seeking to attain that shining eminence to which
the common sentiment of our fellow-beings will concede honor and
admiration as its rightful due.

Yet the picture which represents the true condition of our working-women
has undeniably its harsh and melancholy features. It shows a daily,
constant struggle for adequate compensation. There is everywhere a
discrimination against them in the matter of wages, as compared with
those of men. It looks, in some cases, indeed, as if women were employed
only because they can be had at cheaper rates.

Probably the gay ladies covered with brilliants that flash out
accumulated lustre from the footlights of the theatres they nightly
visit have no suspicion that the delicate and graceful girls they see
upon the stage are victims of this same unjust discrimination as regards
compensation. I have never been inside a theatre, and know nothing of
the stage, or of the dancing-girls, except what I hear and read. But I
can readily imagine how beautiful these young creatures must appear,
dressed in light and graceful attire, bringing out by all the well-known
artifices of theatrical costume the most captivating charms of face and
figure. As they crowd upon the stage in tableaux, which without long and
toilsome rehearsal would become more confused and aimless groupings of
gayly dressed dancers, they take their appointed places, and with a
symmetrical unity repeat the graceful combinations of attitude and
movement they have so laboriously acquired in private. The crowded house
is electrified by the complicated, yet truly beautiful display. All is
fair and happy on the outside. No step in painful, no grief shows
itself, no consciousness of wrong appears, no face but is wreathed in
smiles. The show of perfect happiness is complete.

But do the crowd of rich men who occupy box and pit bestow a thought on
the domestic life of these young girls? Do their wives and daughters,
lolling on cushioned seats, clothed in purple and fine linen, and waited
on by a host of obsequious fops, ever think whether the dancing-girls
have a domestic life of any kind or not? They came to the theatre to be
amused,--not to meditate; why should they permit their amusement to be
clouded by a single thought as to whether any others but themselves are
happy?

Sometimes, in the evolutions of the dance, the gossamer dresses of these
ballet-girls are caught in the blaze of the footlights, instantly
enveloping them in fire, a