Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/126

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

she must be well posted on history, art and literature. College girls who have traveled abroad, or governesses who have already had experience in this country, are generally given the preference.

The scale of salaries is a sliding one, governed largely by the personality of the applicant and the liberality and good humor of the employer.

Twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month with all expenses paid, is considered liberal remuneration for a governess traveling abroad with two or three young charges. Trained nurses receive the regulation wages, twenty to twenty-five dollars a week if traveling with a patient who is really ill and requires much attention. For chronic or light cases, where the duties are almost nominal, some nurses will accept as low as ten dollars per week if a pleasant trip is in prospect. These are graduate nurses, you understand. A trained attendant and companion, such as I described further back in this chapter, may receive anything from ten dollars per month to ten dollars per week, with all expenses, and this payment is measured by the fancy which the captious invalid takes to her few-found protége.

Here is a case in point: A whimsical old lady spent several months at a New York hotel, and there took a fancy to a hard-working stenogra-