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DURING the past few years colored girls have been coming rapidly to the front and making their way in the professional and business world. Opportunities are opening for them that once were firmly closed, and they are making the most of these opportunities, like the sensible women that they are. Race prejudice, although still existing to a certain degree, is much softened, and the girl of ability belonging to the colored race finds entrance, if not welcome, in almost any vocation which she attempts. This is true more largely of the professions than of the trades, because with broader education comes a broader view, and the men and the women who are met in professional life are more courteous than are those in the lower strata to these new invaders of the field of endeavor.

A great deal of comment has been made on the fact that a colored girl was given a degree at Vassar College with the Class of '97, her classmates and the faculty not knowing that she was of African descent until her college career was near its close. She was called the most beautiful girl in the college, and her mental attainments ranked with her beauty. It is no matter of comment because a colored girl entered the Freshman Class of '97 of Boston University, although she was the first colored woman who ever entered the college of liberal arts as a regular candidate for the degree of A.B. The color line has never been drawn at this coeducational institution either in theory or practice, so when Miss Ida Hill, of Millerton, N.Y., applied for admission as a regular student, she was cordially received. She prepared for college at the Gilbert Academy, Winstead, Conn., from which school she was graduated with honor the June previous to her entering Boston University. Dr. Clark, the principal of Gilbert, is a Boston University graduate, and it was through his recommendation that she applied to the college on Beacon Hill. Miss Hill is exceedingly attractive. She has a

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pleasant manner and a face that bears the traces of refinement. She dresses in excellent taste, is pretty and graceful, and altogether a decided acquisition to the college. It is said that the several secret societies, to be a member of which is a badge of social prestige, are all anxious to claim Miss Hill as a member.

Just after the war Miss Charlotte Fortin attracted much attention in Boston by her brilliant translations of the Erckmann-Chartrain novels. Miss Fortin was a young quadroon who had been educated abroad, and was a girl with rare qualities of mind. She was quite a protege of Colonel T. W. Higginson, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, and other members of the Boston literary guild. She was the first colored woman to attain distinction.

Cambridge has among its most valued teachers a colored woman, Miss Maria Baldwin, who is principal of the Agassiz Grammar School, situated in the most aristocratic and exclusive part of the University city. Miss Baldwin was educated in the Cambridge public schools, finishing her education at one of the State Normal Schools. On her graduation she applied for the position of teacher in the Cambridge public schools. Her claims to consideration were upheld by many of the leading Cambridge people, and the committee determined to give her a trial. They knew it would not do to attach her to a school in the poorer parts of the city, because the ignorant foreign element, of which these schools were largely composed, would resent the idea of being taught by a colored woman, so she was given a position in the Agassiz school, which is largely attended by the children of the University professors and that choice coterie which makes up Cambridge's most delightful social element. Not only was no opposition offered to Miss Baldwin, but she has been liked and revered as a teacher by the children who were under her training, and her work has been respected and honestly valued by the school committee. She not only kept the position upon which she entered, but by degrees was advanced, until now she is the principal of the school, and Cambridge people would resent the idea of supplementing her by any other teacher.

Miss Baldwin has also been successful as a lecturer, and during the summer of '97 gave one of the lectures in the famous Old South course, her subject being "Harriet Beecher Stowe and Her Work for Anti-slavery through the Medium of the Story." No lecture in the course, which had among its other speakers such men as Secretary Long, Mr. John Fiske, and others of the same stamp, was so warmly commended or so enthusiastically reported as the one given by Miss Baldwin. She closed her lecture with some comments on the question of how far the efforts to educate the negro had been successful. She said, the answer could not yet be given, but there were indications to mark what it would be. The hardest thing of all to bear was the contempt of the white race. The white man kept telling the black that he had not the capacity for the highest development. Something, however, had kept the negro from believing that himself. In the little attempt

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[image: MISS LUTIE A. LYTLE]

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here, the little struggle there, there was evident at least an aspiration. Perhaps no more striking addition to this comment of Miss Baldwin on the question of the capacity of the negro for development could be made than to quote one of her own final sentences. What shall be said of a race one of whose women can say this: "It is not easy to tell what genius is, but there are certain things by which we recognize it--intense personal impressions of life; fresh, strong and direct speech; swift, irresistible rushes of power; newness, unexpectedness, exuberance, and nearly everyPage of, Uncle Tom's Cabin, bears this royal mark."

Topeka, Kansas, has a colored woman lawyer, Miss Lutie Lytle. She says of herself:

"I am not the first colored woman in America who has studied law, but I am the first to practice it. Miss Platt, of Chicago, was the pioneer of my race in the study of law, but she intended to acquire legal knowledge only as an assistance to her in stenographic work. I will practice and make it my life work. I may open an office in Topeka, but my ambition prompts me to begin practice either in New York or in Washington. Those who have taken an interest in me recommend New York.

"I graduated from the Law Department of the Central Tennessee College on September 8, and was admitted to the bar by Judge Cooper, of Nashville, who, although a typical Southern gentleman, was kind enough to me to bid me God-speed in my profession, and professed a hope and prophecy of my success.

"My favorite is constitutional law, but I shall have no specialty. I like constitutional law because the anchor of my race is grounded on the Constitution, and whenever our privileges are taken away from us or curtailed, we must point to the Constitution as the Christian does to his Bible. It is the great source and Magna Charta of our rights, and we must know it in order to defend the boon that has been given to us by its amendments. It is the certificate of our liberty and our equality before the law. Our citizenship is based on it, and hence I love it.

"In the North the letter of the Constitution is better observed than in the South, but in the South the spirit of the Constitution is not dead. In the North the colored people are given all the privileges of spending money, but not of earning it. In the South the negroes are given the privilege of earning money, but not of spending it.

"What I mean is this: In the South the white people give our people employment side by side with themselves in a most generous spirit, but they are not allowed to spend money side by side with them in the opera house, in the restaurant, in the street car, nor even in the saloon. In the North the people are niggardly in giving the colored people a chance to earn a dollar, and they are generous in allowing them to spend it elbow to elbow with them at the theatre or anywhere else.

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[image: MISS LILIAN LEWIS]

"The South discriminates in punishment for violations of the law as between the Caucasian and the negro. If a poor negro is suspected of a capital crime he is immediately lynched; if a white man is convicted of a capital offence he is given a slight jail sentence. That is not right; both should be justly dealt with and punished with equal severity.

"In connection with my law practice, I intend to give occasional lectures, but not in any sense for personal profit. I shall talk to my own people and make a sincere and earnest effort to improve their condition as citizens. I shall also talk to the white people and appeal to them for fair play to my race. I am not a radical in anything, nor do I intend to be. I believe in efficacy of reason to bring about the best results.

"I conceived the idea of studying law in a printing office where I worked for years as a compositor. I read the newspaper exchanges a great deal and became impressed with the knowledge of the fact that my own people especially were the victims of legal ignorance. I resolved to fathom its depths and penetrate its mysteries and intricacies in hopes of being a benefit to my people. I very soon ascertained that it was more deep and intricate than I first supposed it to be. It requires hard work to master it, if such a thing is possible at all. It is a great study and I am infatuated with it. I have devoted some time to the cultivation of elocution and oratory, and I intend to improve myself in them."

The Boston Herald has on its editorial staff a young colored woman, Lilian Lewis. Miss Lewis is a graduate of the Girls' High and Normal School

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of Boston and began her newspaper career very early after her graduation. Her first position was that of private secretary and assistant to the then society editor, Mrs. Anna M.B. Ellis, now of London. Upon Mrs. Ellis' retirement from the position, it was taken by Miss Lewis, and she filled it very creditably for a period of years. Then feeling that she was capable of stronger and more original work, she gave up the position, still continuing with the Herald, however, and became one of its corps of special writers. When it is understood that the Herald writers are considered among the most brilliant of the newspaper men and women of the city, it will be easily seen that Miss Lewis must have been possessed of genuine ability to attain a position among them. Besides her newspaper work Miss Lewis has written several exceedingly clever stories, and has been so successful in that line that she sometimes threatens to abandon newspaper work for the field of fiction.

Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, widow of the late colored Judge Ruffin, of the Massachusetts bench, has edited for some time a weekly paper devoted to the interests of her race, particularly to the women. Mrs. Ruffin is a handsome, stately woman, with the airs of a grande dame, highly intelligent and refined. She makes her paper exceedingly bright and full of interest. She is interested in charitable and philanthropic movements and is a member of the Woman's Press Club of New England, as is Miss Lewis also.

Miss Dora Gould, of Dedham, Mass., is a graduate of the State Normal Art School, and has been a successful teacher in one of the race schools in the South.

Miss Gould, who also possesses fine literary ability, is a frequent contributor to Mrs. Ruffin's paper, writing many of the book criticisms and articles treating on purely literary topics.

