e than a
premature marriage.

My sister's engagement pleased me very well. Our confidences were not
interrupted, and I understood that she was happy. I was very fond of
Moses Rifkin myself. He was the nicest young man of my acquaintance,
not at all like other workmen. He was very kind to us children,
bringing us presents and taking us out for excursions. He had a sense
of humor, and he was going to marry our Frieda. How could I help being
pleased?

The marriage was not to take place for some time, and in the interval
Frieda remained in the shop. She continued to bring home all her
wages. If she was going to desert the family, she would not let them
feel it sooner than she must.

Then all of a sudden she turned spendthrift. She appropriated I do not
know what fabulous sums, to spend just as she pleased, for once. She
attended bargain sales, and brought away such finery as had never
graced our flat before. Home from work in the evening, after a hurried
supper, she shut herself up in the parlor, and cut and snipped and
measured and basted and stitched as if there were nothing else in the
world to do. It was early summer, and the air had a wooing touch, even
on Wheeler Street. Moses Rifkin came, and I suppose he also had a
wooing touch. But Frieda only smiled and shook her head; and as her
mouth was full of pins, it was physically impossible for Moses to
argue. She remained all evening in a white disorder of tucked
breadths, curled ruffles, dismembered sleeves, and swirls of fresh
lace; her needle glancing in the lamplight, and poor Moses picking up
her spools.

Her trousseau, was it not? No, not her trousseau. It was my graduation
dress on which she was so intent. And when it was finished, and was
pronounced a most beautiful dress, and she ought to have been
satisfied, Frieda went to the shops once more and bought the sash with
the silk fringes.

The improvidence of the poor is a most distressing spectacle to all
right-minded students of sociology. But please spare me your homily
this time. It does not apply. The poor are the poor in spirit. Those
who are rich in spiritual endowment will never be found bankrupt.

Graduation Day was nothing less than a triumph for me. It was not only
that I had two pieces to speak, one of them an original composition;
it was more because I was known in my school district as the
"smartest" girl in the class, and all eyes were turned on the prodigy,
and I was aware of it. I was aware