n all probability she is a mother. In this case she must
not only stand alone, but sustain her helpless children. Since her
earliest recollection, others have ministered to her wants and
pleasures. From a father's hand, childhood and youth received their
countless natural blessings; and brother or husband, in later years,
has stood between her and the rough winds of a stormy world. All at
once, like a bird reared, from a fledgling, in its cage, and then
turned loose in dreary winter time, she finds herself in the
world, unskilled in its ways, yet required to earn her bread or
perish.

What can she do? In what art or profession has she been educated?
The world demands service, and proffers its money for labor. But
what has she learned? What work can she perform? She can sew. And is
that all? Every woman we meet can ply the needle. Ah! as a
seamstress, how poor the promise for her future. The labor-market is
crowded with serving women; and, as a consequence, the price of
needle-work--more particularly that called plain needle-work--is
depressed to mere starvation rates. In the more skilled branches,
better returns are met; but even here few can endure prolonged
application--few can bend ten, twelve, or fifteen hours daily over
their tasks, without fearful inroads upon health.

In the present time, a strong interest has been awakened on this
subject. The cry of the poor seamstress has been heard; and the
questions "How shall we help her?" "How shall we widen the circle of
remunerative employments for women?" passes anxiously from lip to
lip. To answer this question is not our present purpose. Others are
earnestly seeking to work out the problem, and we must leave the
solution with them. What we now design is to quicken their generous
impulses. How more effectively can this be done than by a
life-picture of the poor needlewoman's trials and sufferings? And
this we shall now proceed to give.

It was a cold, dark, drizzly day in the fall of 18--, that a young
female entered a well-arranged clothing store in Boston, and passed
with hesitating steps up to where a man was standing behind one of
the counters.

"Have you any work, sir?" she asked, in a low, timid voice.

The individual to whom this was addressed, a short, rough-looking
man, with a pair of large, black whiskers, eyed her for a moment
with a bold stare, and then indicated, by half turning his head and
nodding sideways toward the owner of the shop, who stood a