Many girls who have been educated in the schools of the North have gone South and found a fine field of labor among their own people as teachers. The list of colored women of attainment would not be complete without the name of Mrs. Booker T. Washington, the wife of the principal of Tuskegee University, in Alabama. Mrs. Washington is an inspiration, not only to the girls who come under her immediate influence, but to all colored girls with ambition and ability. It is to women like her and Miss Baldwin that the women of the negro race may look for the gradual beating down of the race prejudice which still exists to a marked degree, although it has lessened materially during the last quarter of a century.

With examples like these and that of the other women who have been quoted, the young colored woman of the present and of the future may feel that no path in the professions is barred to her, but that there is work for her hand to do if she has courage and perseverance to attempt it.

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THE task of caring for those who are ill is one for which, by very common consent, women have always been allowed to be particularly fitted.

Many years ago Sir Walter Scott wrote of woman:

"When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou."

Mothers, sisters, wives, cared for their relatives who were ill, until through many generations of exercise, what may have been at first only the natural maternal instinct came to be developed in some women until they had what was called "a gift for taking care of the sick."

Because they could do the work of nursing better than other women, and because people must be ill who had no mother, sister or wife to care for them, the work of these self-taught nurses came to have a distinct market value. Partly because there grew to be a demand for a greater number of nurses than then existed, and partly because, in these later years, people have come to see that very often, in the absence of the physician, the life of the patient depended on the nurse knowing, in some sudden emergency, just what should be done and how to do it, there began to be a demand for women who should have this knowledge. The trained nurse has been the result.

Compared numerically the number of women at work as trained nurses will always be very much greater than the number of men in the same profession. The writer has asked a successful woman physician, who has been practicing for the last fifteen years in a large city, to write out the results of her observations during this time on trained nursing as an occupation for women.

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"So nearly as I remember now," she says, "the first training-school for nurses in this country was established early in the '70's, by an English woman, at Bellevue Hospital, in New York. Since then similar institutions have sprung up all over the country, and the demand for the work of the graduates has been so great that women have flocked to this new field of labor until it is safe to say that the number at work to-day is at least a hundred times what it was five years ago. As a result, if I was asked what I think about the desirability of women entering upon this line of work now, I should say that I think the field is probably about full. In saying that, however I should wish to add another statement which I believe to be equally true.

"The women who first became trained nurses took up the work as many men and women study medicine; because they had a special fitness for it which led them to look conscientiously upon this as their ordained life work. Since then the commercial advantages of the field have led many other women to enter it, regardless of the question whether or not they have any liking or fitness for it. The result has been that there are now many trained nurses who will always be of only indifferent ability in the work, and so, while the field may seem to be full, I am convinced that any woman who has tact and a liking for the work, who will thoroughly fit herself, and then is willing to work hard, will find profitable employment.

"Many young women seek this field because they have an idea that the work is easy. A greater mistake was never made. There are rare cases which a fortunate nurse may sometimes obtain, where the nurse's work is little more than that of a companion, but they are indeed rare. In general it is hard, confining work, with long hours, day or night, some times both. It is true that very often a young woman who has no organic disease, but who may not have been well, finds herself grow stronger and better after she has been for some time a pupil in a nurse's training-school. When this is the case her friends are very apt to think, and say, that this is because the work of a nurse is easy. The real reason is very much more likely to be that the change from the irregular hours of home life to the regular routine of a hospital, and the increased knowledge of the laws of hygiene and physiology, are what has caused the improvement.

"The first thing a young woman should do, if she thinks of becoming a trained nurse, is to go to her physician and be thoroughly examined to see if she is physically well enough to take up the work. If she has any organic disease whatever, she should at once dismiss the idea of becoming a trained nurse.

"Thorough training can be had only at a training-school connected with some hospital. As a general thing the larger the hospital the better the school, for the reason that the experience is so much wider. The pupil must expect to

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stay at least two years, while the best schools are now extending that time to three years, and recommending four.

[image: "A MINISTERING ANGEL THOU"]

"The work will not be easy. The hours in most schools are from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. in. for day duty, and from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. for night duty. Of course there are stated periods for rest and recreation. The young woman who knows nothing of what the drill may be, and goes to her duties expecting to assist at a delicate operation the first day, may be surprised to know that her first task will probably be the scrubbing of floors, and the second, the scrubbing of newly arrived patients, quite likely to be a good deal more dirty than the floors. In time, the other duties come, though, a steady development from one thing to another.

"Apropos of the need of training, even in these first duties, there came not so very long ago to one of the great New York training schools, seeking to become a nurse, the daughter of one of the most famous poets America has produced. The second day she was there she was set to work to bathe an old woman patient just brought in. In this case 'scrub' would have been the better word, for there seemed to be good reason to believe the patient's assertion that she had not taken

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a bath for fifteen years. The new pupil had energy and determination, though, and she did the task set her so thoroughly that the patient died the next day, from the direct effects, so the doctors said, of her bath.

"One advantage about this work has been that the expense of learning has been small, and from the very first there has been some income. The only expense is that of the uniform which the nurses are required to wear, and since these must be of cotton, and must be worn all the time, the cost is apt to be less than ordinary clothing for the same length of time. From the very first, too, the pupil receives not only board and lodging, but a certain sum, even if small, for wages. I think there are some of the Canadian hospitals where the pay is only seven dollars a month, for the first year, but I do not know of any in the States where the wages are less than ten dollars for the first year, and from that up to sixteen dollars for the last year.

"Girls wishing to enter a training school must make application, and then wait until there is an opening for them. The number which can be taken at almost any school is limited, and of late there have been so many would-be pupils that it is often necessary to wait some time.

"So far as wages after leaving the school are concerned, the best nurses in large cities, except in some very special cases, can command twenty-one dollars a week for ordinary diseases, and twenty-five dollars for contagious diseases. From that the price comes down to ten dollars a week in smaller places. The woman who is willing to go out into the country towns and smaller cities will not be able to command quite so high prices as her city sister, but on account of the lack of competition her employment will be so much more constant that I am inclined to think her income will equal that of the city woman. It should be remembered that even if she is to be employed a good portion of the time, the nurse must have a home to which she can come when not at work. The expense of keeping a room, or a suite of rooms, in the town is very much less than in the city.

"If I was to add a word of advice to young women who are trained nurses, or hope to become such, it is to emphasize the need of tact. The difference between hospital nursing and private nursing is very great. Very many trained nurses fail, or at least fall far short of success because they have not the tact to adjust themselves to the changed conditions into which they come to work. It is no less necessary that they be exact, and insist on being allowed to strictly carry out the doctor's orders, but it is possible to do this and still 'get along' with the patient and the family. The nurse who does not do this runs the risk of serious injury to her patient from the uncomfortable atmosphere with which she surrounds herself.

"Try and put some heart into your work. Don't look upon it simply as a means of earning money. Don't feel that the giving of powders at the appointed

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[image: THE TRAINED NURSE]

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time, and the shaking up of pillows, are all the duties which you owe your patient."

It was in this special tact and thoughtfulness that "Mother" Bickerdyke, perhaps the most famous nurse this country has ever seen, excelled. It was on the battlefield and in the hospitals of the Civil War that Mrs. Bickerdyke gained her reputation, but she had been an experienced nurse for a long time previous, and had supported her two little sons by her work.

Mother Bickerdyke's eightieth birthday was celebrated in 1897. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who knew her and her work very intimately, and loved the woman as much as she admired the work, in speaking of Mother Bickerdyke on that occasion, said: "She was the best nurse I ever knew. She had the instinct which led her to know what was the best thing to do for every case. With it she had a heart so big and kind that she would go to no end of trouble to do things to make her patients happy, believing this did quite as much as medicine to recover them.

"I remember once a poor young fellow in a hospital had set his heart on having a baked potato to eat. She had told him that just as soon as it was prudent for him to eat a potato he should have it, but his mind still dwelt upon the coveted delicacy so persistently that finally she went and got four nice new potatoes, washed them clean, dried them, and then warmed them. Then she brought them to the sick boy, for he wasn't very much more, and said, 'There, my boy, here are four nice potatoes. You shall have them in bed with you, where you can touch them, and look at them, and just as soon as it is safe for you to have a baked potato to eat, you shall have one just like the best of these cooked for you.' The man was as happy as a child. He hoarded up his treasures, and crooned over them, and was quiet and contented.

"The next day along came the ward surgeon on his rounds. He discovered the potatoes, asked how they came there, and when he knew, tossed them out onto the floor. He was a young man, and did not know Mother Bickerdyke. She happened to be out of the room, but came in before the round was completed. The potatoes were on the floor, and the man, weak with pain and long illness was crying. It took only a glance for her to comprehend what was the matter.

"'Who threw those potatoes down there?' she asked.

"'I did,' said the surgeon.

