e street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a
certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement.
It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we
live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more
difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened
supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining
children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she
doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her
first month of experience with the family since bereaved.

The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the
result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The
girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable
school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by
all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even
shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose
family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to
another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,
knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her
position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to
the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social
advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is
judged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful
little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the
people whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her
background, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact
that girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where
"working girls" and "young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where
the clothes superficially look very much alike. Bright and ambitious
girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon,
to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might
hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own
neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits
and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by
other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same
reason, girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little
towns and villages, where every one knows every one else,