it," was her simple reply. "There are women who would
be glad to get three dollars a week, and think themselves well off."

"But how do you live on so small a sum?"

"We have to deny ourselves almost every little comfort, and confine
ourselves down to the mere necessaries of life. After those who can
afford to pay good prices for their marketing have been supplied, we
come in for a part of what remains. I often get meat enough for a
few cents to last me for several days. And its the same way with
vegetables. After the markets are over, the butchers and country
people, whom we know, let us have lots of things for almost nothing,
sooner than take them home. In this way we make our slender means go
a great deal farther than they would if we had to pay the highest
market price for every thing. But, it often happens that what we
gain here is lost in the eagerness we feel to sell whatever we have,
especially when, from having walked and cried for a long time, we
become much fatigued. Almost every one complains that we ask too
much for our things, if we happen to be one or two cents above what
somebody has paid in market, where there are almost as many
different prices as there are persons who sell. And in consequence,
almost every one tries to beat us down.

"It often happens that, after I have walked for hours and sold but
very little, I have parted with my whole stock at cost to some two
or three ladies, who would not have bought from me at all if they
hadn't known that they were making good bargains out of me; and this
because I could not bear up any longer. I think it very hard,
sometimes, when ladies, who have every thing in plenty, take off
nearly all my profits, after I have toiled through the hot sun for
hours, or shivered in the cold of winter. It is no doubt right
enough for every one to be prudent, and buy things as low as
possible; but it has never seemed to me as quite just for a rich
lady to beat down a poor fish-woman, or strawberry-woman, a cent or
two on a bunch or basket, when that very cent made, perhaps,
one-third, or one-half of her profits.

"It was only yesterday that I stopped at a house to sell a bunch of
fish. The lady took a fancy to a nice bunch of small rock, for which
I asked her twenty cents. They had cost me just sixteen cents.
'Won't you take three fips?' she asked. 'That leaves me too small a
profit, madam,' I replied. 'You want too much profit,' she returned;
'I saw just such a bunch of