"'What did you do it for?'

"'Because it was foolish and unnecessary to have them where they were. I'm not going to have the beds in this hospital made into potato hills.'

"Mother Bickerdyke swooped down on the potatoes, and gathering them up in her apron brought them back to the bed.

"'Do you think anything is foolish which makes a sick man comfortable?' she exclaimed. 'It can't possibly hurt him to have those potatoes there. I even

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warmed them, myself so they should not be cold to touch.' Then to the patient, putting the vegetables back into the bed, 'There, there, my poor boy,' said she, 'don't you feel bad. You shall have them back, and you shall keep them in bed until they sprout if you want to.' And he did keep them until he was able to eat his potato baked."

The young woman who has Mother Bickerdyke's tact and kindness of heart, and who has fitted herself to be a nurse, need not fear but what she will be successful, and have all the work she wishes to do.

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"YOU see," said a Boston milliner, "my sister and I at first made the great mistake of locating where there were no other millinery establishments, thinking to thus secure a clear field; and, indeed, the field was so clear that we got no customers at all. A friend with whom we took counsel said: 'Move at once into the very midst of bonnet shops. People looking for head gear never come into this district, and the people who live near here, even if they patronized you, which they won't, for every one likes to go to a fashionable place to look at things even if she is going to buy a twenty-five cent hat, even if they patronized you, their custom would never support you and pay your rent. When places of one kind are near together, if one doesn't find what she wants at one store she will go to another. You are apt, even from the beginning, to catch a good deal of this floating custom.'

"We acted on the advice of our counselor, and here we are in a thicket of milliners. We have done well; better than I expected we should.

"We have these two rooms, and make trimming a specialty. We used to make hats, but we find it pays better and is less trouble to have our customers bring their hats. We, of course, buy individual hats and bonnets when requested to do so. Our second specialty is making over old hats. Our customers sometimes declare the remodeled affair is as pretty as any new creation could be, and go away wearing a half-price headgear which looks like brand new. Many people patronize us who cannot often afford a new hat or bonnet, but can comparative1y often spend a dollar on what they already have.

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[image: MR. AND MRS. GEORGE H. KRAFTS]

"We take great pains to give our customers just what they want, letting them see that we appreciate and desire to cater to their taste as well as put forward our own."

These two sisters had tried many kinds of work before recognizing, or yielding to, their vocation of millinery. Their motto is that the proper study of the milliner is woman--not merely the shape of her head and face, but her whole nature. Does she choose shapes and colors wisely? Does she need a little less or a little more color than she naturally chooses to wear? Must one furnish her with a taste, or be guided by her taste? By this habit with their regular customers these young women have come to be depended upon for decisions or appealed to for advice in scores of cases. By their comprehension and tact, their ladylike and attentive manner, their ability to converse on many subjects. and their interest in the affairs of the day, they have, with very small capital, built up a business which has evidently come to stay.

Moving through the large millinery department of R. H. White & Co., Boston, is a little blonde woman with a vivacious manner and far-seeing and pleasant glances, whose comprehension seems capable of taking in a dozen things at once. This woman, Mrs. Georgia Krafts, buyer and designer, makes two trips to Europe each year, designs every special bonnet and hat in the establishment, has entire oversight and direction of the workroom and

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salesroom, taking orders from no one. "Is the milliner born or made?" says Mrs. Krafts. "Both, if she is really to be a success. I was certainly born a milliner. My mother at one time kept two houses in London, employing some of the time as many as fifty girls. She made and trimmed hats and bonnets for all the elite of the city. My uncle declares that I 'was always in a bandbox.' My mother says that I never wanted a doll, but used to toddle over the counters, peeping into every box and drawer I came to, and my favorite and always-continued amusement was to make tiny hats and to manufacture wee boxes into which to put them.

"My parents lost their property and came to New York, where I was born. I entered the store of Madame Galleapeau, the famous New York milliner, when I was fifteen. Madame had for customers the Astors and Vanderbilts, the Steinways and Heinrichs--in short, all the rich families of the place. I have known her to receive as high as a hundred and eight dollars for one hat.

"I came from New York to Providence, R.I., to take charge of the millinery department in Shepard's; or, rather, to make a millinery department, for there was very little to begin with. We built up a large and splendid business there. From there I came here, being offered a much larger salary than I received in Providence.

"I have never sought places; they have sought me. I have never left a place where I had been employed without sincere regrets, and carrying with me pictures of my late employer and the members of his family. From this close sympathy and good will between my employers and myself I believe much of my success to have resulted. To be in happy and harmonious relations with every one, especially those near to you in space or in interests, facilitates business by helping to keep one well, and enabling her to keep her mind on affairs in hand, rather than dissipating her force by worries.

"Another thing to which I attribute my success is my ability to dispense with memoranda. When a customer orders a bonnet or a hat I make a mental picture of it; photograph it, as it were, on my brain, dwelling intently upon it till its image is so indelibly stamped on my memory that I cannot forget it, and can exactly reproduce it. I require my forewomen to acquire this ability, and thus much time is saved, and much more satisfactory results are produced.

"I take care to have saleswomen who are alert and courteous in manner, deft fingered, and with an intelligent, interested air. It adds much to a saleswoman's value, as well as makes her happier personally, if she is informed upon many subjects besides those pertaining to her immediate business. For this reason I make it a point, when I am with my girls in the workroom, to talk with them, or to them, upon various important and interesting subjects, which not only affords them information, but sets us all to thinking, and renders us eager to learn more.

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"A motto which I have found most useful is, that if a thing has a right to be at all, it has a right to be complete in all its details. I insist that all trimmed bonnets and hats shall go out in neat boxes, delicately papered, and that nothing about them shall suggest cheapness or carelessness. A badly done-up parcel is a poor advertisement for any house.

"Where do I get my designs? Literally everywhere. I go to the theatre as much to see the women's headgear as to watch the play. In architecture, in groupings of statuary or single chiseled figures, in pictures, on placards and posters, in the way fences are built, in everything my eyes fall upon I look for a suggestion for shapes. Color and shadings, also, I gather from every conceivable source. The mosses on stone walls, smoke from chimneys, autumn leaves and berries, old gardens where many kinds of flowers are growing, vines, sunset hues, moonlight on different objects, the rings on the necks of pigeons, the colors on the wings of birds, insects, cattle, shrubs, hues in druggists' windows--all these and a thousand more objects give me hints which are carried out again and again in my business.

"While I believe that every one who is to be eminently successful will have one dominating idea, I do not for a moment believe that a one-ideaed woman will succeed as well as a many-ideaed one. Whatever things one may know besides those things pertaining directly to her business are like frosting to cake--not actually essential to the cake, but making it more valuable and attractive. Every class of women should read and think and converse, and certainly milliners are no exception to the rule. Talent for the work, open eyes, quick and deft fingers and a happy heart are the ingredients which go to make the artist-milliner."

The author of "Women in the Business World" quotes a woman who has become wealthy as a milliner, as saying:

"I know of no better business than millinery for a woman who has any talent for it at all. Even if she have but little skill at first, more will come to her if she tries to acquire it, and is in earnest about her profession. I am a classical scholar. I graduated with honors from one of the best colleges, but I have never been sorry that I devoted myself to making bonnets rather than pursuing some of the phantoms women think they must give chase to, if they are educated. My education has been quite as much benefit and as great a pleasure to me in this calling as it could have been had I written books or chiseled statues.

"As for 'society,' I have the best, and have never heard of any lines being drawn upon me because I make and sell bonnets. The cowardice of women who are afraid to do this or afraid to do that lest they lose caste, is laughable to me. It is those who have no assured position who are most afraid. They are always indifferently educated, too, you will find. Thorough education rids the mind of all such foolishness.

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"Years ago, when the milliner was a poverty-stricken being, bleaching old straw bonnets in a barrel with sulphur, she was not much sought after as an ornament to society, I dare say. Now, when she holds her own in the business world, and is useful in a large way, society--all she cares for-- is ready enough to be nice to her. Besides, a woman in business is really 'in society' all the time. That is, she constantly comes in contact with others, and so has less need of that which calls itself 'society.' In fact, she could not give much time to it--if it begged on its knees. That sort of thing is for those who have time to kill. The business woman has none.

"No; I have never regretted becoming a milliner. I pay $2000 a year rent for my shop, and I own a twenty-thousand-dollar home up-town. My account at the bank is good. I have little investments here and there, and I go to Paris every summer. Perhaps if I had turned my attention to what ill- informed persons call a higher vocation, I might now be a newspaper reporter, running around armed with a shabby umbrella, and other accessories to match, anxious to 'write up' some idle woman's wedding trosseau, or describe some actress home-toilet. I am very satisfied to be what I am."

