ng educated. Some grow up and take
their places as full-blown salesladies, and begin to sigh for the gayety
of the streets, for freedom from restraint, and for amusements that are
not within their reach. Naturally _au fait_ in style, with taste and
clever fingers, they dress in an attractive manner, with the hope of
beguiling the ideal hero they have constructed from the pages of the
trashy story paper. It is a sort of voluntary species of sacrifice on
their part--a kind of suicidal decking with flowers, and making
preparation for immolation. Full of pernicious sentimentality, they are
open to the first promising flirtation. They see elegantly-dressed and
diamonded ladies, and their imagination is fed from the fountains of
vulgar literature until they dream that they, too, are destined to be
won by some splendid cavalier of fabulous wealth. Learning from the
wishy-washy literature that their face is their fortune, and so, reading
what happened to others, and how perfectly lovely and romantic it all
was, they are ready for the wiles of the first gay deceiver. Waiting in
vain for their god-like ideal, they are finally content to look a little
lower, and favorably receive the immodest addresses of some clerk in
their own store, or succeed in making a street "mash."

Sometimes the pretty girl rushes impetuously into marriage, repents and
separates from her husband. She is still good looking, and her marital
experience has given her an air of easy assurance, and she readily finds
employment as a saleslady. Her influence afterwards, among girls
comparatively innocent and without her experience, cannot but be
pernicious, and at the same time must exert a certain formative and
shaping process in determing the peculiar character of the whole class
of girls in the store.

Very frequently she does not attain even to the questionable dignity of
a marriage ceremony. Flattered by the attentions of some swell, the
pretty shop girl will be induced to accompany him to the theatre and to
supper in a concert saloon. Her vanity is kindled by his appearance. She
rejoices in the style of his clothes, in the magnificence of his
jewelry, and she thinks her mission in life is to walk beside the
splendid swell, amid rose gardens, theatres and supper rooms, for the
remainder of her life. Finally she yields to his soft solicitations, and
her prospects are forever blighted. She becomes an incorrigible flirt,
meets her "fellows" on the corner of th