deal woman, clad in latest
Parisian garb, with golden hair and blue eyes, gazed down benignly into
the faces uplifted with envy and admiration. Did she not plainly say to
them "For $17 you can look as I do"?

The store was apparently flourishing, and except for such few useful
articles as stockings and shirts it was stocked with trash. Patronized
entirely by labouring men and women, it was an indication to their
needs. Here, for example, was a stand hung with silk dress skirts,
trimmed with lace and velvet. They were made after models of expensive
dress-makers and were attempts at the sort of thing a Mme. de Rothschild
might wear at the Grand Prix de Paris.

Varying from $11 to $20, there was not one of the skirts made of
material sufficiently solid to wear for more than a few Sunday outings.
On another counter there were hats with extravagant garlands of flowers,
exaggerated bows and plumes, wraps with ruffles of lace and long
pendant bows; silk boleros; a choice of things never meant to be
imitated in cheap quality.

[Illustration: THE REAR OF A CHICAGO TENEMENT]

I watched the customers trying on. Possessed of grace and charm in their
native costumes, hatless, with gay-coloured shawls on their shoulders,
the Italian women, as soon as they donned the tawdry garb of the
luxury-loving labourer, were common like the rest. In becoming
prosperous Americans, animated by the desire for material possession
which is the strength and the weakness of our countrymen, they lost the
character that pleases us, the beauty we must go abroad to find.

Miss Arnold priced everything, compared quality and make with
Jacksonville productions, and decided to buy nothing, but in refusing to
buy she had an air of opulence and taste hard to please which surpassed
the effect any purchase could have made.

Sunday morning Mrs. Brown asked me to join her and Miss Arnold for
breakfast They were both in slippers and dressing-gowns. We boiled the
coffee and set the table with doughnuts and sweet cakes, which Miss
Arnold kept in a paper bag in her room.

"I hardly ever eat, except between meals," she explained. "A nibble of
cake or candy is as much as I can manage, my digestion is so poor."

"Ever since Brown died," the widow responded, "I've had my meals just
the same as though he were here. All I want," she went on, as we seated
ourselves and exchanged courtesies in passing the bread and butter,
"all I want is somebody to be kind to me. I've