The author of the book from which the above quotation is made adds:

"Old as this occupation is, it is one of the best paid in which women engage, because a milliner, of necessity, is one who understands her business, who has been trained in what she is expected to do. When employed by others, her salary varies according to her ability. If an expert in concocting confections for the head, she can command almost incredible wages as an employe, or make an enviable fortune as a proprietor. It is said that the Princess of Wales is a very clever milliner, and usually gives the finishing touches to her bonnets, sometimes making them outright. It is well known that she is a skillful dressmaker. Before her marriage she and her sister, now wife of the Czar of Russia, made all their own dresess. The sensible princess has taught her daughters the same art."

Two New York girls started a millinery business by sending out circulars and personally soliciting trials of their skill. At their opening, which consisted of "six ready-made bonnets and a cup of tea for all who were good enough to come," they asked their guests to advertise them, which they did in a very generous manner.

They made it a rule to study the individual tastes of their customers, and to "never let a hat or bonnet box go home without a civil note of thanks."

One of their specialties is making second-best hats for their customers, utilizing material which has already been used, and which they reburnish and freshen. This, they declare, is the part of the business which pays them best of all.

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WHAT capital did I begin with?" says Madame Juliette Pinault, manicurer and dealer in high grade toilet goods, a Parisian born but now fully Americanized. "Well, I began with my mother's wrinkles and freckles, or rather they began my business for me, though I never realized that this was so. My mother, poor woman! was more wrinkled at twenty-five than I am at sixty-two, and her freckles were something terrible. We lived in a little house in Paris. My father was a physician, and from morning sunlight to evening moonlight there was something brewing or stewing or combining that possibly might remove freckles or dispose of wrinkles. After my father died my mother married an analytical chemist, and then the brewing and stewing and combining waxed hotter than ever. All the mixtures were first tried on me, for I too, was more spotted than a leopard. In the meantime I had been reading, always reading, books heavy as to weight and matter, for I was eager for all kinds of knowledge, and most eager of all for a knowledge of chemistry. Of course, I entered into all the experiments with peculiar interest, and many I made on my own responsibility.

"In delving for a wrinkle remover and freckle effacer we evolved, instead, a number of other things which were valuable as aids to beauty.

"When I had become a young woman I married a handsome officer in the French navy, and was more anxious than ever to be rid of all face blemishes, for I longed to be fair in my husband's eyes. Therefore I worked with added zeal at my experiments.

"In 1875 my husband died, leaving no property, and I was forced to face the problem of how I could earn a living. Naturally it occurred to me to try and turn

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my knowledge of chemistry to account. For several years I remained in Paris, making and selling a few articles. In 1884 I landed in America.

[image: MADAME JULIETTE PINAULT]

"I was always deeply interested in occult and metaphysical works, and a year after coming to Boston I began studying with Joseph Rodes Buchanan. 'I am going to make a good living,' I said to my teacher. 'What capital have you?' he questioned. 'No capital at all outside.' I replied. 'It's all inside, but I shall do well, depend upon it.' 'Good!' he exclaimed. 'I believe you will. I knew a mariner who built a ship with only a bushel of beans to start with.'

"Well, my large hope was my bushel of beans, and with that I set to work. I had only a few dollars. I went to the Young Women's Christian Association on Warrenton street, to board. I got a small number of pupils to whom I gave French lessons, and with the money thus earned I bought materials for a few articles, which I manufactured and sold to the friends or acquaintances I had, and they, in turn, told me of other ladies who might use my preparations, and to them I went, using the names of those who sent me as passports. I learned to do manicuring, and went to people's houses to attend to their hands. I really created a demand for my goods. People seemed to think it was wicked to want to look better than they naturally did, but with my philosophy, and my preparations and manipulations as temptations, I convinced them that the wickedness lay in being uglier than one needed.

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"At last I opened parlors, and my old customers and many new ones came to me. My business has been built up by always acting honorably, selling nothing which was not all that it was represented to be and able to do all that I claimed it would do. I had four articles when I began. I now have eighteen, I make every one of them, and warrant every one as harmless. You see my face. Can you see a freckle on it? I found the effective freckle lotion at last as I and thousands of others can testify, also the wrinkle eraser. Ah! the millions of wrinkles my lotion has done away with! If my once poor tormented mother knows about it she must almost want to come back for a time just to feel how it seems to be where wrinkles cease from troubling and freckles are non est.

"I have now introduced manicuring into the business, and keep two assistants. I am not rich, but I consider that I am successful because I am always well, and have by honorable means built up an honorable business which is still growing, has few fluctuations, and which gives me all the necessities and some of the luxuries of life."

Madame Pinault is a handsome woman, "sixty-two years young," who laughs and enjoys, and forges along with a vitality and eagerness few girls are capable of. Her brain keeps evolving some new article for the toilet, and her dreams seem to be pregnant with meaning, for the recipe for her "creme mystique," which is the long-sought wrinkle and freckle destroyer, came, she declares, while she was asleep. Her parlors are unique and pleasant places to visit. Madame is finely educated, widely read in the best literature, a chemist of undoubted ability, with the American's capability for business and the Frenchwoman's charm. Although she does not lecture (publicly), she may rightfully come under the head of "beautifiers," of which a recent writer speaks thus:

"The professional beautifier is usually a woman. She undertakes to remove all facial blemishes, wrinkles included. She gives practical lectures on how to be beautiful, and furnishes the example of beauty herself. Her pupils are numbered by hundreds, her dollars by thousands. The realm of the toilet is her kingdom, and royally she reigns. Of all lecturers on practical subjects, she has the largest constituency--one that continually increases."

"It is one of the best businesses in the world for women who will keep dignified and true to their best selves and their best interests," declares Madame Alary, of Winter street, Boston, speaking of manicuring and hairdressing. "It has many temptations to vice, but none of them need be yielded to, and when one's reputation is established these temptations are few and far between. I took up the work because I felt that I should love it, and because I so much like to experiment with chemicals. I live at home with my mother, and there I make all my own washes and creams that I may be able to say to my customers, 'This is this, and that is that.' There is capital as well as comfort in the confidence of one's patrons.

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"I put $500 into the business to begin with. Many start with much less, but of course it is far easier to make a good beginning if one has some money. I keep four assistants."

Madame Alary is a fine, frank looking woman, bland, serene, gracious, and businesslike.

I recently read the following anecdote concerning two men who were talking about the marvelous success of a friend:

"Everything seems to come to him without trouble," said one. "While others are frantically tearing ahead, exerting themselves to the point of madness, he quietly moves on, and money rolls in upon him, as though each dollar was bent upon reaching him and nobody else."

"I believe I know the secret of it," said the other. "He rides an even sea. That is, he keeps his mind calm, and that attitude attracts what he desires. You call it luck; but it is science, in its way. Look about and you will see that the people who accomplish most are not those who go tearing ahead like madmen. I always try to keep out of the way of people who bang through life, just as I try to keep out of the way of cannon balls, or other things too strongly charged with energy, and too unswerving in their course. The atmosphere of hurry is fatal to achievement. In the silent pool everybody is moved to cast a stone; but the torrent that tears its way through walls and over precipices drives everything away from it. Its turbulence makes it impossible for it to retain anything.

"Our friend rides an even sea. In his mind are no troubled waters. He understands the art of saying 'Peace, be still,' to his thoughts and they obey. The quiet of his mind is reflected in his manner, and that makes him agreeable to those who come in contact with him. He is not lacking in energy because he does not thresh about like a wounded serpent. The most irresistible form of energy is noiseless. Then, greatest of all accomplishments, he never speaks hastily, angrily, impatiently, or offensively,--not even in the shadings of tones, and that means that he is already in the kingdom, of which it is said that when we have gained it, all other things shall be added unto us. I do not hesitate to say that the full control of the voice and speech, which rids them of all that can hurt or offend, will be followed by wonderful prosperity. I have never seen it fail. Our words and even tones are fraught with power to make or mar our fortune. We can't be too careful how we use them."

I was strongly reminded of this anecdote by a visit I paid to Miss Rosilla Butler in her beautiful rooms on Tremont street, Boston. Miss Butler is sweetly genuine and genuinely sweet, and serene as the march of the planets. To a remark of mine similar to the above the young girl who was manicuring my hands, enthusiastically replied: "Oh yes, and she is always so. I have been here three years, and I never saw her different. I shall never want a place of my own.

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She makes it so pleasant we all enjoy being here. She takes an interest in all that concerns us. If one of us is ill she is so kind, and she enjoys our fun as much as we do."

Miss Butler, pretty, petite, frank and cordial, moves among the ten members of "her family " as she calls the girls in her employ, speaking kindly to one, smiling at another careful that thoughtfulness, and justice, and sweetness shall make a magnetic atmosphere about them all. Work goes on like magic, without jar, break or fret, every one constantly and joyously busy. To me all this evoked harmony and happiness seemed this young woman's most valuable success, but she has, largely, I doubt not, in consequence of these, great success in that which would generally be considered a more practical way.

