Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/44

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Side Talks with Girls

serve your position for you, nor convince your employers that you are a necessity.

A little while ago I was in one of the best stores in New York, when the girl who was waiting on me turned deadly white, swayed to and fro, and I thought was going to faint. One of her comrades put her arm around her, while another finished attending to me. Then I said: "I will get a glass of water for that girl, and speak to the floor-walker and ask him to allow her to go home," but her friend said to me: "Please don't, ma'am; Annie has these fainting attacks often, and we all try to help her out, but if it is once known how delicate she is she will be discharged, and she has nobody to take care of her." What could I do? I was perfectly helpless, for I could not guarantee that after I went away she might not be told that she could go, but she need not come back. So you see in considering the question of earning your living in New York, you have to think of yourself as well or sick, and you must remember what enormous chances you take.

GIRLS WHO PAINT OR TEACH

Somebody says: "You are only taking the class of girls who go into the stores." I do that because they form the greatest number, and because they are the girls who come here from the