Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/44

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forgotten. He will put a mysterious little sign somewhere on that application, meaning that you are to be sent for when clerks are needed.

When looking for work of this sort, dress suitably. Do not wear your biggest hat, your fanciest waist, your longest gloves, your shoes with the highest heels. Look at successful business women, and you will find them simply but well dressed in tailored effects, with hats of medium size. Be sure your petticoat does not hang below your dress skirt, that the heels* of your boots are straight, and the finger-tips of your gloves are all mended. The up-to-date superintendent watches his applicants from the tail of a sharp eye, and the girl who is slovenly in her appearance, he argues, will be slovenly in her care of his stock.

Now, we will take it for granted that yau have filled out your application blank correctly and have been told by the superintendent just when to come back to secure an opening for the busy season.

You have slipped in the entering-wedge. Go out and get experience of some sort, at some price. In any large city such openings are advertised daily in bakeries, candy-stores, five-and-ten-cent stores, shops where notions and dressmakers's upplies are sold. Such firms seldom pay over five dollars a week, some pay only three, but take the work and serve here the ap-