Miss Butler came to Boston at a very early age, having decided that she wished to do something to earn her own living. She was the youngest of eleven children, and naturally no great amount of money was hers. But she had the New England girl's usual heritage, good health, excellent morals, a good common school education, and plenty of energy. She always had possessed a taste and a talent for dressing hair, and doing deft little services about the person. When an opportunity presented itself for her to learn the art of hair weaving and hair dressing she gladly accepted it. She was master of the craft in three months. It occurred to her that she might as well have a shop of her own as to serve another, so she took a small room in the top of the building where her elaborate parlors now are, and began dressing the hair of her old customers on her own account. Business increased, and before long she needed an assistant. She also ere long needed more room. "I came down as my business came up," says Miss Butler, laughingly. She now occupies the whole second floor of a building near the corner of Winter street. Her large plate glass windows command a view of nearly the entire common, and the sun is always with her. An ecru and gold Axminster carpet covers the parlor floor, chairs and couches and cushions, each in excellent taste and perfect harmony with all else, are ranged about, while large plate mirrows magnify the apartment and its belongings. In this parlor the manicuring is done, while the hair dressing has a room to itself. In the back room, which Miss Butler calls "the kitchen," the hair weaving and shampooing are carried on. Miss Butler has invented an electrical apparatus by which drying is accomplished in seven minutes.

All the many washes and creams and other combinations exhibited in the oak showcases are manufactured by Miss Butler, who with all her other gettings has absorbed a considerable understanding of chemistry.

An inexperienced person would scarcely believe that so much happiness and refreshment could be extracted from an hour in a manicuring and hairdressing establishment, as is enjoyed during sixty minutes in Miss Butler's domains.

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WITH the advent of women into the medical profession has come also her entrance into its remoter branches. In dentistry, for instance, she is already a conspicuous factor and the number of women practicing this profession is increasing yearly. The latest data show that there are one hundred and fifty women dentists practicing in the United States. Statistics, however, are difficult to collect; for as one clever and successful representative of the profession said:

"You see there are women everywhere, especially in parts of the West, who will practice without a full course or a diploma in States where the regulations regarding such things are not strict. Such women are not, of course, officially registered; but if they were counted in, the total would be greatly increased."

Philadelphia, which has cradled a surprising number of the woman movements of the century, was the first city to graduate women in this profession and naturally the greatest number of them flocked thither, only one dental school--that of the University of Pennsylvania--being closed to them. The Boston Dental College has let down its bars; and though Harvard has not yet surrendered, one of its professors lately said to a woman: "You are knocking at the doors so loudly that we shall have to admit you." Maryland does not admit women to any of its dental schools, and New York State is equally inhospitable, as is also the city of St. Louis.

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The summer of 1897 witnessed the graduation from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery of an interesting woman from Japan, Miss Yasa Nakamura. Miss Nakamura's object is not merely to practice the most painful of the healing arts among Japanese women, but to establish a school of dentistry of her own.

Although not such a steep and thorny way as the entrance into medicine, the story of woman's introduction into the untried field of dentistry is a story of struggle. As has often happened in such cases, the entering wedge was first inserted by a man, Dr. James Truman, of the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, who, in 1866, in an address to the graduating class of that institution, launched a bomb in the form of a suggestion that women and dentistry were peculiarly fitted to one another. At a date when a female physician was a thing to be shuddered at, the idea of a woman dentist was simply a combination of the outrageous and impossible. Within two years, however, the "eternal feminine" made her appearance in the form of Fraulein Henriette Herschfeld, who, when refused admission by the dean of the Pennsylvania College, appealed to the faculty. She was finally admitted to matriculation, when it was discovered that she had come to America from Germany fully persuaded that in that woman's country she would have no difficulty in obtaining the education she desired; and more than that, she had been promised by the Minister of Public Instruction in Germany that she would be allowed to practice there if she secured her diploma in America. The dangerous precedent, however, was not followed in a hurry by the college, which rejected all subsequent applications from women, until one of the disappointed candidates was admitted to the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery; the first and last woman ever received there. This spurred the rival college in Pennsylvania into formally opening its doors to women, in which it was followed by those of other States.

The National Woman's Dental Association was organized in Philadelphia about the year 1892, and in 1897 had about fifty members all over the country.

Now no one worries about the woman dentist. The tender solicitude over her health, always shown when woman enters a paying profession, has subsided; the discourtesies first offered her by masculine rivals have been exchanged for the hand of fellowship--and she is making money. One of these successful practitioners said recently: "It is because there are so few of us that women seem more prosperous in this profession, comparatively speaking, than men. It is not such a choked-up 'opening' as most of those we hear about for our sex. Woman's tact and dexterity peculiarly fit her for such work. People have asked me how women can bear constantly to inflict pain. We don't inflict pain, we relieve it; the pain is inflicted by nature." Someone, describing a call on a woman dentist, ends the story as follows:

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"My last glimpse of her through the half-open office door showed her hovering over a small boy with a rubber dam in his mouth, who was so occupied in round-eyed amazement, listening to her story of the wicked microbe family, and how they tried to take up their abode in good children's teeth and spoil them, that he occasionally forgot to howl in the right place--thus scoring the greatest of triumphs for the woman dentist."

Another of medicine's appended professions, into whose mysteries women have penetrated, is pharmacy. At the New York College of Pharmacy a feature of the fall term of '97 was an unusual number of women students. In the spring of the same year six young women passed into the senior class, and in anticipation of the largely increased attendance, the accommodations for women were enlarged and the woman's room changed from a contracted space on the ground floor to handsome and commodious quarters joining the lecture hall. In speaking of the marked increase in the number of woman students of pharmacy, a trustee of the college says: "Eventually the retail drug trade will pass into the control of women. It is a business suited to intelligent, wide-awake women, and they seem to be developing a taste for it." One of the professors says:

"Women are particularly fitted for work in pharmacy. They are naturally neat and delicate in their handiwork. The average standing of women is better than that of men, so far as can be judged by the small number who have entered. The women are hard students, perhaps because they realize that, being few in number, they have a record to make. It is very possible that if there were more of them, they would not do so well. The best women are not up to the standard of the best men. They have not the ability of the men, for they have not had the years of training, which undoubtedly makes a great difference. It is the story of the tortoise and the hare. Industry will accomplish more than genius alone.

"There is one obstacle in the way of women securing good positions as pharmacists. There is always a chance of their marrying after a few years of service. A man who wants a clerk will be apt to say, 'A student is of no very great service, anyway at first. A woman will do no better work than a man, and then, just as I get her well trained, she is going to be married and leave me. If I take a man, he will stay and become a great value.'

"So he puts the woman behind the counter or at the cashier's desk, where she will be attractive, and takes a man for his more serious work. Pharmacy is not now so attractive to men as formerly, because of the reduction in pay. That does not affect a woman so seriously. If she takes it up to make a livelihood, she is well satisfied to receive from $40 to $60 a month."

A woman who has made a notable success as a pharmacist is Mrs. Cora Dow Goode, a young woman not yet thirty, who owns and controls four prosperous drug stores in Cincinnati. The last one of the four to be opened is said to be one

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of the most magnificent establishments of its kind in the world. Mrs. Goode owes her success entirely to her own efforts, as she began her business career without capital. She inherited neither stores nor wealth, and all her property and all her professional success were won by her own industry, alertness, and attention to business. How many young men of the same age are there in the United States who have achieved so much in so short a time?

[image: MRS. CORA DOW GOODE]

Mrs. Goode is not only a thoroughly equipped pharmacist from the scientific standpoint, but is, besides, a practical business woman of extraordinary foresight and sagacity. Her father, Mr. E. B. Dow, was for many years a well-known wholesale druggist in Cincinnati, but a stroke of paralysis at the very prime of his life incapacitated him for business, and his successful career came to an untimely end. This was when his daughter was yet a child. Nevertheless, although but sixteen years of age, and knowing nothing of the business, she determined to do something, and accordingly opened a drug store in the city. A hired clerk who possessed the necessary technical knowledge supplemented her own labors and everything moved along as it should in a well conducted pharmacy. Every spare moment was spent by the young proprietor in studying the rudiments of her profession and in acquiring the art of making the receipts exceed expenditures. Her capital was limited and she found herself again and again handicapped on this side and on that; but in her bright lexicon that well known and too familiar word "fail" was wanting, and she passed successfully through this critical period of her pharmaceutical existence. At seventeen the State Board of Examination was wrestled with and triumphantly overcome. Encouraged by this, she immediately entered the department of pharmacy of the Cincinnati University and had the distinction of being the only woman in a class of seventeen. She graduated at nineteen, although at first there was some trouble about her diploma being conferred, since it was never given to young men until they were twenty-one. This obstacle, like all others, was overcome and she found herself a fully-fledged pharmacist with a business so increased that she was compelled to open a second establishment. This was followed by a third, which was for a long time the only all-night drug store in Cincinnati; and, finally, by the fourth and largest.

