harmlessly,—innocently! But I, for one, can never wonder or condemn, though I often deplore, that, driven at bay, like hunted animals, and many of them with limited knowledge and intelligence, they should snatch at the passing sunbeam, lest another should never gild their lonesome path. We need a wider charity for these girls; for all those on whom life bears so hardly. We who are well-fed, well-clothed, well-educated, how illy do we, with all these helps to virtue and goodness, perform our part. Let us remember this in our hasty judgment of them, in our disgust that they do not choose for themselves more wisely. Let us not in church, or elsewhere, ask to be forgiven our shortcomings, with all these helps, when, if one less enlightened I have alluded, in a former article, to the cheap and comfortable boarding-houses, as a refuge to the working-girl from the horrors of their tenement-house home. I was descanting upon their advantages not long since to one who has herself been through many of the most distressing phases of the sewing-girl's life. She heard me silently, and to my surprise, without enthusiasm, when I spoke of the wholesome food, pure air, refreshing baths, free reading-room, and laundry. "What?" asked I—"do you not consider this a blessed asylum for these girls?" With an emphasis which I cannot convey on paper, she said, as her eye kindled, "Give me rather my poor room, even in the tenement-house, where, if I had a grief, I could cry it out, with no eye but that of my Maker to witness it. I could never be happy to go to my bed at night in company with a dozen others, in ever so clean or spacious an apartment, where there was no privacy. I had rather work ever so hard, and earn all I had, than to feel that I was in any measure a recipient of charity,—that I was in an Institution, and labelled as an inmate when I passed in and out." Now there are those who, reading this, will only express disgust. I confess, although it surprised me, that I have a strong sympathy with the self-respect which prompted this frank avowal; and, excellent Never apply the word "tomboy" to a girl who is taking healthy and innocent exercise. Are there not mincing misses enough about us, who pervert girlhood by adult nonsense, till the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint? Better, a thousandfold, be "tomboys" than such things as these. "Tomboys" have lungs and chests and rosy cheeks, and grow up to be healthy mothers of healthy children. Doctors may not like them, but common-sense and husbands do; though, truth to say, these terms are not always synonymous. |
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