Mrs. Goode attends personally to the details of the business, does all her own buying, writes her advertisements, and arranges her displays. She is a firm

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believer in advertising, and has prepared several articles of her own which she sells through a mail order department, already grown to be a most important feature of her business. With all this, she is intensely feminine--the strongest proof of which is, that she always adds postscripts to her letters. She is very fond of music and intended to make it her career, but she has become so much absorbed in the details of business and finds it so remunerative that she is satisfied to depend now on music for amusement and recreation alone. One chief article of her creed is, that a woman's work, like a man's work, is gauged by ability.

Other girls and women are finding good livelihoods in this profession, but none of them, so far, have attained the position of this clever, keen, shrewd Ohio woman.

Miss Sophia B. Cowles, of Johnson, Vt., entered the drug store of her brother-in-law more than a quarter of a century ago, and learned the business so thoroughly that when reverses came to him she was able not only to buy the drug store, but to carry it on alone, doing a thriving business for several years. When, after a trial of other kinds of business, her brother-in-law wanted to go into the drug business again, Miss Cowles hired him as head clerk for a while, and later took him into partnership. To-day the firm stands as "Holmes & Cowles," and she is the active head, doing the buying, putting up prescriptions, etc., while everybody in the town feels perfect confidence in her skill and honesty.

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OPPORTUNITIES for women to work as printers, editors and publishers, have been possible for a longer time than in many other occupations, and yet here the field is rapidly widening. In years past, when all typesetting was done by hand, women were very frequently employed, their deftness of touch and quickness of motion making them particularly skillful. Nor has the introduction of typesetting machines driven them from the field. Many women now become expert in operating these machines, and when they have done so, are able to earn excellent wages. The supplementary branches of the printers' work are being constantly made more available for women.

Of women publishers, the name of Kate Field suggests itself first. Her "Washington" was original with her, and she made it eminently successful. Mrs. Nicholson, of New Orleans, took charge of the Picayune of that city upon the death of her husband. Mrs. Anna M. Grogan, of Hartford, Conn., upon her husband's death succeeded him as editor and publisher of the Telegram, and for several years has conducted the paper in an exceedingly able manner. Miss Jeannette Gilder is associated with her brother as editor of the Critic. Mrs. Annie L.Y. Orrf, of St. Louis, edits and publishes the Chaperon Magazine. The Household Realm of Cleveland is published by a woman. Miss Marilla Andrews, of Evansville, Wis., assisted by her sister, edits and publishes the Evansville

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Badger, and Miss Helen M. Winslow is publisher as well as editor of the brilliant new magazine, the Club Woman.

One of the most conspicuous successes in this line of work is that of Miss Kate E. Griswold, of Boston, who publishes "Profitable Advertising." Her success is the more gratifying to women from the fact that such a publicaand tion as hers calls particularly for that executive business ability which women are sometimes said to lack.

Miss Rena Challender, of Manistee, Mich., enjoys the distinction of being, so far as the writer has been able to learn, the only woman at work as foreman of a daily newspaper office. Miss Challender's position, and her very notable success in it, have been honestly earned, for she has worked herself up from being simply a "printer's devil" to where she is now. She has fed the press, done job work, run the engine, and, when necessary, sat down and written copy. As a result, she has gained a thoroughly practical knowledge of all the details of a printer's work.

Miss Challender's home was in a village in Michigan. When she was fourteen years old she was apprenticed to a printing office where a paper with "patent outsides" was published. From a brief story of her experience which Miss Challender wrote for the News, certain paragraphs have been quoted because they seem to have such a practical bearing on just the points which this book is intended to emphasize.

"From this office," Miss Challender says, "I went to a daily newspaper office in the city, where I came into competition with men. Many difficulties were encountered, but they were surmounted by careful attention to business. Without wishing to set myself up as a superior to the women who were my fellow-workers, I could not help noticing that I easily gained the goodwill of the men-workers by attending strictly to my duties, and not asking assistance for every move I made. The others seemed to require so much attention, and 'I can't' was often upon their lips, while my conduct was governed by the instructions of my first employer, who taught me not to care what the 'other fellow' says, does or thinks; never to grumble; to pay no attention to the work of others; to have a pleasant word for all; and to do my work so that the foreman would not be compelled to do it over.

"Early in my experience I found that men were prejudiced against women because the majority are willing to work for lower wages, and to do a man's work--or attempt to do it--on half the salary given to men. If a woman can do as much as a man she should be paid accordingly, and if there is a trade union in her vicinity she should join it and demand equal rights. Most unions are now open to women workers.

"By following this plan I received my just dues and wages, and was made 'foreman' of the composing-room of the afternoon daily after serving one year at

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[image: WOMEN OPERATING TYPESETTING MACHINES]

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the case, and was also entrusted with the mechanical department. There were in the office four presses: a large cylinder, a pony cylinder, and two small jobbing presses. I held this position for two years, and was then sought out to assume charge of an illustrated eight-page morning newspaper where none but women were employed. I attended to the making up of the paper and acted as foreman of the office.

"In my opinion there are few professions or trades that a woman cannot enter, but to maintain her position she must closely follow the independent line. I am aware that employers usually insist upon paying a woman or a girl small wages, taking advantage of her generally too helpless condition.

[image: MISS A. FLORENCE GRANT]

"I do not think there is any other business from which a woman can derive more satisfaction than that of printing. It is like music to me to hear the click of the type as it falls into the stick, and the buzzing sound of the old press as she turns her papers out on the 'fly.' Girls who are starting out as I did will do well to note some of the rules I adopted. Never say 'I can't,' but go ahead and do the best you can and you will succeed. Learn the printing trade, learn to operate the machine, for our typesetting days are over. There is always work for a good competent woman compositor. I have never been without a position. Whatever you undertake, go at it with the idea that you cannot fail and must succeed, and you will surely win."

Boston enjoys the distinction of having a successful woman job printer. Miss A. Florence Grant has now conducted a printing business in that city for eight years, competing successfully with the men in the business, doing almost all kinds of work, and giving the best of satisfaction.

Miss Grant was born in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, in 1870. She says that she always thought she wanted to go into business for herself but that as a child, she thought she would like to be a grocer. The printing business she says she grew into, influenced perhaps by the fact that when at the Wakefield High School she

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helped edit the school paper. Her knowledge of her business has been thorough and practical. Before it had grown to its present proportions, where all the proprietor's time is required in the office to attend to the executive department, she was able to take a hand at any of the mechanical details.

There is no evidence of femininity about this printing establishment except in the personality of its fair but business-like proprietor. The sign on the door which indicates the character of the business tells nothing of the sex of the person whose name is given, and so "Grant, Printer," frequently receives visitors who are greatly astonished at being met by a slender, refined appearing girl as representing the head of the establishment.

Seated at her desk in her private office she figures upon "contracts" with as much ease as the society girl reckons up the dances on her card, and with speculations that are doubtless more surely realized.

Miss Grant's experience, like many another business woman's, testifies not only to the genuine respect and substantial patronage which men accord a capable, business-like woman, but also illustrates the fact that woman is woman's friend, and that no feelings of petty jealousy ever prevent a woman from extending the hand of sisterly fellowship to a brave woman comrade, and while doing all possible to encourage and assist her, experiencing a true sense of pride in the success which means not only personal benefit, but reflects credit upon the entire sex.

Of this matter Miss Grant herself says, in a paper which she read before a business league:

"When a woman enters the business world the first question is, 'Is she a business woman?' If so it will quickly be seen, and then she will receive the most courteous treatment from both men and women. The meeting in business is on a more equal basis than any other, and it is in this realm that the true nature of our fellow creatures is seen. A business woman of to-day has received her business education in a much shorter time than a man. He is trained from early youth to his career, while the girl is usually overtaken by circumstances and has to learn through experience many things which the boy has been taught.

"We so often hear it said by parents that they would like to have their daughters do something, but they do not wish them to work hard. They talk thus instead of finding for what the girl's capabilities fit her, and then training her for some definite purpose. Work, and hard work, are but synonyms for what one dislikes to do. Given a congenial occupation, and the energies of the worker may be pushed to their greatest and highest capability for endurance without making the work anything but pleasure, and the individual, the community--in fact, all the world, are the gainers thereby. To the mother who knows little or nothing of the business world it may seem hard to think of her daughter spending

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so many hours daily in an office. She may think it much easier for her to remain at home doing the sweeping, the cooking, or the fancy work. But to many, very many girls, housework is the dullest monotony, and it would be much more agreeable to be engaged in some occupation adapted to their talent. Office work may be the same routine each day, but the different characters one meets, the interchange of thought, the knowledge of the happenings in the world keeps one's brain active and gives one a great calmness in times of necessity, developing and strengthing one as nothing else can.

"For about three years my business was mostly with men, and I found them always courteous and kind. Since then I have met many women, and that has increased the pleasure I have felt in my work. There is true happiness in the business life if one enters into it for the sake of business itself, but if one does it because it is the fashion, or 'for the good of the cause,' the results are dire in the extreme, both to one's self and to every one coming in contact with the business conducted on such principles. What is needed for success is a polite independence, and good- will to all."

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BACK in the dark ages for women--and they were not so very far away, either, when one comes to think of it--the question was asked why need girls be taught arithmetic, because even if they had the brains to comprehend the science of numbers, they would never in later life have any opportunity to use it.

Those days passed; but it is only since we have been going down the last half of this century that business men began to realize that women not only could learn arithmetic, but practice it. Now, the number of women doing satisfactory work as bookkeepers and cashiers is legion; and while the opportunities for very great advancement may not be possible in this work, as in the professions and in business, the number of women who earn a comfortable living salary is probably as great as in any other line of work. That they are efficient is shown by this very fact.

William Ellery Curtis, writing of life in Washington in the Chautauquan for September, 1897, says: "Nearly one-fourth of the employes in the executive departments are women, and it is the universal testimony of all unprejudiced officials of experience that they maintain a higher standard of efficiency than men in this clerical work. This is even more noticeable in those branches of the

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treasury where bonds and money are to be handled. A treasury 'countess' in the redemption division, where worn-out money is exchanged for new, or in the division of issue, from which all bank bills and greenbacks originally proceed, is unsurpassed for accuracy and acuteness in all the banking world. There are women in those offices whose instincts enable them to detect a counterfeit note almost by the touch. There is one woman who has testified as an expert in nearly all important lawsuits involving the genuineness of money, and she is regarded as the highest authority on that subject. There has seldom been a woman thief in any of the executive departments or in the post offices throughout the country, although the agents of the secret service are constantly making arrests.

"As clerks and correspondents women are equally efficient, and they often accomplish more than the men, although they are not promoted as rapidly and do not receive the same salaries. The highest compensation paid to a woman in the government employ is $1800, and there are only two or three who receive that amount. Married women are not allowed to hold positions if they have husbands or sons to support them, and the majority of women clerks have obtained their positions through competitive examinations. The old system of political patronage did not offer them as many opportunities as are afforded by the new system."

The great number of business colleges which have sprung up all over the country furnish instruction in the theory and practice of bookkeeping which undoubtedly gives a pupil in such a school a very great advantage both about getting a position and taking up the work after the position is secured. At the same time the details of the different enterprises, and the individual methods of different employers vary so much that experience must be the last and best teacher.

In connection with this question of experience the writer has asked two young women, each of several years' experience, and successfully holding positions as bookkeeper and cashier, to answer certain questions, and give briefly an account of their own experience, as a help to other young women who may be wishing to take up the same work.

The questions asked were these:

"How did you first happen to take up the work; by chance or design?

"What were some of the principal difficulties you encountered at first?

"Does experience enable you to guard against these, or are new difficulties liable to arise at any time?

"Do you find the work pleasant? Tiresome? Hard?

"Do you think the pay is in general satisfactory?

"Do you think the field is full, or is there room for really competent women?

"General suggestions."

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To these the bookkeeper made the following replies:

"A successful bookkeeper asked me to study with her. After a course of private lessons there came an opportunity for me to open a set of books for a new business. From then on circumstances were such as to lead the way for me. Possibly the counting-room would not have been my choice had some other field been open and promising of remuneration. The instruction I had received was invaluable in my work.

"There have been no difficulties except such as have been easily overcome by conforming to the main principles. The double entry theory being clearly in mind, details will vary to suit the business in hand.

"New emergencies are likely to arise at any time, but experience as to the best methods is of value, and there are principles which are invariable.

"All three. The occupation may be said to be in some degree menacing to health because of the close application for so many consecutive hours. Longer periods for rest are needed than the ordinary vacation limit. The need for rest equals that of a teacher.

"There are instances in which the pay is very satisfactory. In general it is less than the value of the work. It is a field where many a woman does better work than a man would do in the same place, and as a whole she receives a smaller compensation. The qualifications of patience, accuracy and close attention to detail mark her work.

"It is best to be as well prepared as possible. At the same time, the novice must continue to be teachable, and to learn new lessons constantly in practical work.

"There will always be room for the really competent, but the field is full of applicants, and it takes opportunity for ability to make itself evident.

"There is a field of effort in the counting room wider than would be supposed. A study to effect the best economy of time, to employ the best and simplest methods, to make the clearest and most intelligent showing of values accrued, and of expenditures, to present helpful analyses and ratios of expense--these suggest that the arithmetic of the counting room goes further than the 'rule of three.'"

The cashier, whose duties also include some portion of the bookkeeping of the establishment where she is employed, says: "Mere chance put me in the position I now hold. I entered the office as billing clerk. One day I was told I must help the bookkeeper. and take charge of the cash drawer, for a few days. This I did with fear and trembling. I had not had any experience whatever. In school I had studied bookkeeping, but of practical knowledge I had none.

"I shall never forget my first day, or rather night, for the night before I began my new duties I went through the whole day's work. After a few days I was told that I was to remain in the position of cashier; and here I am still.

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"Experience I do not think is really necessary, provided one learns quickly, as each person has his own way in which he wants his books kept. It is well, of course, to have a good idea of the general principle of bookkeeping. It is necessary to understand banking, discount and interest, notes payable, and notes receivable. One will gain more from one week of practical work than from two months in a school or college.

"I find my work very pleasant, and enjoy it greatly. It is really fascinating, and after a holiday I am always eager to get back to the office. The work of cashiering is not an easy task, because there is so much responsibility attached to it. Unless a girl's whole heart and soul are in it she should not attempt it, for she will not succeed. The work is very wearing, and if a girl is of a nervous temperament she had much better try something else."

The writer has also asked the president of one of the oldest and most successful business colleges in the country for a brief summary of his observations of the work of women in this field. He says: "There is an army of women employed now as bookkeepers and cashiers. It may be said, then, that the field is full. In a certain sense it is full, but the trouble is, both for the women who are at work, for those who want to go to work, and for too many of the employers, that a large proportion of the young women who take up this work do so simply as a stop-gap between school and marriage. The woman who is willing to really fit herself for a position, and then do her work carefully and conscientiously, not all the time keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the boys, will never need look far for a place, and a good one, too.

"Of course, I believe that the best way for any one to fit for the work is to take a thorough course of instruction at a good business college. The time which should be required for this varies, in different pupils, with their previous training and their ability to learn. Many pupils learn all that is necessary in six months; others require a longer time. In addition to bookkeeping, arithmetic, and penmanship, the pupil should study banking, and commercial law. Rates of tuition vary from about $40 a quarter of ten weeks, to $120 a year of forty-two weeks. There need be few extra expenses, except board. Thoroughly trained and competent women bookkeepers earn from $15 to $25 a week. Less able women, employed by smaller establishments, cannot command as high wages. Cashiers, as a general thing, require less training, and get less pay.

"So far as the comparative ability of women to do commercial work is concerned, I should say that the average woman is quite competent to take charge of the books of the great majority of business enterprises. Moreover, there will be, in every city, a few women who have developed so much talent for this work that they are the equals of any men, and perfectly competent to take the entire charge

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of the books of any business, no matter how complicated or extensive. Such women as these easily command from $1500 to $1800 a year."

These three records of the observations of the work of women as bookkeepers and cashiers may be summed up briefly, then, as follows: "Learn how to do your work; do it just as well as you are able, and there will be work for you to do."

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WHAT may be a sign of the times is disclosed by an analysis of the plans of a class of fifteen girls who have recently completed the three years' course in one of the best of Boston's private schools," said the Transcript of that city recently. The word "best" is used advisedly, and in its broadest and deepest sense; it is meant to stand not only for the kind of people from whom this school draws its patronage, but also for the high character of instruction which combines with the culture of modern Athens the enlightened Christianity of the best thinkers of this city.

Though not one of these fifteen daughters of wealthy parents has any idea of earning her own living, all have more or less definitely mapped out a life of useful activity and work. A few years ago for such young women to be simply "society girls" would have been enough. We have said that no girl in the fifteen has any idea of earning her own living; all have been taught to realize that every place filled and every salary drawn by women upon whom neither stern necessity has laid her imperative hand, nor special talent called with a constraining urgency impossible to misunderstand, deprives some other woman of her rightful work and wage.

Quite different from women who clamor for well-salaried positions which they do not need will these fifteen be. Three will, in college, go on with their studies; three will, while traveling abroad, strenuously strive after deeper knowledge and

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further cultivation; two, who are motherless, will immediately assume the duties, social and domestic, appertaining to them as heads of their fathers' households; one, with a decided talent for music, will this winter continue her violin studies in Dresden. Thus it will be seen that nine, or more than sixty per cent of the class of fifteen, have distinctly before them working futures.

Six girls remain. Superficially, this half dozen might be said to come in the category of "society girls." They will be introduced by their mothers to the fashionable world, and, being bright, healthy girls, they will probably get a fair share of fun out of the frivolity about them. Yet, though they will be "in the world," they will not be "of it." One has already begun to stir up interest in a working girls' club, and another has gone in for sociological study with a fervent desire to "come over and help." The four who remain have not yet expressed themselves as to their intentions, but it is fair to assume that they, too, will be more than mere self-indulgent seekers after amusement.

A deep sense of their responsibility as privileged young women to those less rich in opportunity animates the girls in the school in question, and shows itself in desire to help other girls. Certainly this bodes very well for American women of the twentieth century. College settlements and working girls' clubs are breaking down the barriers between classes, and, while the wage-earner is being taught English composition, French, German, and music, her privileged sister is coming to realize that only by setting herself a purpose in life--and that, too, an unselfish one--can she do her duty in the world, and, incidentally, find the truest and most lasting happiness there is in it. With the tailoress, the educated daughter of to- day is crying for "more life, and fuller," and, while the one refuses to let her soul be bound by the four walls of the workshop, the other discovers that the narrow line of conventional "society" does not of necessity define her life's pathway.

The following faults of commission and omission in women's colleges in America were recently suggested in conversation to a prominent American woman by a college-bred newspaper man. They were stated in a spirit so fair and friendly that I thought them worthy of transmission to the columns of the Critic, and submit the memorandum again to you as a contribution to one of the most important studies now before our people. Under none of these heads do I mean to indicate that there is an utter lack of these things.

FAULTS OF COMMISSION.

1. Too Great Emphasis of Literary and Scientific Life as the Life Really Worthy of a Woman. --This seems to be the only life for which some of the teachers care, and time only ideal of life which they, by precept or example, hold up to women.

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2. Imitation of Man.--In their effort to prove their capacity and the quality of their college work equal to man's, many women strive to make their capacity and quality identical with man's. This is unworthy of womanhood. Men's colleges have many faults which women, starting at this late day, could avoid. At the---Annex it is possible and desirable to correct faults and make advances impossible in---University. But a--- professor (also professor in the Annex) says that the women will not have any improvement; they wish just the same education as the college man, not a better one.

3. Women's Education a Fad.--College education is held up before all women as desirable. Many women who lack strength of mind or body weaken what they have in the attempt to do what a few can or should do. Women sacrifice vigor which would otherwise tell to the advantage of men and women, in the attempt to re-create their nature and capacities, and they utterly fail to develop already created capacities and ambitions. While women of too widely varying natures enter college, the college seems to be planned for a too limited class, often apparently for teachers. This makes the contrast all the more dangerous between the too wide range of women and the too narrow curriculum.

FAULTS OF OMISSION.

1. Lack of Physical Training, for (a) purposes of recreation and proper balance of bodily and mental work in college, (b) future health, and (c) the duties of wifehood and motherhood. Women's colleges are not responsible for all the ill health of their students in and out of college, but it is one of the special functions of women's colleges-- through their more experienced trustees and teachers and alumnae--to look this question more squarely in the face in the attempt to solve it for all American women.

2. Lack of Social Training.--Many of the teachers themselves have no social capacity. They do not care for humanity as much as for books, or they are sadly lacking in ability to express their interest in mankind. The over-emphasis of the literary life prevents recognition of the claims of the social life among those teachers who have social capacity and trained social tact. The woman's college seems to fail to show the possibility of the development and expression of the intellectual in the social life. Women have the power and opportunity to do this in America. They should not put thought into social relations during their four years in college. Throughout I use "social" in a wide sense, including social events, conversation, friendships, mingling with men and women, social helpfulness, and the problems of mankind as bound together into a society with physical, artistic, ethical and religious needs.

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3. Lack of Refining Influences and Tendencies.--Women themselves recognize this in their college life. It is painfully apparent in some cases to men. Women can point out the way, if anybody can, to a "fine art of conduct" in (dress, bearing, thinking, speech, and in a delicate sympathy that has real helpfulness and real tact. It is hard enough for me to attain and retain a wholesome and pervading refinement; and we look to women to set us the example, to hold up before us the ideal, and so in both these ways to make this refinement a pervading force. A member of one of the oldest and best Eastern women's colleges, a girl who is apt to be over-loyal, told me that she did not think one would find much refining influence in this college. Under this head I find both an absence of helpful and a presence of hindering influences.

4. Failure to Hold Up the Ideal of Wifehood and Motherhood.--I do not forget that some women do not care to marry, and that some are not fitted to do their best work as married women. But a woman's college should present and rightly prepare for the duties of womanhood. In---College every teacher is, I think, unmarried, except a very few, who are widows. Is it not rare in other colleges to find women teachers who are, or have been, married? Does not the almost exclusive presence of unmarried teachers unconsciously tend toward an ideal which is not that of womankind? Of course, I am not issuing a diatribe against unmarried women as teachers, for they find a noble aim there; but I am questioning the effect of the overwhelming proportion in women's colleges.---College is more normal than---in that it has both men and women on its faculty. So far as I can learn from courses of study, and from the experience of my sister, my cousins, and my friends, almost nothing is done in the leading colleges and coeducation schools either by personal or public effort to train women intelligently in this line, or even to suggest the possibilities of the ideal. Is it reasonable for my sister now to feel it unworthy either to have, or to express to friends, this ideal of wifehood or motherhood as her highest ideal, when she frankly expressed it as a little girl?

5. Lack of Preparation for Continuity of Intellectual Life After Leaving College.--A woman's college training fails to connect with her later life. The similar failure in men's colleges is somewhat remedied by the continuity of intellectual life in professional or university study and then in professional work. The failure of women's colleges seems to me partly in (a) selection of subjects, and partly in (b) method of work.

(a) Women seem to be working on the same old schedule, instead of taking for scientific study subjects which generally enter into women's later life. In order to let women develop their inborn interest, provide a good range of electives in pedagogy, psychology, hygiene, nursing, physiological chemistry, chemistry of good, economics of the household, physiology, certain branches of medicine

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(elementary), physical culture, social science, social ethics, history of culture, scientific English composition (e.g.., daily themes), and the special interests which women can discover for themselves and which they will be likely to have after college. Of course, the standard branches must also be offered. But there is a whole range of subjects which enter into women's lives for which they have had no college training. How effective women could be in charities, in churches, villages, homes, if some of the time put into things dropped at graduation had been used to give them a systematic knowledge of social questions! Why should not upper- class girls and graduate students make a regular part of their work the personal investigation and criticism of associated charity work in cities, or of selected families in villages? Women seem to me to be particularly fitted for satisfactory study of the much misunderstood and abused history of culture. They could have almost to themselves--with the exception of Edward Atkinson--the scientific study of domestic economy.

So, they have an open field in certain branches of economic history, the history of household economy, the effect of costume on trade, and vice versa, the history of social reforms.

Dr. Dyke, of Auburndale, Mass., published an interesting article in the Atlantic, about a year ago, on "Sociology in the Education of Women," in which he spoke well of this matter of continuity and of the astonishing lack of courses in social science in women's colleges. Women could make pedagogy more practical and serviceable than it is now, and could put college training to immense advantage in the nursery. President G. Stanley Hall says women can make quicker and finer investigations in psychology than men. I think it was Mrs. Sidgwick, of Newnham College, Cambridge, who exposed some of the cleverest spiritualistic frauds in London. All of these things ought to be offered as electives of equal value with literature and mathematics, and not as added burdens to over-worked students.

(b) A majority of subjects must be studied in college generally rather that fundamentally, but every woman in the last two years ought to go near enough the bottom of something to find out what original research by the laboratory method is. She ought to have courses for method more than for matter. The college to-day fails to give her such scientific and independent work that she can hardly lose afterward her craving for and power to do her later work--at least some of it--scientifically. To-day she fails to get such a clear habit of thinking, writing and acting that it shall always be a pleasure to her to do things clearly. This process of natural selection and of research would develop the average college woman, and would give a free range to real genius.

These faults of women's colleges, I think, are very fundamental and serious. One can excuse slow development, but one cannot excuse serious damage to a

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generation because college authorities and alumnae are unwilling to acknowledge mistakes. The errors can be remedied when the alumnae will forget false loyalty, acknowledge mistakes, and determine to correct them. The wonderful development of woman's higher education shows that it is possible for women's colleges to achieve this when they determine to do so.

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